Almost half of women working in technology say they have experienced gender discrimination at work, according to ISACA’s 2026 Tech Workplace and Culture survey — and the figure has moved in the wrong direction. The share rose to 47% from 42% in 2024, an increase of five percentage points, in a period when awareness of gender inequality in the sector has, by most accounts, grown. That is the survey’s most uncomfortable finding: recognition of the problem has not yet translated into a change in behaviour. The survey’s value lies less in any single number than in the pattern across them.
Together, the figures describe a workplace where women in tech are present in growing numbers but report a consistent experience gap — in how they are treated, how much influence they hold, and how sustainable the work feels. Each measure on its own could be explained away; the consistency is harder to dismiss.
The survey, of more than a thousand tech professionals, is careful to note that most respondents are broadly happy with their jobs and careers. The gaps sit underneath that satisfaction, and they are consistent across several measures. Women report lower satisfaction than men with workplace culture (52% versus 65%), job security (59% versus 69%) and career progression (67% versus 73%). Two-thirds of women (63%) still believe the sector is under-represented by gender, against 41% of men.
The authority gap
The most revealing findings are about power rather than presence. Only 53% of women feel they have sufficient authority to contribute to company strategy, against 66% of men — a 13-point gap. The split widens on other decisions: 59% of men versus 48% of women on personnel decisions, and 52% versus 32% on purchasing decisions, a 20-point divide. The issue, in other words, is not only getting women into the sector but their influence once they are in the room.
That framing matters because it reframes the problem. Much of the industry conversation has focused on the pipeline — encouraging more women into technology education and entry-level roles. ISACA’s data suggests the harder question is what happens after entry: whether women get the decision rights, sponsorship and stretch assignments that turn presence into progression. That is a leadership question rather than a recruitment one. The authority gap also has a practical cost.
Decision rights shape careers: who gets to sponsor a project, who is trusted with a budget, who is in the room when strategy is set. When women in tech report less authority across strategy, personnel and purchasing decisions, the effect compounds — less visible contribution, fewer stretch assignments, and a slower path to the roles where influence is greatest.
Burnout and retention
The survey also links the gap to strain and to employers’ difficulty holding on to people. Women report work-related stress or burnout at 64%, against 57% of men. The drivers are unremarkable and familiar: heavy workload (48%), lack of resources (43%), unsupportive management (42%) and lack of appreciation (40%). Support has not kept pace — only a quarter of employers offer mental-health days, and 23% of respondents are unclear on what support exists at all.
Retention is a persistent worry for employers: three-quarters of respondents say it is a significant or moderate concern for their organisation. Among those who changed jobs in the past two years, the reasons were better career prospects (29%), higher pay (28%), more interesting work (23%), better culture (23%) and better work/life balance (23%). None of these is unusual on its own; together they describe a workforce that leaves when it cannot see a path forward or feels unsupported. The burnout data connects to the retention data. A workforce that reports high stress, unsupportive management and a lack of appreciation is a workforce that leaves — and the survey’s list of reasons for changing jobs reads less like ambition than like avoidance.
Retention as a Compensation Problem
Employers that treat retention as a compensation problem are addressing only one of five cited drivers for women in tech. Support for managing burnout is thin, and the survey suggests employers underestimate it: only a quarter offer mental-health days, and 23% of respondents cannot say what support exists. Flexibility is the lever respondents value most — the reasons for leaving centre on work/life balance and culture as much as pay — yet it is also the hardest to provide non-punitively, because informal expectations of availability tend to punish the people who use it. That is a pattern the independent research on retention echoes: formal policies matter less than whether people can use them without cost.
India’s leaky pipeline
India’s own research tells a consistent story, which is why the ISACA findings land here with particular force. KPMG’s 2026 report on women’s leadership in corporate India found that 39% of women have experienced or observed gender-based discrimination, and that mid-career is the most precarious point: 65% of respondents named senior or middle management as the stage at which women are most likely to leave the workforce.
The pipeline thins sharply at the top. CII’s research found that women enter India’s technology sector in strong numbers — around 40% — but fall to roughly 28% at managerial level and 18% at senior-manager level. EY’s study of India’s STEM landscape notes that while 42.6% of the country’s STEM graduates are women, their participation in STEM jobs remains disproportionately low, with the steepest attrition between graduating and the first year of work. Nasscom, meanwhile, puts women at 36% of the Indian tech industry and reports that more than half of women in product roles cite a lack of mentors or role models as their biggest struggle. The pattern is the same in each dataset: a strong entry pipeline and a mid-career leak.
The Indian data is not an outlier but a mirror. KPMG’s finding that mid-career is the point of greatest risk matches ISACA’s emphasis on authority and progression; CII’s and EY’s pipeline figures match the survey’s sense that entry is no longer the bottleneck. For women in tech in India, the evidence suggests the leak is structural — concentrated at the transition from senior individual contributor to manager — rather than a matter of individual choice.
What would help
Respondents are clear about remedies, and they point upstream. Two-thirds (65%) say educational institutions should provide women with more female mentors and role models; 48% recommend women’s technology clubs or networking organisations; and 40% say institutions should hire more women as technology professors. That emphasis on early intervention — shaping representation and culture before talent enters the workforce — is notable because it addresses the pipeline and the authority gap at once.
There is also optimism in the data. More than two-thirds of both men and women (71%) expect to see more women entering the tech sector over the next five years, suggesting an appetite for change even amid the survey’s sobering numbers. The question the survey leaves open is whether that appetite converts into the structural changes — clear progression paths, real sponsorship, non-punitive flexibility and equitable decision rights — that the data suggests are missing.
The remedies respondents propose are telling because they are upstream. Mentors, role models and women’s technology clubs address the authority gap before it forms, by giving women in tech visible examples of influence and networks that informal, male-coded advancement paths often provide to men by default. That is a different intervention from a recruitment target, and it targets a different stage of the problem.
What the survey does and doesn’t establish
It establishes a large, self-reported survey of tech professionals and a set of findings that independent research on India’s talent pipeline broadly corroborates. It does not establish that discrimination incidents themselves rose; a higher reported figure can reflect greater awareness and willingness to report as much as more occurrences, a distinction the release does not settle. Moreover, it also does not name employer case studies or measure the effect of any particular programme. What it does show, clearly, is that the experience of women in tech still diverges from that of their male colleagues on the measures that shape careers.
It is worth noting, too, that ISACA is not a neutral observer: it sells professional credentials and runs SheLeadsTech, its programme for women in tech, so the research aligns with its mission. That does not make the findings wrong — the corroboration from KPMG, EY, CII and nasscom is independent — but it is part of the picture.
Survey Quantified a Gap
The honest summary is that the survey quantifies a gap the industry has long discussed without closing. The striking number is 47%, and the striking direction is up. But the more useful finding is quieter: that fewer than three in five women feel they have the authority to shape their company’s strategy. Until that changes, the pipeline debate will keep returning to the same place, because the sector’s problem is not only who enters it but who gets to decide — and the survey’s answer, for now, is not enough of the women who do.
Editor’s Note: This article draws on the ISACA release and its published survey materials, and on independent research by KPMG, EY, CII and nasscom on women in Indian tech and STEM. All survey figures are as reported by their publishers; the ISACA data is self-reported by respondents. ISACA sells professional credentials and runs the SheLeadsTech programme. No interview was conducted.