Workplace culture is the biggest reason why women are leaving their tech jobs, a new report shows.
Women make up less than one in five tech workers in Europe, according to a new report that warns the gender gap could widen even further without action, especially in the age of artificial intelligence (AI).
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In 2025, women accounted for 19 percent of employees in core tech roles across Europe, down 3 percent from the year before, according to a new report by consulting firm McKinsey & Company.
The decline suggests that efforts to address the persistent lack of representation have failed to make meaningful progress, the report said.
“As AI reshapes roles and value creation in tech, existing gender gaps could widen without deliberate action,” the report said.
The warning comes as organisations in the United States and Europe have begun scaling back diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives that, throughout much of the 2010s, encouraged women to enter traditionally male-dominated fields such as science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).
Where does the gender gap start?
The research analysed 4 million LinkedIn profiles in tech roles across the European Union and combined them with data from the Organisation for Economic Co‑operation and Development and workforce data from AI hiring platform Findem.
Women start to drop off from tech-adjacent fields almost immediately after leaving school, the report found. Girls slightly outperform boys in STEM topics in primary and secondary school, but only 32 percent of all female students decide to enrol in a tech-related bachelor’s degree.
Among those who pursue advanced education, women are slightly more likely than men to get a PhD in a STEM field. Yet, only 19 percent of all tech workers are women.
Another big hurdle for women is career progression. Women’s participation in the tech labour force drops by up to 18 percentage points before they reach managerial roles, leaving women with just 13 percent of management positions in tech companies.
These early losses “compound the gender gap at the leadership level,” the report continued, since only 8 percent of executive or corporate roles are held by women.
The divide is sharper in some tech fields than others. Software companies have a 15 percentage-point gap between the number of women with entry-level jobs and those who eventually reach corporate leadership.
Concentrated in fewer roles
Women are also clustered in a narrow set of tech jobs that are being hit with layoffs.
They make up 39 percent of employees in product management and 54 percent in design. However, the report notes these positions rarely lead to executive leadership and represent a small portion of Europe’s overall tech force.
Even in fields where women are concentrated, they often have limited influence over the direction, governance and design of the broader tech sector, the report found.
Women are also underrepresented in AI, the report warned. Men are capturing a larger share of entry-level jobs in AI, data, and analytics.
This trend is concerning during the AI boom, the report said, because it risks a “narrowing of perspectives at precisely the levels at which bias, accountability and societal impact must be addressed.”
The report found that women are also struggling with the tech gender gap in countries that tend to be stronger on gender equality on average, such as Finland and Sweden. Women represent 36 percent and 23 percent of tech workers, respectively.
Why women leave tech
Workplace culture is the main reason why women leave their tech jobs, the report found.
McKinsey’s survey said just under half of women experienced sexism or bias in the past year, while 82 percent said they had to prove themselves more than their male colleagues.
That’s because women often feel isolated in their roles, since they are often the ‘only one’ in the room, the report continued.
Women are also more likely than men to take on additional unpaid work at their jobs, such as resolving team conflicts or coordinating events, because they are considered “the social glue” of their teams.
On average, a woman takes on 200 hours a year of this type of “office housework,” the report found.
Policies designed to support parents, such as flexible or remote work arrangements, can also slow career progression for some women, the report found.
How companies can close the gap
Improving workplace culture is the most effective way to reduce the gender gap, because it is the strongest predictor of whether women remain in tech roles, the report said.
Companies should set clear representation targets and review them quarterly, the report urged.
It also suggests tying career advancement decisions to an individual’s output, which will “help level the playing field” for women.
Mentorship should also be a wider focus within companies. Pairing mid-career women with senior leaders can provide role models and clearer pathways to leadership, the report advised, adding that Europe should also invest in AI-driven reskilling as “a new on-ramp” to get women in tech.
Women could capture many of the mid-level and senior roles that will be opening up due to the AI restructuring of the workforce with “targeted reskilling and deliberate advancement pathways.”
Organisations could do this either by helping mid-career women already in tech move into adjacent mid or senior-level AI roles or by creating more roads from the product and design fields into executive roles.
“Accelerating women into these future-critical roles is not a side agenda; it is one of Europe’s most tangible levers to build the leadership AI now demands and to strengthen innovation, governance, and competitiveness across the region,” the report added.
