Women in Tech Statistics 2026: Latest Data & Trends

Female representation has consistently been a topic of consideration for tech companies as the tech sector has developed from a niche industry to a key driver for developed economies. In 2026, the picture remains mixed when it comes to gender equality and women in leadership positions in the tech sector. There is significant variation across roles, regions, and sub-sectors. In this analysis of the key statistics on women in tech in 2026, we bring clarity on this topic and help women looking to build a career in the tech sector to make smart choices.

Where do Women in Tech Stand Today?

Before taking a deep dive into the specifics of gender diversity in different roles and regions, a broad overview is needed so that more granular insights can be understood in context.

What Percentage of the Tech Workforce is Female?

It’s challenging to put a concrete figure on the overall percentage of women within the global tech workforce in 2026.

However, most estimates place the figure at roughly 26-28%. An important caveat is that in many sub-sectors, this percentage is much lower. For example, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that only about 16% of engineers and architects are women.

How Have the Numbers Changed Since 2020?

The answer may seem somewhat negative at first. Estimates place the percentage of women in tech at 28.8% in 2020, suggesting there has been little change over the past 6 years. However, there are underlying figures that bode well for the future. According to the 2025 edition of LeanIn.Org and McKinsey’s annual Women in the Workplace report, which focuses on the US, female representation at the entry-level stage in the tech sector in the US is now 49%. The report also notes that women saw an average 7-percentage-point increase in leadership roles at the best performing companies (those in the top quartile) since 2021.

Women’s Representation by Tech Role

While the Women in the Workplace report 2025 finds that women make up 43% of all employees at the entry level, the percentage drops gradually as you move up the corporate ladder. 39% of Managers are women, 38% of Directors, 36% of VPs, and 37% of Senior VPs. Notably, tech is the second-best performing sector for female presence in the C-suite, with 34% of executives in the industry being women.

Women vs. Men in Tech Salaries and Promotion Rates

Given the general lack of transparency on salaries within the industry, finding statistics on direct salary comparisons is challenging. In the ISC2’s Women in Cybersecurity study (2026), 34% of the women surveyed (vs. 19% of men) believe pay or promotion inequity has held women back. And recent studies of sub-sectors within tech appear to confirm this finding. The Society of Women Engineers repora persistent gender gap in pay across a range of computer science occupations. Female database administrators and architects earned just 73% of what their male counterparts earned, with computer systems analysts (86%), web developers (87%) and software developers (88%) similarly disadvantaged.

Gender Gaps in the Tech Industry

Representation is one piece of the puzzle. But we must also understand how women can build careers within the industry, what challenges they face in doing so, and what factors impact the quality of their working life.

Hiring and Retention Statistics

Retaining female talent is proving challenging. This is not, however, an exclusive issue for the tech industry. Deloitte’s Women @ Work 2025 survey finds that only 5% of women plan to stay with their current company for more than five years, citing work/life balance, pay, and lack of opportunities as major reasons for this. The SheTO survey found that, in the case of engineering, retaining female talent is especially difficult due to weak onboarding and lack of sponsorship.

Female Leadership and Executive Representation

83% of respondents to ISC2’s Women in Cybersecurity study said they personally saw women in either leadership or technical roles at their organisation. This finding is consistent with McKinsey and LeanIn’s finding that 34% of C-suite roles in the tech sector are held by women at present.

However, in the specific case of engineering and technical roles, the SheTO survey found that 93% of senior engineering roles are held by men. Specifically in terms of Directors, only 9% are women.

Barriers to Entry for Women in Tech firms

ISC2’s Women in Cybersecurity study found that work-life balance was the most frequently quoted impediment to career advancement (mentioned by 45% of respondents), with pay and promotion inequality also highlighted as a key factor. In the SheTO report on women in engineering, more emphasis is placed on bias and a lack of sponsorship. This finding is consistent with overall trends for women in the workplace. Lean In and McKinsey’s annual Women in the Workplace found that 45% of entry-level male employees have a sponsor at work, compared to just 31% for women at the same level.

