40 Telling Women In Technology Statistics [2023]: Computer Science Gender Ratio

Research Summary. If you were to visit a university and tour a few different programs of study, you would likely discover that some programs have far more female students than males and vice versa.

You’re likely to see more men than women in tech-related disciplines, which matches the male-dominated tech industry that has been struggling to recruit and retain females for decades. After extensive research, our data analysis team concluded:

• Women hold 28% of computing and mathematical jobs in the US as of 2022

• Women make up 34.4% of the workforce of the U.S.’s largest tech companies (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft).

• Women hold 44% of STEM-related bachelor’s degrees as of 2022.

• Only 15% of engineering jobs are held by women, making it the STEM field where women are most highly underrepresented.

• Women hold fewer than 20% of leadership positions in the tech industry; only 19% of senior vice presidents and 15% of CEOs in the tech industry are women.

• 74% of girls express a desire for a STEM career.

• 39% of women in tech say that they see gender bias as an obstacle to getting a promotion.

• Women in tech were almost twice as likely as men in the same industry to leave their jobs, be laid off, or furloughed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

For further analysis, we broke down the data in the following ways:
Demographics | Trends + Projections | Barriers to Women in Tech | Leadership + Entrepreneurship | Benefits of Women in Tech

General Women in Technology Statistics

• 34% of Apple’s workforce is female, while only 24% of its technical jobs are held by women.

• 37% of Facebook’s workforce is female, while only 24% of its technical jobs are held by women.

• 33% of Google’s workforce is female, while only 25% of its technical jobs are held by women.

• 29% of Microsoft’s workforce is female, while only 23% of its technical jobs are held by women.

• Women make up 47% of the U.S. workforce.

• As of 2022, women make up 28% of the tech industry workforce.

• 26.5% of executive, senior-level and management positions in SP 500 companies are held by women.

• Women only hold 18% of Chief Information Officer and Chief Technical Officer roles in 1,000 of the largest tech companies in the U.S.

• Just over 25% of software engineers are women.

• Women are most underrepresented in physical science (40%), computer (25%), and engineering (15%) jobs.

Women Representation in STEM Fields

Women in Technology Statistics by Demographics

• As of 2020, 12% of the tech positions in the U.S. are held by women of color.

  To break it down further, women who identified as Asian or Pacific Islander hold 7%, those who identified as Black or African American hold 3%, and women who identified as Latina or Hispanic hold 2% of all tech positions in the U.S.

  Women who identified as white hold 13% of all tech jobs in the U.S.

  

  Women in Tech by Race/Ethnicity (2020)

  White	African American/Black	Asian/Pacific Islander	Latina/Hispanic	Total Women
  13%	3%	7%	2%	25%

• In 2017, women earned just over 19% of all computer science bachelor’s degrees.

  In comparison, women earned 57.3% of all bachelor’s degrees awarded in 2017 and 49.7% of those in any science and engineering field. Psychology was the most popular discipline among female undergraduate students pursuing a science and engineering field, as over 78% of all degree earners in this discipline were women.

  Computer science degrees are at the bottom of the list, and the next-highest is engineering, with females earning almost 22% of those degrees in 2017.

• In 2017, 61.5% of science and engineering bachelor’s degrees earned by Black or African American students were awarded to women.

  In addition, women received 47.6% of those earned by Asian or Pacific Islander students and 55.6% of those earned by Hispanic or Latino students.

• In 2020, Asian women made 5% less than the baseline wage, white women earned 8% less, Black women made 10% less, and Hispanic women earned 10% less.

  In contrast, Asian men earned 1% more than the average salary, Hispanic men earned 4% less, and Black men earned 11% less.

Women in Technology Statistics: Trends and Predictions

• In 2015, only 7% of female 15-year-old students were expected to pursue a career in STEM.

  This is compared to 26% of male 15-year-old students who planned to pursue this career path. That is nearly four times the number of females who were considering going into this field.

  This doesn’t include health care careers, though, as 37% of female students expected to go into health careers, while just 9% of males expected to go into this field.

  16% of all 15-year-old students expected to go into a career in STEM, and 23% expected to go into health careers, while 60% planned to go into non-science fields.

• In 1984, 35% of tech roles were held by women. In 2018, 32% were.

  The number of women in these jobs has increased by over two million in this same time frame, but gender ratios have not evened out or even improved over those 34 years.

  This is after women made up the vast majority of the computer science workforce during World War II and throughout the 1960s.

• 50% of women who take a role in tech drop out of the industry by the age of 35.

  In other fields, this number is only 20%. In universities, 37% of women in tech classes drop out, while only 30% do across all degree programs.

