Women In Tech Statistics (2024) – The Hard Truth

There is no surprise that women are underrepresented in the corporate world, especially in the tech industry, which is likely to be more male-dominated. Regardless of the advances in gender diversity training, bias awareness, unbiased hiring practices, and more the number of women in the tech space remains low. In this article, we are going to take an in-depth look at the current state of women employees in the tech field and provide essential women in technology statistics to understand female representation in the tech industry. 

Top Women in Technology Statistics

  • According to the latest reports, 27.6% of women currently hold tech-related jobs. 
  • The percentage of women serving as CEOs in technology companies is roughly 17%. 
  • There are a total of 141,038 female employees across 56 tech companies. 
  • Around 56% or 79,163 of the women working across 56 tech companies are women of color.  
  • There was a decline of 2.1% in the representation of women in Big tech companies between 2020 and 2022.
  • Over 50% of women working in the tech field have reported gender discrimination, inequality, or sexual harassment in male-dominated environments. 
  • 83.6% of tech organizations tend to perform unbiased recruitment and training practices. 
  • The average representation of women in Big tech companies is around 26.2%.
  • Asian men and women have a hold of 25% of the computer science workforce. 
  • Tech companies with intersectional pay audits reportedly hire females at 1.3 times the rate in comparison to companies that do not perform intersectional pay audits.

What Percentage Of Women Work In Tech?

Around 27.6% of the women were working in the Tech industry in 2023. There is a higher number of women represented in entry-level roles compared to senior-level roles such as CTOs or heads of engineering, etc. Out of 141,038 of the women employed in the tech industry, 56% are women of color as various Mid-size tech companies are leading towards promoting diversity in the workplace. In the United States, about 3.7 million are currently employed in the tech field respresting 23% of the labor force. While in Europe, 1.7 million female workers are working in the tech industry representing 19.1% of ICT labor force.  

  • Over the last few years, there has been a decline of 2.1% in the number of females working in tech-related positions. 
  • Out of 552,751 tech employees across 56 organizations, only 141,038 are female employees. 
  • There are a total of six tech companies that have incorporated showcasing representational parity (opportunity, equal pay, and representation) towards one career level.

Women’s Representation In Big Tech

Big Tech companies with over 10,000 employees tend to have an average of 26.2% of women representation. Over the last few years, there have been massive changes that have occurred in the tech industry which has affected women’s role in the tech department specifically. For example, the recent wave of layoffs has immensely placed a disproportionate impact on women employees. Apart from this, the coronavirus pandemic resulted in the opening of remote work for its employees providing freedom to work from home. 

However, the impact was absolutely opposite and the majority of employees reported feeling burned out during the global pandemic and even witnessed a decline in women working in the technology field from 2020 to 2022. 

Apparently, there was a decline of 2.1% in the representation of women in the big tech industry between the years 2020 to 2021. While the decline in smaller companies was 5.1%. Although, the number of women employees has risen again in technology. 

Key Statistics: 

  • 39% of women make it to the internship career level in the tech industry workforce. 
  • 32.8% of the women are able to hold entry-level positions in computer science-related jobs. 
  • Only 10,9% of the women are able to secure higher positions such as senior leadership roles or CEO positions in the tech industry. 
  • The average percentage of women able to get employed in tech-career positions is 26%.

The largest tech companies in the US have 33% of female representations

Leading five tech companies Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon have a total of 33% of female representations. Out of all, Amazon has the highest number of women employment rate by 45%. Microsoft has a 29% rate of female representation.  

47% of the US workforce is women, however, only 25% of those roles are computing roles 

Women play a major role in the overall workforce in the United States as 47% of the US workforce is performed by female employees. However, when it comes to tech-related positions the scenes are completely different as only 25% of computing roles are obtained by females.

There are only 2.2% and 1.9% of Black and Latinx women represented in tech positions respectively 

Black and Latinx women in the tech industry are highly underrepresented and only 2.2% and 1.9% of black and latinx women are currently employed in the tech field. Asian ethnic groups are the most represented group in the tech workforce with around 20%.   

Women of color face more significant challenges in the tech industry — and they are greatly underrepresented. While a total of 27% of computing roles are held by women, only 3% and 2% are held by Black and Hispanic women, respectively, according to Accenture.

50% of female employees working in tech industry leave their jobs by the age of 35

The percentage of women working in the tech industry is already pretty low in comparison to male employees. But the surprising fact is 50% of the women are likely to leave their tech-job positions by the time they turn 35 which is quite substantial in contrast to the fact only 20% of women leave their job at the age of 35 in other fields. One of the major reasons behind this outcome is the lack of job advancement for women since only 28% of women have a chance of securing a manager role in comparison to males who have a 40% chance of becoming a manager. 

