What’s changed since 2024?
When this article was first published in January 2024, the conversation around women in tech felt cautiously optimistic: representation was inching upward, big companies were publishing diversity data, and the Alan Turing Institute was leading research on women in AI. A lot has changed.
The gender pay gap in UK tech has widened sharply, from 6% in 2023 to 12% in 2024, moving in the wrong direction for the first time in years. Google, Meta and Microsoft confirmed in 2025 that they would no longer publish DEI and workforce diversity data, making it harder than ever to hold the industry to account. The Alan Turing Institute paused its dedicated Women in Data Science and AI programme, also in 2025. And AI specialisms – where most of the new, high-paid roles are being created – remain among the most male-dominated areas in the sector.
This refresh updates every statistic and source in the original article to reflect where things actually stand in 2026.
The challenges, solutions, and strategies for bridging the gender gap in tech
In 2024, 441,000 women worked as IT specialists in the UK, still just 22% of the sector – a figure that has barely shifted in a decade. If gender representation in IT matched the wider workforce, there would be over 530,000 more women in tech roles. It’s well-established that diversity can fuel innovation and growth, and research continues to show that diversity drives measurably better business outcomes. As we move deeper into an age of AI and technology, that case has never been stronger.
So why are there still so few women in tech, and what’s stopping them from entering – and staying in – the industry?
A quick look at the current gender divide in tech
Nothing has historically been more telling about the real numbers of women in tech than looking at the GAFAM companies: Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft. Until recently, annual workforce reports gave a benchmark for how little had changed. But in 2025, Google, Meta and Microsoft confirmed they would no longer publish diversity, equity and inclusion data, making direct comparison impossible going forward. The most recent available figures show women’s representation in tech roles ranging from 29% of roles at Microsoft to 45% at Amazon – though Amazon has never broken out numbers specifically for tech roles. The withdrawal of this data is itself a significant story: it removes public accountability at exactly the moment it’s needed most.
In AI specifically, the picture is sharper still. The Stanford AI Index 2025 puts women at 26% of AI and machine learning roles globally, while the World Economic Forum reports women hold 30% of data science roles, the highest representation in any AI-adjacent profession, but still well below parity. The Alan Turing Institute, which long led UK research in this area, discontinued its dedicated Women in Data Science and AI programme in 2025, a loss the sector is still absorbing.
In product management (PM), women hold around 30–37% of positions depending on the dataset, but only 36% of senior-level PM roles, and the wage gap persists. In 2022, women entering PM roles earned 94% of what men in equivalent positions earned. This wasn’t always the case: since 2005, tech companies have started introducing technical PM specialisations and new entry requirements, like a computer science degree, and the industry has been moving away from gender-balanced PM teams ever since.
As of 2025, 40.4% of UX design roles are held by women per Zippia data, making the career an outlier in tech. This could be because product design is a more accessible career, diverse backgrounds and experience are welcomed, and degrees in psychology, visual arts, or marketing can all be relevant. However, only 27.5% of senior UX designer roles are held by women, meaning the imbalance returns the higher up the ladder you go.
Reasons for the gender gap in tech
Research by Accenture and Girls Who Code identified non-inclusive company culture as the biggest cause of the gender tech imbalance, and 37% of women in tech cite it as the leading reason they leave. In these workplaces, women feel overlooked, discriminated against, and discouraged by the lack of flexibility and access to women role models. Women of colour and lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women face even greater barriers.
The tech gender pay gap has not just persisted, it has worsened. The 2025 BCS Gender Diversity Report found that women in UK IT roles earned 12% less per hour than men in 2024, up from a 6% gap in 2023. UKTN’s analysis of 50 major UK tech firms puts the median gap at 17.5%, and Channel Web reporting shows the IT-sector gender pay gap is now at a nine-year high. The pay gap has been widening, not closing, since 2022. Recruitment processes also continue to disadvantage women, with job adverts and assessment criteria that tend to favour male candidates.
How can we close the tech gender gap?
School
The tech gender imbalance starts early, in school and university. To create inclusivity, there first needs to be access to computing classes in school and, secondly, the encouragement to join. If young girls and women feel comfortable engaging in technical subjects and have a sense of belonging, they’ll establish an interest that could lead to tech studies.
University
In university, there needs to be clear pathways from studying to working. Again, the culture matters: a more inclusive university culture impacts a woman’s decision to look for a tech career. Men also benefit from an inclusive environment, with their likelihood of looking for tech careers also increasing.
Recruitment
While more companies are actively taking steps to build a pipeline of female talent at all hiring levels, businesses could go further by hiring women who may lack a traditional computer science degree but have the right transferable skills – and investing in the technical training they need.
Policy and leadership
Companies should set diversity targets, introduce full pay transparency, and consider the impact of technology on gender equality, such as when gender biases are baked into digital services and products. Having a diverse leadership group will also establish an inclusive culture and drive opportunities. If you see women leading, you’ll be more empowered to do the same.