  All this results in women leaving tech roles at a 45% higher rate than men do.

  There are multiple reasons why women say they leave the industry: 37% say poor company culture, 31% say dissatisfaction with their particular job, 22% say they’re interested in a different role outside of the tech industry, and 10% say a lack of diversity in the workplace.

  

• The percentage of bachelor’s in computer science degrees held by women has changed from 13.6% in 1970, to 37% in 1984, to 18% in 2021.

  It’s difficult to say exactly what caused the decline, but many put at least part of the blame on the fact that personal computers were mainly marketed to men when they were first released, making women feel like outsiders in the industry.

  Many schools are beginning to work to combat this trend and recruit and retain more female computer science majors.

Barriers to Women in Technology Statistics

• In 2020, 79% of women in tech said they’d experienced imposter syndrome at work, while only 65% of men reported feeling this way about their professional lives.

  This continues to track into 2021 when 78% of women reported that they occasionally feel they have to work harder than their coworkers to prove their worth, while only 54% of men in tech said they felt they needed to work harder.

• 57% of women in tech say they feel burned out at work, while only 36% of men say they do.

  There are many factors that could play into this, and one of them may be that 42% of women in tech said that they took on more of the household work than their partners did during the pandemic, while only 11% of men said that they were the ones carrying the majority of the load.

  Similarly, 29% of women said that they have a greater childcare burden due to the pandemic, while 19% of men said that they bore the brunt.

  This trend of overworking carries over to the workplace, where 43% of women said that they’ve taken on more responsibility within their tech jobs since the start of the pandemic, and 33% of men said the same.



• Women in tech were almost twice as likely as men to have to leave their jobs or be laid off or furloughed during the pandemic.

  While many of these job losses were outside of their control, many of them seem to have come from needing to care for their children and oversee their schoolwork.

• 39% of surveyed women in tech said that they see gender bias as an obstacle to getting a promotion.

  In contrast, only 8% of male respondents said they felt that bias against their gender made it more difficult to get a promotion.

• 72% of women and over 50% of men in tech say women are outnumbered by men in meetings by at least a 2:1 ratio.

  Over a quarter of women surveyed said they’re outnumbered even worse than that, reporting ratios of five or more men to one woman.

• According to 60% of women of color and 69% of white women who work in the tech industry, having no clear path forward is one of the biggest barriers to promotions.

  This is higher than the approximately 40% of women who said gender bias was an obstacle to their promotion.

  Even though hiring managers and executives may not all be disqualifying women based on gender, they have fewer female candidates to choose from because they haven’t provided clear paths forward for them, which still makes it difficult for women to get promoted.

  Many companies have recognized that part of being inclusive is to provide women with female mentors and to proactively clear the way for them to move up in the company instead of leaving them to make their own way.

Women in Technology Statistics by Leadership and Entrepreneurship

• Within SP 500 companies, women hold over 26% of executive, senior-level, and management positions.

• A 2015 study found that companies in the Fortune 1000 led by female CEOs had three times the returns as the SP 500, which are mainly run by men.

• Within the top five tech companies (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft), the breakdown is as follows:

  • Women hold 29% of leadership positions at Amazon.

  • Women hold 31% of leadership positions at Apple.

  • Women hold 34% percent of leadership positions at Facebook.

  • Women hold 28% of leadership positions at Google.

  • Women hold 26% of leadership positions at Microsoft.

• In 2019, startups founded solely by females received 6% of global venture capital dollars, and startups co-founded by men and women received 10%.

• 20% of global startups had a female founder in 2019.

• In 2019, startups with a sole female founder received $6.1 billion in venture dollar investments, and startups with at least one female and one male founder received $20.6 billion.

Women in Technology Statistics by Top Benefits

• In 2017, organizations that had at least eight female managers out of every 20 made about 34% of their revenue from innovative products and services.

  For those companies that only had one female manager for every 20 managers, only 25% of their revenue came from innovative products and services.

  Diversity of all kinds adds to companies’ abilities to be innovative, showing that it’s important to have a variety of perspectives at the table.

• In 2020, companies in the Forbes Fortune 500 had a 66% increase in ROI if they had at least three women in leadership roles.

  These companies also have an estimated purchasing power of $5 trillion. These figures show that, at the very least, companies run a higher risk by not putting women into leadership roles than they do to put them in those roles.

• 52% of women surveyed said that companies would be more successful attracting females to tech roles if they provided more female role models.

