2018 Women in Tech Index

Portugal, The United States and Latvia offer the best opportunities for women in tech, with an industry gender pay gap around 6-7 percent less than the overall average wage gap in each country.

The United States offers the highest wages to women working in tech, at £61,492 per annum, followed by Ireland (£42,996) and Switzerland (£41,911).

At 30 percent, Bulgaria has the highest percentage of women working in tech, followed by Australia with 28 percent and Romania at 26 percent.

With gender disparity a topic at the forefront of modern discourse, leading technology career platform Honeypot, has released the 2018 Women in Tech Index.

The results offer a view on gender-based employment inequalities both at large and in the technology sector. In an effort to position themselves as industry experts, the developer-focused career platform decided to research the role that gender parity plays in the technology landscape by comparing the proportion of female employees, gender wage gap and opportunities for women in the IT field, among other criteria.

In sharing the results of this study, Honeypot aims to highlight which countries offer the best opportunities for women in tech and to encourage the industry at large to take further positive steps towards gender parity.

The study focuses on 41 countries in the OECD and EU, and offers comparable data relating to both the tech industry and the wage gap. The data covers areas such as:

Gender in the Overall Economy: factors such as percentage of women in work and the overall gender income parity.

Women in Tech: as measured by the number of women in IT positions compared to the overall numbers of people in tech.

Opportunities for Women in Tech: calculated by comparing the difference between the percentage share of women in the general workforce, and the percentage of women in the technology sector. In addition, the study took into account the percentage of female STEM graduates.

Tech Wage Gap: difference in gender wage gap between women working in the tech industry and the overall workforce at large.

Female Career Progression: as judged by the percentage of women in managerial and ministerial positions.

Finally, to bring attention to any potential barriers which might hinder a woman’s progression in the tech industry and to highlight the best opportunities for women, the Gender Inequality Index was analysed. This reviews women’s reproductive health, empowerment and labour market participation to conclude overall parity.

To determine if equality has increased or decreased in recent history, we then calculated the difference between the current available wage gap data, as compared to five years previous.

“Gender parity in the workplace is not just an ethical or moral issue, but also an economic one: McKinsey found that $12 trillion could be added to global GDP by 2025 by advancing women’s equality.  As tech recruitment specialists, we are often confronted with the gender imbalances of the industry, which are fully exposed in this study.” says Emma Tracey, co-founder at Honeypot.

“The results reveal the countries which have the most to offer women looking to progress in the tech industry, with Portugal, The United States and Latvia highlighted as the top three nations that have taken positive steps towards gender parity in the technology field in terms of fairer wages. However, with the proportion of female tech workers remaining under 30 percent across the board, we hope that this study will enrich the conversation concerning equality in this industry and inspire more women to seek out opportunities in tech.”

A sample of the results from the top 20 countries offering the best opportunities for women in tech, calculated by comparing the difference between the overall gender pay gap and the pay gap in the technology industry.

A positive number demonstrates that the income disparity in tech is less than the overall average in that country, indicating that female tech workers have been afforded fairer wages. E.G. the Percentage Difference of Overall and Tech Gender Pay Gap in Portugal is 7.26 percent, which indicates that the Portuguese tech pay gap is 7.26 percent better than the overall wage gap. A negative number, for example in Ireland at -3.13 percent indicates that women in tech are 3.13 percent worse off salary-wise than in the average profession.

Comparison of Gender Pay Gap from 2010 to 2015: indicates the percentage that the gender wage disparity has increased or decreased in the past 5 years, (as most current available data is from 2015). A positive number, for example in France, indicates that the way gap has increased by 3.44 percent. A negative number, for example, in Iceland, indicates that wage disparity has improved by 2.29 percent.

Further findings:
* The United States has the highest number of women in the labour force, with 74.43 million. Malta has the least number of women in their workforce, at 80,000.

* Lithuania has the highest percentage of female workforce, at 51.17 percent, one of only two (alongside Latvia at 50.25 percent) countries in the index that have a higher percentage of women than men in their workforce. Turkey has the smallest percentage of female workforce, at 31.55 percent.

* Latvia has the highest percentage of women legislators, senior officials and managers at 44.4 percent, while South Korea has the least with 10.7 percent.

* Sweden has the highest percentage of women in parliament positions, at 44.5 percent, while Japan has the least, at 9.9 percent.

* Finland has the highest percentage of women in ministerial positions at 62.5 percent. Notably, France is the only country with 50 percent of its ministerial cabinet made up of women. Hungary and the Slovak Republic have zero women in ministerial positions.

* Luxembourg has the highest overall wage for women, at £42,026 per annum. Bulgaria has the lowest, at £8,717.

* The overall gender pay gap is largest in South Korea, at 37.18 percent and joint lowest in Italy and Luxembourg, at 5.5 percent.

* The United States has the most employees working in the tech industry, around 6 million, while Malta and Iceland have the least, at around 7,000.

* 6.04 percent of Finland’s labour force is in the technology industry, the highest in the index. 0.8 percent of Turkey’s labour force works in tech, the lowest in the index.

* The United States has the most women working in the tech industry, at just under 1.5 million. Malta has the least, with 800 women working in tech.

* Bulgaria has the highest percentage of women working in tech, at 30.28 percent. The Slovak Republic has the smallest percentage of women working in tech, at 9.29 percent.

* Israel has the largest difference between the percentage of overall women working, and the percentage of women working in tech, at -36.6 percent. Romania has the smallest difference, at -16.57 percent.

* Turkey has the highest percentage of female STEM graduates, at 37.11 percent, while Japan has the least, at 15.25 percent.

* The United States offers the highest wage both overall in tech and for women in tech, at £69,768 and £61,492 respectively. Mexico offers the lowest wages in tech, both overall and for women, at £13,839 and £10,974 respectively.

* Turkey has the lowest gender pay gap in the tech industry, at 8.42 percent. South Korea has the highest, at 41.17 percent.

* Portugal has the highest positive difference in percentage of tech pay gap as compared to overall wage gap, at 7.26 percent. Poland has the highest negative difference in percentage of tech pay gap as compared to overall wage gap, at -17.8 percent.

* Switzerland has the best Gender Inequality Score, at 0.04, while Mexico has the worst, at 0.345.

* South Korea had the highest overall gender pay gap in 2010, at 39.61 percent. Slovenia had the lowest overall gender pay gap in 2010, at 0.95 percent.

* Romania’s gender pay gap has improved by 3 percent from 2010 to 2015, while women in Slovenia were paid 7.15 percent less in 2015 than they were 5 years previously.