6 out of 10 businesses started by women are launched by women of color 

64% of new women-created businesses are likely to be launched by women of color. Apparently for every 10 businesses launched by women over six of them are established by women of color. Around 40% of the US businesses are owned by women. 

What Percentage Of Software Engineers Are Women?

According to the latest data, 25.1% of the 329,559 of currently employed software engineers are women. Regardless of the increase in the number of female employees obtaining software engineering roles, only about a quarter of the software engineer positions are secured by female employees.

Currently, the average salary earned by female software engineers in the United States is $86,157 making 0.93 cents to every dollar received by male employees. Female employees hold 1 in 5 senior software engineering positions. In addition, 33% of the current software engineering workforce are Asian or Asian American. 

What Percentage Of Computer Science Majors Are Women?

Every one in four software engineers is female. However, there has been a decline in the percentage of women obtaining a computer science major by 18%. One of the major reasons behind this decline is the boasts of a smaller gender pay gap in comparison to other technology fields with female employees making 94 cents to every dollar earned by a male employee. 

6.3% of the computer science degree holders are Black or Hispanic. According to The Bureau of Labor Statistics, computer science job roles are expected to witness a growth of 19% by 2026. 

Women in Tech Employment Gaps

According to US Census data, female workers have made a vast jump in the STEM workforce, considering the percentage of women representatives was only 8% minority back in 1970 to 28% in 2019 of all STEM employees. 

Although there has been progress made by female workers in the STEM workforce, there is still a significant gender gap in the workforce of the Top 5 leading tech companies GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft) with women ranging between 29% to 45%. 

The average percentage of women employees in GAFAM is 31%.

Unfortunately for women, the tech employment gaps tend to grow higher and higher as workers climb that corporate ladder. The representation of women in tech positions is highest for entry-level jobs or junior positions. However the percentage of women employment drops in the mid-level positions in the tech domain along with a significant decline again in the senior-level sector.

Leadership Position Gaps for Women in Tech

There is no surprise that there are massive leadership position gaps for women in the technology field. Currently, only 5% of the senior or leadership positions are held by women in the tech industry. There is a major roadblock for female workers in the tech department when it comes to senior leadership positions. 

For every 100 men promoted to manager position, only 87 women are promoted to the same position. While 82 women of color get the same position. This results in a decline in the availability of senior-level job opportunities for women candidates down the line, making it extremely difficult for women to catch up with men in the roles of representation in the tech workforce.

Women In Tech: Hiring Trends

Apparently, the number of women being hired in the technology industry seems to be rising in the past few years. In 2021, 30.9% of the new technology roles are furnished by female candidates, witnessing a rise of 1% in comparison to 2020 with 29% of female hiring. 

10.9% of the females hired in the new technology sectors belong to white females. The bottom of the recruitment list in the new tech hire positions belongs to Black, Indigenous, Multiracial, and Latin women by 6%. However, various companies have incorporated mandatory unbiased training sections to increase the female new hire rates by 34.5%.

Hiring, Retention, And Advancement

Tech companies with active gender equality and diversity policies are likely to have a higher rate of women recruitment in comparison to companies without any active policies. 

Below we have mentioned some of the key statistics regarding the hiring, retention, and advancement of Women in technology.

  • Around 11.3% of women working in technology and STEM spaces have apparently left the workforce last year. 
  • 16.9% of females working in the tech field reported receiving an advancement or promotion from their current employer. 
  • According to a survey, 57% have stated they feel more burned out from their work since the global pandemic in comparison to 36% of the men surveyed. 
  • Tech companies that are performing pay audits are recruiting women at the rate of 1.3x of the organization without structured pay audits. 
  • 30.9% of the new tech hires are females.

Conclusion 

Based on the above-mentioned data and statistics it’s pretty clear the number of women in technology remains low. Although, few tech companies are taking strong initiative towards gender diversity and gender equality policies, skill-based promotions, unbiased hiring practices, and more methods to bring an equal space and opportunity for both men and women and hire female talent at a large space in the tech field.

About GilPress

I'm Managing Partner at gPress, a marketing, publishing, research and education consultancy. Also a Senior Contributor forbes.com/sites/gilpress/. Previously, I held senior marketing and research management positions at NORC, DEC and EMC. Most recently, I was Senior Director, Thought Leadership Marketing at EMC, where I launched the Big Data conversation with the “How Much Information?” study (2000 with UC Berkeley) and the Digital Universe study (2007 with IDC). Twitter: @GilPress
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