According to Deloitte, women's participation in the global tech workforce climbed by 6.9% from 2019 to 2022, while their participation in technical roles increased by 11.7%.
Notably, the share of women in leadership has seen the most rapid growth—an estimated increase of about 20%. Deloitte estimates that by 2022, almost one in every four senior positions at large global tech enterprises would be occupied by women, an increase of more than 4 percentage points from 2019 1.
Women entrepreneurs are taking the lead and starting their own businesses. They are defying the odds by launching innovative and new age tech businesses showcasing that women can be just as good as males when it comes to technology.
Diversity in technology allows for a more holistic approach to challenges and more effective solutions and women leaders in this field can help restore balance and accelerate innovation.
Investing in female-founded businesses makes financial sense for investors since there is strong evidence that gender diversity encourages innovation and leads to improved decision-making by encouraging fresh viewpoints 2.
Graph 1:Share of tech and leadership roles held by women in big tech companies 3
Looking at entrepreneurship from another lens, one could believe that gender doesn't matter when it comes to investing in early-stage enterprises. Investors make educated decisions based on business strategies and expectations.
However, a rising body of evidence suggests that companies with a higher share of women in leadership positions outperform companies with a male-dominated leadership structure.
A study conducted in 2018 across a sample set of 350 companies, by the Boston Consulting Group and MassChallenge came away with some interesting points 4:
- the average investment in a company started or cofounded by a woman was $935,000, which is less than half of the US$ 2.1 million spent in a company founded by a man.
- despite this gap, female-founded and co-founded businesses outperformed their male counterparts over time, generating 10% greater revenue ($730,000 vs. $660,000) during a five-year period.
- startups started and cofounded by women are much better financial bets in terms of turning a dollar of investment into a dollar of revenue. These startups generated 78 cents for every dollar of capital, but male-founded startups only generated 31 cents.