  Female college students who are pursuing a tech-based degree are 27% more likely to look for a job in tech if they have a “good image” of tech workers, further illustrating the power of positive role models. Some even said that having a visible female role model in the industry helped them move forward in their studies.

  If tech companies made an effort to hire more women and give them the platforms they need to be role models, they’re more likely to be able to recruit other female workers and benefit from the diversity that this brings them.

Technology Industry Definitions

• Technology Industry (or Sector): The technology industry is composed of businesses that sell goods and provide services in any number of IT fields, including software, computers, and anything else related to electronics.

  In this article, we also consider IT roles to be a part of the tech industry, whether or not they are a part of tech companies.

• Technical Jobs: The term “technical jobs” in this article is used to refer to jobs that are specific to the technology industry. For example, software developer or information technology technician roles are considered technical roles in this case, while administrative assistant positions aren’t, even if they’re a part of a technology company.

Women in Technology Statistics FAQ

1. What percentage of technology degrees are held by women?

44% of STEM-related bachelor’s degrees are held by women. While this seems about level with men, it’s worth noting that 58% of all college degrees are held by women, indicating that there’s still substantial room for improvement. Furthermore, STEM degrees for women are less likely to translate into a tech career for women as opposed to men.

2. What is the ratio of men to women in the technology industry?

   The ratio of men to women in the technology industry is about 3:1. This is based on the fact that only 25% of computing and mathematical jobs in the U.S. are held by women. If we take a braoder view of the tech industry, this ratio comes closer to 2:1. Regardless of how you measure it, men significantly outnumber women in tech workspaces.

3. What percentage of tech CEOs are women?

   15% of tech CEOs are women. Considering that 37% of entry-level tech roles are held by women and 19% of senior VPs in the tech industry are women, it’s clear that there’s a gender gap at each stage of career progression in tech.

Final Thoughts

Women have been a vital part of the tech industry since the beginning, but somehow they’re not only still underrepresented, they’re also leaving the field more rapidly than ever before. In addition, fewer and fewer women are entering tech, to begin with, further stunting gender diversity in the industry.

Although great strides are being made by companies of all kinds to help women and other minorities feel more included and be more successful, there is still a long way to go.

One of the ways tech companies can improve in this area is by providing a clear path forward or a role model to follow. Many women said that this change would make a huge difference for them in this male-dominated industry.

While changes like these require a lot of work, the effort is worth it for companies, as having a more diverse workplace result in more innovation and, as a result, more success.

References

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2. Statista. “Percentage of Employed Women in Computing-Related Occupations in the United States from 2007 to 2020, by Ethnicity.” Accessed on August 13, 2021.

3. Accenture. “Resetting Tech Culture: 5 Strategies To Keep Women in Tech.” Accessed on August 13, 2021.

4. Zippia. “Software Engineer Demographics and Statistics in the U.S.” Accessed on August 13, 2021.

5. NCSES. “Demographic Attributes of SE Degree Recipients.” Accessed on August 13, 2021.

6. Hired.com. “Hired’s 2021 Impact Report – Wage Inequality in the Workplace.” Accessed on August 13, 2021.

7. NCES. “Health and STEM Career Expectations and Science Literacy Achievement of U.S. 15-Year-Old Students.” Accessed on August 13, 2021.

8. Computerscience.org. “Women in Computer Science: Getting Involved in STEM.” Accessed on August 13, 2021.

9. Trustradius. “2020 Women in Tech Report.” Accessed on August 13, 2021.

10. Trustradius. “TrustRadius 2021 Women in Tech Report.” Accessed on August 13, 2021.

11. Statista. “Biggest Barriers for Getting Promoted Among Women in the Technology Industry in 2021, by Race.” Accessed on August 13, 2021.

12. Fortune. “Women-led Companies Perform Three Times Better Than the SP 500.” Accessed on August 13, 2021.

13. Crunchbase. “EoY 2019 Diversity Report: 20 Percent of Newly Funded Startups in 2019 Have a Female Founder.” Accessed on August 13, 2021.

14. BCG. “The Mix That Matters: Innovation Through Diversity.” Accessed on August 13, 2021.

15. Forbes. “Top Three Reasons We Need More Women in Tech.” Accessed on August 13, 2021.

16. Investopedia. “Technology Sector.” Accessed on August 13, 2021.

17. Pew Research Center. “6 facts about America’s STEM workforce and those training for it.” Accessed on August February 22, 2022..

Author

Abby McCain

Abby is a writer who is passionate about the power of story. Whether it’s communicating complicated topics in a clear way or helping readers connect with another person or place from the comfort of their couch. Abby attended Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she earned a degree in writing with concentrations in journalism and business.