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Tech's Shifting Landscape: Women Navigating Uncertainty, AI, and Power
This is your Women in Business podcast.
Welcome back to Women in Business. Let’s get right to it, because the economic landscape is shifting fast, and women in tech are not here to sit on the sidelines.
According to CompTIA’s State of the Tech Workforce report, women make up roughly a quarter of tech roles in the United States, even though we are nearly half of the overall workforce. Exploding Topics and McKinsey & Company report similar global trends: around 26 to 27 percent of tech jobs are held by women, and an even smaller slice of senior technical and leadership roles. That means most of us are building careers in an industry still designed around someone else’s default – and yet we are still showing up, innovating, and leading.
First, let’s talk about navigating uncertainty in this economy. Layoffs at companies like Google, Meta, and Amazon have reminded everyone that “dream jobs” in tech are not guaranteed. For women, who already face promotion gaps that McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace report has documented for years, a shaky market can amplify existing inequity. But it also sharpens our strategy. More women are future-proofing by building deep skills in data, cybersecurity, and AI, where demand continues to rise, and by treating their careers like diversified portfolios instead of single-job bets.
That leads to our second discussion point: AI as both risk and rocket fuel. A 2024 analysis highlighted that women hold under a third of AI roles, and around one in five AI research positions. At the same time, AI is automating tasks across product management, marketing, and software development. Women who lean into AI skills now – prompt engineering, data literacy, ethical AI governance – are positioning themselves not as replaceable, but as the people designing the systems that shape the next economy.
Third, we need to talk unapologetically about money. AIPRM’s analysis of US tech employment data shows that women in tech earn roughly 84 cents for every dollar earned by men, and the gap widens in higher-paid engineering roles. Yet salary transparency laws in states like California and New York are creating powerful leverage. Women are using public pay bands, sites like Levels.fyi, and internal pay-equity audits to negotiate from data, not from doubt. Economic uncertainty is making many companies cautious, but it is also making them more sensitive to retention risk. When top women threaten to leave, leadership listens.
Our fourth discussion point is about power and leadership. According to StrongDM, only about 17 percent of tech companies have a woman CEO, and global surveys put women at roughly 14 percent of tech leadership roles. Still, there is real momentum: more women are stepping into founder and investor roles, launching funds focused on women-led startups, and joining boards where real budget and strategy decisions are made. In a tight capital market, women leaders who can tie diversity directly to performance and innovation are not a “nice to have” – they are a competitive advantage.
Finally, let’s talk community as an economic survival strategy. From Women Who Code to AnitaB.org’s Grace Hopper Celebration, to local meetup scenes in cities like San Francisco, London, Lagos, and Bangalore, women are building networks that function like economic insurance. Referrals, backchannel references, shared salary data, and quiet cofounder-matching are helping women move faster and recover quicker from setbacks. In a volatile tech economy, isolation is expensive; community compounds.
So as you navigate this moment – whether you are a software engineer in Austin, a product manager in Berlin, a data scientist in Nairobi, or a founder pitching in New York – remember: you are not just trying to survive the current economic landscape. You are actively reshaping what power, pay, and possibility look like in tech.
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Published on 3 days, 12 hours ago