When you look at the C-suites of large tech organizations like Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, and Google, you’ll often see women in roles such as Chief of Finance, Chief of People, or Chief of Marketing. However, women tech CEOs remain rare. Whitney Herd, founder of Bumble, says, “Women chief executives are held to higher standards than male leaders.” Bumble’s current CEO, Lidiane Jones, adds, “We must use the resilience we’ve built because opportunities are harder to come by.”
In 2023, female-only founders received just 2% of U.S. venture capital funding, while teams with both female and male leaders garnered 20.7%. Melanie Perkins, founder of Canva, highlights this disparity, noting it took her three years to secure venture capital funding. The lack of female representation among venture capitalists, with women comprising only 11% of investing partners at U.S. VC firms, exacerbates the challenge.
Tech companies also have a higher gender pay gap than other industries. A UK study found that men in tech earn 16% more than women. Additionally, Levy economists discovered that nearly 80% of all of the unpaid work necessary to maintain a household and care for its family members is done by women. The culture of expected overtime disproportionately affects women with family responsibilities, making it harder to balance work and personal life.
These barriers contribute to the high turnover rate among women in tech. In 2024, 31% of women are considering quitting their tech jobs, indicating that tech is losing valuable talent by not addressing these issues.
Can we emulate the paths of successful women CEOs by addressing these challenges? Let’s explore further.
Making Tech an Industry Where Women Choose to Stay
According to Techopedia, women occupy 43% of entry-level positions in the software industry, but this number drops to 30% in SVP and C-suite roles. There is a disconnect between women entering the tech force and them reaching the top. At BairesDev, we have seen a steady increase in female applicants, with a surge of +43% in 2021-22 and a further +11% the following year.
While there may be a rise in applicants, women tech professionals still leave more frequently than their male counterparts. This provides a roadblock to women reaching the top tech positions. Let’s explore how tech can foster more inclusive cultures that retain and promote women.
We spoke with female engineers and tech professionals at BairesDev about the challenges they’ve faced in their careers. The following are accounts of their professional experiences and what we can do to make tech an industry where women can thrive.
Give Women Equal Opportunities
It is a shared belief that women have to work harder to show their worth. A QA engineer said, “There is a bias (even an unconscious one) in the industry that a woman’s work is not as high quality. It takes longer to have the opportunity to prove your skills, which is key to advancing in the field.”
Engineering managers should take more chances on women. Just as in sports betting, you can’t predict success with certainty based on statistics alone. An example of this is Rocío Belfore, who became BairesDev’s Chief Innovation Officer before 30. According to her, she was fortunate to work in a welcoming environment that values diverse perspectives. This environment, she notes, is pivotal for the advancement of women in the tech industry.
Standardize Paths to Leadership Positions
A software engineer mentioned, “There’s a lack of clear promotion plans. Though it isn’t exclusive to tech, roles in education like teachers have clear stepping stones to promotions and raises. In tech, it’s foggy.”
Meta’s ex-C00, Sheryl Sandberg wrote in her book ‘Lean In‘, that to reach the top, you have to “negotiate like a man.” However, she notes that women who are perceived as aggressive or ambitious often pay a social penalty, whereas men are encouraged and applauded for the same traits. To mitigate women falling behind on promotional curves, there should be a standardized path to management and leadership positions.
Implement Flexible Work Policies and Upskilling Practices
Our engineers believe tech, with its remote-work perks, is a great industry for women, but there’s a caveat. The fast-paced tech industry leaves little time for upskilling.
One of our software engineers thinks that the flexibility of remote work benefits women in managing home and family tasks, which aren’t yet well divided. She believes that ‘In order to advance in technology, we need to always study (programming) languages, best practices, and new releases. Women need to be granted the time and opportunity to upskill at work.’
While flexible policies can attract women, access to courses and mentors should be provided, both of which can equip them to move up in their careers. The long hours and lack of company-paid upskilling hours and policies can keep female tech professionals stagnant. As a result, women leave for more favorable industries or never advance to leadership positions.
Identify Part-time Opportunities for Female Talent
Many women prefer part-time roles in the first years of motherhood, mostly because of staggering childcare costs. The high-tech industries particularly favor full-time roles due to the nature of the work, which often requires continuous project involvement and deeper integration into team activities.
