Women in Tech: Numbers, Pay, and Trends (2026)
Tech has been the most-tracked and least-fixed diversity gap in American industry for 20 years. This page pulls the latest BLS, Pew, and NSF numbers on who actually works in tech, what they're paid, and where the pipeline is leaking.
By specialty
| Specialty | Women (%) |
|---|---|
| Data Scientists | 37.2% |
| Web Developers | 32% |
| Software Developers | 22.5% |
| Computer Programmers | 21.4% |
| Information Security Analysts | 23.8% |
| Network Architects | 8.3% |
| DevOps / Systems Admins | 19.1% |
| Computer Hardware Engineers | 12% |
| Computer & Info Research Scientists | 28.5% |
Pay gap detail
The raw tech pay gap (~9%) is smaller than in most industries, but the adjusted gap — controlling for level, specialty, and company — persists at around 3-7%. The bigger gap is in leveling: women cluster at lower rungs of the same career ladder.
-
At FAANG-tier companies, women in engineering are 22% less likely to reach Staff+ level (L6 and above) by year 10 of their career, per Payscale and Levels.fyi aggregated data.
-
Hired audit (2024) of 10K+ interview processes found women received 4% lower initial offers than men with equivalent interview performance at the same companies.
Trend
The share of women in CS bachelor's programs has halved since 1984 — a uniquely American pattern; most other countries' CS programs have been stable or slightly up over the same period. The 'decline' appears to track the cultural masculinization of personal computing in the mid-1980s.
| Year | Women entering (%) |
|---|---|
| 1984 | 37% |
| 2000 | 28% |
| 2010 | 18% |
| 2020 | 21% |
| 2024 | 18% |
Patient outcomes
Productivity and outcome research in tech: teams with at least 30% women show better customer-impact outcomes (15% higher in one McKinsey study), lower bug rates, and higher code review thoroughness in several corpus analyses — controlling for team size and tenure.
-
GitHub pull-request acceptance rate study of 3M requests: women's code was accepted at higher rates than men's when gender was not disclosed (78.6% vs 74.6%) — but lower than men's when gender was visible (58% vs 61%).
-
McKinsey 'Delivering Through Diversity' found tech teams in the top quartile for gender diversity were 21% more likely to outperform on profitability.
Sources
Frequently asked
What percentage of software engineers are women?
22.5% per BLS 2024 data. The broader 'computing and math' category is 26%. Data scientists are higher (37%); network architects lower (8%).
Is the tech pay gap real?
Yes. Raw gap ~9%; adjusted gap (controlling for level, specialty, company) persists at 3-7%. Leveling gap — women clustering at lower ranks — is the larger structural issue.
Why has the CS pipeline shrunk for women?
The decline from 37% in 1984 to 18% today correlates with the cultural masculinization of personal computing (marketing PCs as boys' toys from ~1984). Countries without that cultural pattern didn't see the same drop.
Do women write worse code?
No. GitHub pull-request studies (Terrell et al. 2017) found women's code was accepted at *higher* rates than men's when gender wasn't disclosed.
What's the 'broken rung' in tech?
The first promotion from individual contributor to manager or senior IC. McKinsey finds women get this promotion at 72% the rate of men — the largest single drop in the pipeline.