Lack of access to training on key workplace tools may also be a factor. In a recent analysis of Women and Generative AI, Deloitte noted that women feel less positive than men regarding the training and encouragement they receive from their companies when it comes to using generative AI.

Burnout and Attrition Rates for Women in Tech companies

Across all industries, women are facing stress and burnout. According to Deloitte, in 2025 only 51% of women at work described their mental health as good. These broad patterns are certainly seen in the tech sector. Recruitment firm Mason Frank dug into its data on cloud specialists that showed 46% of respondents reporting burnout in the past 12 months.

Gender Diversity Trends by Region

The conditions and opportunities for women in tech, from female executives to new hires, vary considerably by region.

Women in Tech in Lithuania

In terms of Europe, starting our analysis with Lithuania makes sense. Eurostat reports that it has registered the EU’s highest average growth in Information and Communication specialists over the past decade (14.2% annually). Women leaders and employees have been at the forefront of this growth – Lithuania had the EU’s highest annual growth rate in female ICT specialists between 2015 and 2025. At present, 22.5% of Lithuania’s ICT professionals are women, a percentage considerably higher than the EU average of 19.5%.

Female-led startups are playing a key role in boosting the representation of women. Vinted, Europe’s largest fashion marketplace and Lithuania’s first unicorn, has Milda Mitkutė among its co-founders. She is joined by the likes of Simona Andrijauskaitė, co-founder of interpretation platform Interactio, and Dalia Lašaitė, co-founder of 3D model marketplace CGTrader.

56% of senior management roles in the country’s tech-heavy Global Business Services sector are held by women according to Invest Lithuania. Lithuania is also successfully closing the gender gap in STEM, with women making up more than 58% of all scientists in Lithuania, according to Eurostat. A hotspot for Life Sciences, the country has multiple women leaders in this field. These include neuroscientist Dr. Urtė Neniškytė and nanochemist Dr. Ieva Plikusienė, who have both received the L’Oréal Foundation and UNESCO’s Rising Talent award.

Women in Tech in the US

Home to the best-known tech companies globally, and with some of the most attractive tech jobs on offer anywhere in the world, the US certainly offers unique opportunities for women in tech.

Unfortunately, women in tech are still losing out to male colleagues when it comes to careers. Overall, women hold around 28% of computing roles, a figure that drops to 24% at the “big five” tech firms (Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft), reflecting a gender gap that widens further at the industry’s most prestigious companies. The situation in STEM overall is only slightly more positive, with women making up 35% of STEM employees in the US according to recent data from the WomenTech network.

Women in Tech in Europe and the UK

The EU average for female ICT specialists currently sits at 19.5% according to EuroStat. There is wide variance within the bloc when it comes to gender balance, ranging from just 12.9% in Czechia to 27.8% in Romania.

In terms of STEM employment in general, women’s inclusion is increasing in Europe. Eurostat’s latest figures show that 7.9 million women in the EU are currently working as scientists and engineers. This 7.9 million figure accounts for 40.5% of all employees and is well up from the 5.2 million registered a decade earlier.

The UK is also at an all-time high for women in the “core STEM” workforce, which covers science, engineering and ICT. According to the WISE (Women in Science and Engineering) campaign, women now account for 27.6% of all specialists in these sectors. At 20.2%, the UK’s percentage of women in ICT sits slightly higher than the EU’s average, while in science, the figure is up to 47.5%.

Women in Tech in the Asia-Pacific region

In China, although women make up about 40% of the STEM workforce overall, less than 20% of the most popular STEM positions in technology are held by women. That is according to a December 2025 report by the Asian Development Bank.

According to a survey by APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation), women in the region face familiar barriers to entry and career progress – 39.4% of women in STEM believed that societal concepts of gender equality still need to be reinforced. The survey also noted that ingrained social biases in the Asia-Pacific region pose additional challenges and difficulties for women in STEM as they navigate their careers. For example, only 31% of tech startups in the Philippines have at least one female founder.

