Women accounted for 51% of the working age population (those aged 16-64) in 2024, 49% of those in work and 46% of the unemployed.
There were 441,000 female IT specialists in the UK in 2024 – 22% of all IT specialists in the UK at that time. This is up one percent from 2023 figures.
If gender representation in IT were equal to the workforce 'norm' (49%) there would have been an additional 530,000 female IT specialists in the UK.
Black Women IT specialists make up less than one percent of this workforce at 0.6%. This compares with 0.7% in 2022 when we first started tracking this figure.
Female IT specialists were more than four times more likely to be working part-time than males during 2024 (i.e. 13% versus 3%).
IT specialists in the UK are much less likely to work part-time than other workers and in 2024, just 6% were working part-time hours compared with 23% of workers as a whole.
Female IT specialists were much more likely to be working part-time than males (13% of women in IT positions compared with just 3% of men), but compared to women in other occupations, part-time working amongst women appears extremely low (i.e. 35% amongst women in occupations other than IT).
At £23 per hour, the median hourly earnings for female IT specialists in 2024 was 12% less than that recorded for males working in IT positions (for those working as employees). In 2023 that figures was 6% for women.
The level of female representation in IT varies by job type - from around one in twenty IT engineers (6% of the total over the 2020-24 period), to around one in three IT Project/Programme Managers, Web Designers/ Developers and IT Operations Technicians (34%, 34% and 30% respectively).
At 2.4% the associated unemployment rate for female IT specialists was notably higher that for males normally working in the IT field (1.9%) but still well below the overall unemployment rate for women in the UK (4.2%).
The incidence of self-employment amongst female IT specialists (5%) was slightly below that recorded by men working in IT positions (7%).
By industry, gender representation for IT specialists was worst amongst Manufacturing firms in 2024 where women accounted for just 11% of those in IT roles. In 2023 the lowest figures was in Construction.
In 2024, female IT specialists (that were employees) were more likely than males to be in ‘positions with responsibility’ (44% vs 42%).
Around eight in ten (73%) IT specialists held some form of HE level qualification in 2024 - the proportion higher amongst women than men (82% of females and 71% of males).
Just 5% of female IT specialists held some form of IT degree compared with 10% of their male counterparts.
The most common means of IT specialists (male/female) securing a job during the 2020-24 period was by ‘replying to an advertisement’ (40% and 31% respectively).
