Women in Tech Gender Discrimination Rises to 47% in ISACA Survey

A problem that is getting worse, not better

The tech industry has spent years talking about gender equity. A new survey suggests that the talk has not reduced discrimination, and that more women may be experiencing it now than two years ago.

ISACA, the global association for IT governance, risk and security professionals, reports in its 2026 Tech Workplace and Culture survey that 47% of women working in tech say they have faced gender discrimination at work. In 2024 the figure was 42%, so it has risen by five percentage points.1 The association says the increase happened even as awareness of the issue spread across the sector. Its own reading is that recognising the problem is not the same as fixing it.1

ISACA collected the data between 17 July and 3 August 2026 from 1,025 tech workers around the world.1 Julia Hermann, a former vice president of ISACA's Germany chapter and a member of its SheLeadsTech Global Advisory Group, presented the findings to journalists at the ISACA European Conference 2026.13

Most outlets covering the report led with the 47% figure.46 The more useful story sits underneath it: the numbers on employer action, influence and burnout show what women in tech deal with day to day.

The gap shows up across the whole job

The survey does not treat discrimination as a single headline number. It records a consistent gap between men and women on almost every measure of job satisfaction. Only 52% of women are happy with their organisation's culture, compared with 65% of men. On job security the split is 59% to 69%, and on career progression it is 67% to 73%.2

The gap is wider still on power. Just over half of women (53%) say they have enough authority to help shape company strategy and direction, against 66% of men.1 The detailed figures show the same pattern for decisions about people, where 48% of women and 59% of men feel they have a say, and for purchasing, where the split is 32% to 52%.13 In other words, women in the room often do not feel they control the budget. Influence over spending is one of the clearest signs of real organisational power.

The survey also suggests the problem begins at entry. Thirty percent of women say they met gender- or diversity-related bias or stereotypes when they started a tech career, compared with 4% of men. Twenty-six percent of women name self-doubt or lack of confidence as an early obstacle, against 14% of men.13

Women and men also see the problem differently. Sixty-three percent of women believe women are underrepresented in the sector, while only 41% of men agree.1 A gap that large between colleagues in the same industry makes it hard for companies to agree on what needs fixing.

Unclear career paths and burnout

Across all respondents, the biggest obstacle to advancement is an unclear route to promotion, named by 34% overall. Among women the figure is 41%, compared with 33% of men.1 Women are also more likely to report limited access to development opportunities, at 31% versus 23%.9

Burnout is widespread. Fifty-nine percent of respondents say they have experienced work-related stress or burnout, mostly because of heavy workloads (48%), too few resources (43%) and unsupportive managers (42%).1 The US edition of the release adds lack of appreciation, cited by 40%.2 Women again fare worse, with 64% reporting burnout compared with 57% of men.1 Employer support lags well behind. Only a quarter of employers offer mental health days, and 23% offer no burnout support at all.1

The survey does contain some good news. Seventy-three percent of women say they received a pay rise or promotion in the past two years, slightly ahead of 71% of men.13 That complicates any claim that women are simply being held back. A fair reading is that women are moving up in pay and title but still lack the authority, clarity and cultural standing their male peers report.

Fewer hiring programmes for women

In my view, the most important number in the report is not the 47%. It is the fall in employer hiring programmes. The share of respondents who say their employer runs a programme to encourage hiring women dropped from 63% in 2024 to 53% in 2026, a ten-point decline.139

Hermann tied the two trends together. She said awareness of the barriers women face has grown, but employer action has not kept pace, particularly on hiring programmes meant to bring more women into the sector.1 She also said that retention problems show good intentions are not yet becoming action.1

The survey cannot show that fewer hiring programmes caused the rise in reported discrimination, and that link should not be treated as proven. Still, the two numbers moving in opposite directions over the same two years is hard to ignore. The industry appears to have more awareness and less structured effort. Retention adds pressure: three-quarters of respondents call keeping talent a significant or moderate problem for their organisation.2 Among people who changed jobs in the past two years, the most common reasons were better career prospects (29%) and higher pay (28%).2 These are the same areas where women report the biggest disadvantages.

Where the coverage diverges

Outlets agreed on the main numbers but diverged on several details, and some of the differences matter.

The Next Web wrote that women are "just as unhappy" as men about culture, job security and promotion speed.4 ISACA's own figures show the opposite: women report lower satisfaction on all three measures.2 The same article said four in five respondents see retention as a problem.11 ISACA puts that figure at three-quarters.1 Infobae's Spanish-language report framed the 53% of women who feel they have strategic authority as a reassuring point, even though ISACA presents it as evidence of a gap.7

The figures on mentorship also vary because ISACA issued two versions of its release. The London version says 69% of women want more female mentors and role models, and 55% want more female tech professors and women's networks.1 The US Business Wire version gives figures for all respondents: 65% favour female mentors provided through educational institutions, 48% back women's tech clubs, and 40% want more women hired as technology professors.2 The Next Web attributed the 55% figure to all respondents.4 Neither version is wrong, but readers comparing articles could easily mix them up.

HCAMag reported that 46% of women feel underrepresented in the IT workforce. EscudoDigital gives 46% as the share of all respondents who believe women are underrepresented.13 The full report would settle which reading is correct.

Reading the numbers carefully

The overall sample of 1,025 is modest for a global survey, and the published materials do not say how many respondents were women.1 A five-point rise within that subgroup is a meaningful signal, but it is not precise. It could partly reflect people being more willing to name discrimination as awareness grows, rather than discrimination itself increasing. ISACA itself points to rising awareness as the backdrop.1 Even under that more cautious interpretation, the result does not look good for employers. Women are more willing to call out unfair treatment, and fewer companies are running programmes to address it.

Other research points the same way. WomenTech Network's 2026 statistics compilation reports that women made up around 45% of those laid off during the 2022–2023 cuts, while holding only about 26–28% of tech jobs. It also finds that women's representation in applicant pools falls at each step from junior to senior roles.5 At the policy level, a UN Human Rights Council working group warned in 2026 that AI hiring tools trained on biased historical data can reinforce discrimination against women.8 Belgian outlet ITdaily framed the ISACA findings around the claim that uncertainty driven by AI weighs more heavily on women in IT.

Optimism, with a condition

Respondents remain hopeful. Seventy-one percent of both men and women expect more women to enter tech over the next five years.1 ISACA argues that mentorship, education and its SheLeadsTech programme can help turn that hope into results.1 Anna Murray, a member of the SheLeadsTech advisory group, argued that support programmes matter because they turn awareness into action.2

That optimism depends on employers doing the work. The sector is better at naming the problem than it was two years ago, but on the evidence of this survey it is investing less in fixing it. If discrimination reports keep rising while hiring programmes keep shrinking, the expectations for 2031 are unlikely to be met. The next edition of this survey will show whether companies have responded.