However, autonomous tech workers and outsourcing companies can bill clients per hour. Both independent contractors and agencies could use this system to their advantage by employing women for part-time hours on a flexible basis. For example, becoming a fractional CTO could be a great opportunity for women who are balancing family and professional responsibilities to develop and further their leadership skills.
There is still an unequal distribution of family and household responsibilities. Therefore, we need to reshape traditional tech structures to retain women in their roles and create pathways for their advancement. We could also create roles that would suit the flexible schedules some female tech talent needs. Let’s explore concrete strategies to address these challenges.
4 Actions to Nurture Female Tech Talent into Leadership
If we have more women at the start line, we will have more women at the finishing line. At the same time, like any winning athlete, women will need equipment to get the upper hand so that they don’t trail in last or give up. Ussain Bolt didn’t sprint across the finishing line in a pair of Converse.
1. Transforming the Mindset of Male Peers in the Tech Industry
As our interviewees mentioned, women often are treated differently from men on the team. A QA engineer shared with us how the mentality around gender in the industry should be transformed. She said, “Men need to understand that we aren’t here to take over their roles. Diversity is beneficial because women bring more attention to detail and a fresh perspective. There is an assumption of ‘Did she get promoted because she is female?’ Men need to know we can perform and collaborate without receiving additional privileges.“
We could change this mentality by building up women tech professionals. Publically acknowledging in a company what roles women play in software projects can be a starting point. For example, highlighting women’s roles and contributions to the project’s success can break down those prejudices, particularly if female leadership is involved.
2. Introducing Policies to Get More Women Into Tech
Steering clear of stacking up too many privileges for women, there are policies that can simply level the playing field. The first is mandatory gender pay reporting. In the UK, employers with 250+ employees must report their gender pay gap data. This level of transparency discourages employers from paying different salaries based on gender.
Some companies could choose to introduce quotas for women in leadership. For instance, HP has pledged to reach 50% gender equality in director-level and above roles by 2030. In 2021, California introduced a law to have at least 2 females on corporate boards, and by 2022 they achieved 33.33% female representation. The law was overruled since and the rates dropped below one-third. A balance of quotas and affirmative action with transparency on why a female employee is promoted or hired could work.
3. Empowering Women through Mentorship and Community
Our female engineers, Scrum Masters, and QAs seek quality mentorship to learn new technologies, take on new roles, and gain experience. A Scrum Master shared the importance of having mentors who provide honest feedback, “They are inspirational and help build your confidence. I upskilled from PHP to RoR with guidance from a BairesDev mentor,” she said.
Good tech companies will have upskilling, knowledge-sharing policies, and mentors to actively lift developers up together, including women. Our company has an internal community called The Circles, where our tech professionals, whatever their position in the company, can talk together about challenges and tech trends.
One of The Circles members, a Scrum master, said, “I’ve had access to great tech leads to guide me. I can ask them to show the rationale behind decisions so I can understand and learn too.”
Companies that have open channels of communication and dedicated spaces for knowledge share have a more inclusive environment. If we make these changes, we can counter women’s leaving the industry. We can also up the odds of women tech leaders if we create an environment where men and women can advance in parity.
4. Illustrating Women in Tech to Younger Generations
Stamp out the prejudice early on by encouraging girls to code. We need to make equal representation in the classroom the norm for the new generation of developers.
A Scrum master mentioned that her nieces were curious about how she broke into tech and what benefits she enjoys. “It has given me the chance to show them they can do a ‘boy’s’ job. I share with them what they can do to be in tech. The sooner they enter tech, the better for their career growth.”
Our Giveback program, an initiative committed to creating opportunities in tech for people from all walks of life, donates to NGOs sharing this mission. We’ve donated to Black Girls Code, Girls in Tech, and WomenX in Power, all of which are dedicated to getting girls from underprivileged communities into the field.
Conclusion
The goal is to increase the presence of women in decision-making roles like CTOs, CIOs, and CEOs. This will drive industry change. Diverse decision-makers can effectively combat biases in technology.
Achieving this requires a multipronged approach. Companies can start by upskilling female engineers in desired technologies and considering diversity quotas for entry-level and board-level positions. Another key action for keeping women thriving in tech is to improve work-life balance for homemakers. Changes in managerial perceptions, benefits packages, and flexible roles are essential. These efforts can transform the tech industry into an appealing field for women.
If we’re diligent about it we could turn the table within this generation.
