Tech's Unsung Heroines: Thriving in the Eye of the Storm

This is your Women in Business podcast. Welcome back to Women in Business. I am so glad you are here, because today we are diving straight into what it really means to be a woman navigating the current economic landscape in the tech industry. Let’s start with where we stand. According to CompTIA and AIPRM, women now hold roughly a quarter of tech jobs in the United States, around 27 percent, even though women make up almost half of the overall workforce. Exploding Topics and StrongDM report similar numbers globally, with women hovering at about 27 to 28 percent of tech roles. That means every woman listening in tech today is already doing something statistically rare. You are not an exception by accident; you are an early majority shaping what comes next. But representation is only the first layer. The current economic climate, with slower growth, tighter venture capital, and waves of layoffs, has hit women harder. WomenTech Network’s analysis of recent layoffs showed that women were more likely to be let go than men, in some cases making up well over half of those laid off, even in companies where they were a minority of the workforce. So when we talk about resilience, we are not talking about a motivational quote; we are talking about job security, negotiating power, and the ability to pivot quickly. That leads to our first big discussion point: power skills in a volatile market. McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace research shows that women often outperform in people leadership, collaboration, and change management, yet those skills are undervalued compared to hard technical skills at promotion time. In this economy, the women who thrive are leveraging both: deep technical credibility and business fluency. Think of leaders like Reshma Saujani with Girls Who Code or Fei-Fei Li in artificial intelligence. They combine technical insight with storytelling, policy influence, and ecosystem building. The question for listeners is: how are you making your impact visible in business terms, not just technical terms? Second, we have to talk about the leadership gap. AIPRM cites data showing that only around 14 percent of global tech leaders are women, and StrongDM notes that fewer than one in five tech companies have a woman CEO. Meanwhile, the pipeline at entry level is often close to parity in some software roles. The drop-off is happening in the middle. This is where sponsorship, not just mentorship, becomes critical. Whose name gets said in the room when promotions are discussed? Who is being put in charge of revenue-driving products, not just “support” projects? Third, the pay and equity conversation. AIPRM’s analysis of US Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that women in tech earn roughly 15 to 16 percent less than men in similar roles. High5 Test reports that women in computer and mathematical occupations earn about 86 to 87 cents on the dollar. In an era of inflation and rising living costs, that gap is not abstract; it is years of retireme This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI.