Women still underrepresented in top tech roles

Today is International Women’s Day, a day that provides an opportunity to acknowledge achievements and highlight struggles faced by women around the world. For the tech industry in particular, it’s a chance to reflect on progress made, and devise more robust strategies progress, given the work that still needs to be done.

While a leadership gap is apparent across most industries, it’s far wider among tech companies. According to stats from DDI’s 2023 Global Leadership Forecast, which surveyed close to 2 000 HR professionals and around 13,500 business leaders from over 1,500 companies around the world, the share of women in tech leadership roles now stands at around 28%. In recent years, the sector has acknowledged the importance of bringing female perspectives into science and technology, but the numbers show that real progress isn’t being made. As such, women in tech leadership still face uphill battles to secure C-suite and boardroom seats.

For instance, when May Govender, group CIO of pan-African financial services group Old Mutual, first started moving up the corporate ladder, she was one of very few women doing so. As a result, she didn’t feel like her counterparts properly heard her or took her ideas seriously. She recalls voicing her opinion and being ignored, only to have a male colleague suggest the same thing minutes later and be lauded for his ingenuity.

“I very clearly remember giving my opinion on a topic and feeling like people heard me but like I wasn’t really heard,” she says.

People also didn’t acknowledge her technical capabilities because women in leadership roles were more typically involved in other areas of the business, like marketing or people management. And being in the minority, she says, meant she was excluded from male-only cliques. Describing these struggles as a bit of a “branding” issue, she felt prejudged and disproportionately scrutinized since she wasn’t like everyone else in the room.

Aveena Mothilall, CIO of African energy group Engen, faced similar hurdles early on in her career. Like Govender, she struggled to make inroads into male-dominated circles and earn trust. Plus, many of her colleagues had negative perceptions of other responsibilities women have to carry, such as thinking she didn’t take her job seriously because she had to attend a meeting at her child’s school, for example. According to Mothilall, the industry has come a long way since then, but she acknowledges a lot needs to change to make spaces for women in tech, and to increase the number of women in leadership roles.