Intersectionality: Race, Age, and LGBTQ+ Inclusion

Women of Color in Tech

Unfortunately, opportunities for Black, Latina and Native American women in tech appear to be stagnating. Despite them receiving double the number of computing degrees in 2023 compared to 2017, the representation trend in America’s tech workforce had a downward direction between 2018 and 2022, from 4.6% to 4.1%, according to data from the Reboot coalition.

LGBTQ+ Representation in Tech Roles

Individuals who openly identify as LGBTQ+ make up just 2-3% of the tech workforce, a 2024 study by Women Tech Network showed. Efforts are being made to help female and non-binary employees develop their tech careers. For example, SheTO‘s Leadership and Management Accelerators support engineers from these demographics to reach executive roles.

Age Discrimination Trends

In Europe, representation by age in the ICT sector has remained virtually the same over the past 10 years. Eurostat reports that young employees (aged 15-34) made up 36.4% of ICT employees in 2015 and 36.0% in 2025. The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has found that 25-39-year-olds are overrepresented in tech, accounting for 41% of all employees, compared to 33% in the wider economy.

Women in Emerging Tech Fields

Just as there are regional variations in gender parity, the picture changes across different fields of tech.

AI and Machine Learning

According to Deloitte’s Women and Generative AI study, women comprise less than 30% of the AI-related workforce. This figure is particularly surprising given that 44% of women in tech roles are using generative AI regularly in their projects, compared to 33% for their male colleagues. According to the Closing the AI Gender Gap: Four Conditions for Change report by IMD, women hold only 14% of AI executive roles and 18% of AI research positions. Opportunities for women in employment may also be thin on the ground, given that AI-related job postings are heavily concentrated in traditionally male-dominated sectors.

ICT

Eurostat’s “Digitalisation in Europe – 2026 Edition” found that 19% of ICT employees in the EU are female. As noted above, regional variation is substantial. In the US, women account for 28% of computing roles. In the EU, the figure is 19.5%, rising to 23% in countries like Lithuania, while in the UK it sits at 20.2%.

Cybersecurity

ISC2’s study found that female representation on cybersecurity teams ranges from 18% to 24%. As with other sectors, career advancement is proving challenging for women. Only 7% of the women surveyed for the report have reached C-level roles, with 45% of respondents citing work/life balance as a key reason for the lack of career opportunities.

Science

Science as a sector boasts the highest gender diversity of all tech-related sectors. Women make up 35% of STEM employees in the US according to the WomenTech network. Eurostat shows that women specialists now make up 40.5% of scientists and engineers in the EU, and in countries like Lithuania, the figure is as high as 43%.

However, the World Economic Forum notes that the drop-off in gender parity at the executive level is especially pronounced in STEM fields.

Progress and Initiatives

There are multiple ways to enhance opportunities for women in tech, and action by companies, governments, and educators is already helping move the dial.

Top Companies Promoting Gender Equality in Tech

The SheTO report noted that companies with active DEI programs have 2.5x more women CTOs and roughly 2x more women VPs of Engineering than companies without such programs. Female leaders and founders are also key to providing role models and proving that career advancement is possible. For example, in Lithuania, both local companies like Vinted and global companies with teams in the country, such as SumUp and Wix.com, boast high-profile female leaders.

Government and NGO-led Initiatives

Governments can play a key role in gathering data to increase transparency about women’s position in tech. A notable example is the Women in Digital Index, an EU index launched in 2025 to track the pipeline of women specialists from STEM education through ICT training, employment, and leadership.

Globally, the World Economic Forum runs various gender parity programmes. Meanwhile, the Global 50×50 Initiative is targeting 50% women in cybersecurity by 2050.

Skill Development and Upskilling Programs

Mentorship programmes like Women Go Tech in Lithuania are designed to empower women who want to enter the tech sector, offering six months of mentoring from business executives and experts. 52% of Women Go Tech mentees have found a job in tech during the programme while as much as 70% find employment within a year.

