Women in Tech Statistics 2026: What the Latest European Data Actually Shows

Women still account for fewer than one in five ICT specialists in Europe

Europe has spent the better part of a decade talking about its technology skills shortage. The number of people working in information and communication technology has continued to rise, investment in artificial intelligence is accelerating, and European policymakers want the continent to become considerably more technologically self-sufficient.

One part of the equation has barely shifted.

Women represented just 19.5% of ICT specialists in the European Union in 2025, according to the latest Eurostat data. Men accounted for the remaining 80.5%. A decade earlier, women's share was approximately three percentage points lower, meaning progress has been real but slow.

There were around 10.45 million ICT specialists working across the EU in 2025, up 2.6% from the previous year. The European Union's Digital Decade strategy aims for at least 20 million ICT professionals by 2030 while improving gender balance. Europe therefore needs to expand its technical workforce dramatically while simultaneously addressing one of its largest untapped talent pools.

The gap varies considerably across Europe

The European average hides substantial differences between countries. In 2025, women represented around 28% of ICT specialists in Romania, 26% in Latvia and approximately 25% in Bulgaria and Sweden. At the other end of the spectrum, women accounted for roughly 13% of ICT specialists in Czechia, 15% in Hungary and 16% in Slovakia.

Germany is particularly interesting because of scale. Eurostat counted approximately 436,800 female ICT specialists in Germany in 2025, the largest absolute number of any EU member state. Yet a large population and technology economy mean Germany can simultaneously have hundreds of thousands of women working in technology and considerable room to improve representation, as our analysis of women in tech in Germany sets out in more detail.

The employment gap also intersects with pay. Germany's Federal Statistical Office reported a 19% unadjusted pay gap in information and communication in 2025, compared with 16% across the German economy overall. German Business Review has explored how differences in seniority, working patterns and occupational distribution contribute to this wider labour-market problem.

Artificial intelligence could make the gap more consequential

The next chapter is not simply about software engineering. AI is changing the skills companies value across engineering, product, operations, finance, marketing and leadership.

The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs research identifies AI and big data as the fastest-growing skills expected through 2030, followed by networks and cybersecurity and technological literacy. At the same time, employers continue to place significant value on analytical thinking, leadership, resilience and talent management.

This creates both an opportunity and a risk. Women do not need to become machine-learning researchers to participate in the AI economy. AI literacy is increasingly relevant to almost every professional function. But representation inside the teams actually building and governing these technologies remains low, which is why we argue that the gender gap in European tech is becoming an AI problem.

Recent McKinsey analysis found women represented around 19% of tech roles in Europe in 2025, with representation becoming smaller at more senior levels. Its research also found women held only 13% of tech management roles and 8% of senior management roles across the companies and datasets analysed.

Europe's technology problem is increasingly a talent-utilisation problem

The European Commission has made the economic argument directly. Women make up approximately 51% of the EU population but fewer than one in five ICT specialists. The Commission estimates that increasing women's participation in ICT substantially could contribute hundreds of billions of euros to European GDP.

Companies cannot solve that gap with recruitment campaigns alone. The evidence points toward several separate problems: who enters technical education, who applies for technology jobs, who remains in the industry, who moves into management, who has access to high-value emerging skills and whether senior careers remain viable through different stages of life. That is also why Europe's technology skills shortage cannot be solved without more women.

The numbers are moving. They are not moving quickly enough.

There are more women working in European technology than a decade ago, and hundreds of thousands are building careers in engineering, AI, product, data, cybersecurity and digital leadership. But the central statistic remains difficult to ignore: in 2025, more than four out of every five ICT specialists in the EU were men.

Europe wants twice as many ICT professionals by the end of the decade. Reaching that ambition while leaving half the population substantially underrepresented would make an already difficult talent challenge harder. FemTechConf works on exactly this problem, connecting more than 450,000 women and allies through conferences, careers and scholarships - you can read more about our community and impact.

For employers, policymakers and the technology community, increasing women's participation is therefore not a side issue in Europe's digital strategy. It is part of the workforce strategy itself.