Opportunity
Companies can forge connections with groups such as Girls Who Code, Stemettes, and Code First Girls to give girls, young women, and non-binary individuals a chance to attend workshops and join mentoring programmes with technology and engineering companies.
Where AI fits in
The original version of this article was written before generative AI reshaped the tech landscape. The AI gender gap is now one of the most pressing dimensions of the broader problem and one with long-term consequences.
The Stanford AI Index 2025 reports that women hold just 26% of AI and machine learning roles globally. These are among the fastest-growing and highest-paid positions in tech, which means the under-representation of women in AI today will compound the pay and seniority gaps of tomorrow. Worse, AI systems built without diverse teams are more likely to encode existing biases: research indicates gender-diverse AI teams produce significantly fewer bias-related errors in their products.
The UK has taken a step backwards here: the Alan Turing Institute, which ran one of the few dedicated programmes researching women’s participation in data science and AI, ended that work in 2025. The gap it leaves is real.
FourthRev’s LSE AI Leadership Career Accelerator was built with this problem in mind, giving people from non-traditional backgrounds a structured path into AI leadership roles.
Women are needed in the tech industry
Women have unique and distinct strengths to offer the tech industry.
Take product management. Marty Cagan, Silicon Valley’s “guru of PM,” argues that while being smart, creative, and persistent are qualities all PMs need, women make excellent PMs because they often possess a higher level of emotional intelligence, humility, and stamina, all essential to excel in the job.
Women and minorities are critical to the fields of data analysis and data science, where unconscious bias can impact data sets and algorithms, leading to inaccurate conclusions and harmful policy decisions. A good read on this is Caroline Criado-Perez’s Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men.
In her article Why Are Women Encouraged to Go Into UX?, UX writer Daley Wilhelm says UX requires empathy and involves “cleaning up and caregiving,” traits that help in understanding and predicting user behaviour. To explore the dangers of making assumptions about users, read Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic Tech by Sara Wachter-Boettcher.
Gender diversity also has a significant impact on company performance and success; tech companies with a gender-diverse workforce see higher share prices. And the AI dimension makes representation even more critical: gender-diverse AI teams have been shown to produce significantly fewer bias-related errors in their products – a finding backed by the Stanford AI Index 2025.
Thriving in a male-dominated workplace
Some industries have a long way to go before they reach equal gender representation. But that shouldn’t stop women from entering their desired field.
Look for the right culture
To ensure you’ve chosen a business committed to equality and fairness, look for companies with diversity, equity, and inclusion as part of their core values, and check for equitable parental leave policies to avoid the “motherhood penalty.”
Demand equal pay for your work
The pay gender gap in tech is real. Research shows that women are significantly less likely to get a raise even though they ask for them just as often as men, and McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace research points to the broken rung between entry-level and manager as a key structural barrier that compounds over a career.
Use sites like Glassdoor, Levels, and CWJobs to see what you should be earning. For UK tech specifically, Hired.com’s State of Software Engineers and the ONS Gender Pay Gap bulletin give a more granular picture of where the gaps sit by role and sector. And read this article on how to go about salary negotiation as a woman in tech.
Find a mentor or coach
Female mentors can help you navigate your career journey and expand your network while prompting conversations that can break down barriers and remove stigmas or biases. You could also engage a sponsor who will advocate for you and ensure your work gets seen in the right places, at the right time, by the right people.
Career coaching
Working one-on-one with a career or executive coach can help you achieve your long-term goals. It can also help you realise your strengths and potential and give you the confidence to get the results you want.
King’s Product Management Career Accelerator learner, Iryna, assumed she’d be starting as an intern because she had no previous PM experience. Her confidence was transformed in just one session with her FourthRev Career Coach – and that work motivated her to aim higher, helping her land the sole product manager role in an exciting startup.
LSE Data Analytics Career Accelerator learner Elodie Hudson made the transition from teacher to data analyst with her coach’s support.
The highlight of my learning journey was the realisation that I could acquire skills that I previously thought were beyond my reach. It’s been life-changing.”
Elodie Hudson
Lead Data Scientist at AssessTech Analytics
Network with other women in tech
If you work in UI/UX, consider joining Ladies That UX, where you can share knowledge and connect with fellow UX designers from across the globe.
Women working in data analysis or science can explore the global communities at Women in Data, and if your passion is product management, join the Women In Product community of over 30,000 women and non-binary people.
For a broader UK-focused network covering all tech disciplines, Women in Tech UK and the Women in Tech Network are both active, well-resourced communities worth bookmarking.
Turn your ambitions into reality
We’ve been working to bridge the gender gap in education since we first launched our Career Accelerators in January 2022.
Women make up 47% of all learners enrolled on a FourthRev Career Accelerator since 2022.[1]
We’d love to help you make your tech career a reality. Browse the Career Accelerator portfolio and unlock your potential in a high-growth digital career.
[1]Female learners enrolled on a Career Accelerator as of June 2026.