Beyond Lithuania, ISC2’s research has found that 40% of women in cybersecurity have access to mentorship programmes, 32% receive sponsorship from leadership, and 45% have support from informal mentorship or peer networks.

Industry Awards and Recognition

Multiple award and recognition programmes exist, ensuring that women in tech, and the companies that do most to support them, receive the kudos they deserve.

For example, AnitaB.org, a digital community for women in tech, runs the annual Abie Awards, which honour female technologists in three categories: innovation, leadership, and social impact. In the UK, the WISE Awards (part of the WISE campaign) honour women across STEM and tech fields, while the TechWomen100 Awards spotlight the women shaping the UK tech industry.

What needs to change?

From more female-led startups to better representation in leadership positions and improved gender balance in tech firms, there is still much to be done to improve the situation. Starting with culture is a must.

Addressing “Bro Culture” and Bias in the Tech Industry

Given that bias and lack of sponsorship are both cited as key barriers to progress for women in tech, it is clear that improving the culture within tech companies is needed. A positive first step in this area would be to increase the number of startups and tech companies led by women.

PitchBook also shares positive news on this front in AI. In the US, venture funding for companies with at least one female founder hit $74 billion in 2025, which is almost double the level two years ago. However, companies with exclusively female founders still only account for 2% of all AI funding.

Policy Recommendations

The first and most important step governments can take is to track the real situation on the ground for women in tech. Without reliable, consistent datasets, it is impossible to fully understand the situation women face in this sector and make sound decisions that actually improve it. The EU’s recently launched Women in Digital Index is a positive example of this approach.

One concern that policy can address is a training gap between men and women when it comes to AI. McKinsey and LeanIn note that only 21% of entry-level women are encouraged by managers to use AI tools, as compared to 33% of men. So policies to increase women’s access to AI training would be a smart move.

Women in Tech: FAQs

Is a Tech Career Good for Women?

The short answer is yes, but a lot depends on where you are, what your role is, and what type of company you work for.

Globally, women make up roughly 26-28% of entry-level tech employees. That means women starting their careers in tech will meet many other women in the field and don’t need to act as pioneers breaking new ground for others to follow.

That said, the higher up the career ladder you progress, the less representation you will find. Therefore, women may have to work harder in tech than in other sectors to build the career that they want. However, as tech sub-sectors like AI and cybersecurity continue to grow, we can expect more opportunities to emerge, including for women.

What are the Main Challenges for Women in Tech?

The data clearly shows that, while there is still progress to be made in terms of achieving 50/50 parity at entry level, the biggest challenges relate to career progression and gaining representation at the highest levels of the industry. For example, only 24% of computing roles at the “big five” tech firms are held by women, suggesting they have to fight disproportionately hard for the most prestigious opportunities. Even once women are established within companies, bias and a lack of sponsorship contribute to fewer opportunities at senior levels.

In terms of retention, work-life balance is most commonly cited as a reason to leave the industry or switch companies.

Which Tech Fields Have the Most Female Representation?

The best situation in this regard is in science. For example, in regions like the EU, 40.5% of all scientists and engineers are women, a percentage that jumps even higher in countries like Lithuania. Beyond science, fields like AI also boast relatively good representation, with women making up about 30%.

In cybersecurity, representation is stuck in the 18-24% range, while an engineering survey put the percentage of female ICT employees at just 15.1% worldwide.

How Can Women Advance their Careers in Tech?

Clearly, while challenges remain, the opportunities have never been greater for women to advance their careers in the tech sector. There is considerable variation in terms of regions and sub-sectors, so carefully considering where to locate yourself is important. Choosing countries or regions where women are already highly represented is likely to mean fewer barriers to entry. And in terms of companies, targeting female-founded tech firms like Vinted and Interactio is likely to pay off. The fact that women are already at the very top of these organisations suggests that career development will have fewer barriers.