From closing the ‘broken rung’ in career progression to leading AI innovation and governance, the next decade presents a defining opportunity to ensure women are not just participants in technology, but architects of its future.
Since I started working in technology, I have asked and heard a familiar question: How do we get more women into technology?
While things have improved quite a bit over the last couple decades, the numbers are alarming. Approximately 45% STEM graduates are women, 35% women take entry level positions in technology, 13-17% of women take up senior leadership roles and a measly 7-11% get into C suites.
The next decade is going to be all about technology, data , privacy, security, AI – yet, at the very moment that technology is becoming more consequential, women continue to fall away as careers progress
Perhaps the question for the next decade is different: How do we make it easier for women to stay, grow and contribute meaningfully towards shaping our future?
The conversation about women in technology has often focused on the glass ceiling the difficulty women face reaching senior leadership. But increasingly, the evidence points to an earlier problem: the broken rung.
A study conducted by McKinsey found that in technical roles historically only 52 women were promoted to manager for every 100 men. The research identified three important enablers: equitable access to skill building, structured and less-biased promotion processes, and strong cultures of mentorship and sponsorship.
Missing that first promotion is not simply missing one job title. It means missing opportunities to build experience, visibility, networks and confidence. It can create a compounding disadvantage over an entire career. Perhaps that should become a leadership wake-up call.
From participation to influence
Such a steep drop in representation has long lasting impact. People who understand problems, design solutions – if a big chunk of people are missing from those discussions, do we really believe we will get inclusive solutions? A global analysis of 133 AI systems found that about 44% displayed gender bias, according to UN Women. The organisation argues that building more inclusive technology requires diverse teams and gender considerations to be incorporated from the design stage.Leaders parameters for inclusion has to change. Rather than asking how many women we hired or what is the inclusion ratio – we should ask:
- How many stay? Got promoted ?
- Who gets the high-visibility technology projects?
- Who becomes a CIO, CTO or CEO?
- Who leads AI research? Who sits on the governance boards.
We start with representation but target Influence.
AI could become the great equaliser or another broken rung
Artificial intelligence creates an extraordinary opportunity for women.
It is a given that a woman will take a break at important milestones of life – and these breaks will be longer than a man would take e.g. for childbirth. I have seen a lot of smart, capable women drop off at this milestone – not because they suddenly could not perform at work – but because the cost of re-entry was huge. The world of technology moves at lightning speed and for someone to be out of action for a year (or more) – makes a difference. AI becomes an equalizer in this case. Imagine a woman returning to technology after a year (or more) career break. Her AI assistant can tell her what has changed in her industry, create a personalised learning programme, refresh her technical skills, simulate interviews and support her during the first months of returning to work.
A woman who doesn’t want to join the workforce in the traditional sense and wants to start her entrepreneurial journey could use AI to conduct market research, create a prototype, analyse customers, develop software, create content and automate parts of her business without needing a large team from day one.
However things are not all rosy. Women remain underrepresented in AI while being disproportionately exposed to some of its potential disruption. The International Labour Organization’s 2026 research found that female-dominated occupations are almost twice as likely to be exposed to generative AI as male-dominated occupations 29% compared with 16%. At the same time, women remain underrepresented in AI-related jobs.
The technology most likely to reshape the workplace is being developed by a workforce that is not representative of the workplace.
UNESCO’s latest South Asia research reinforces the point. In India, women represented about 29.9% of AI engineering talent among LinkedIn users in 2024. Across six South Asian countries, 71.76% of AI research publications included at least one woman author but only 26.01% had a woman as corresponding or primary author, a proxy for research leadership and intellectual ownership.
By 2035, women need to be designing models, leading AI laboratories, deciding what data is used, testing systems for bias and shaping the rules that govern AI.
“The real challenge is no longer getting more women into technology. It is ensuring they stay, grow, lead, and shape the technologies that will define the future. By 2035, success should be measured not by representation alone, but by the influence women have on the decisions, innovations, and AI systems that impact society.”
– Priya Dar, CIO, Valvoline Cummins Pvt. Ltd. (India)
The workplace of 2035 must be compatible with life – women’s life
Work from home and hybrid work could become one of the most important enablers of women’s careers but only if organisations avoid creating a new disadvantage.
Flexibility clearly matters. But flexibility has a trap. McKinsey’s 2025 research found that women working remotely three or more days a week were less likely to have sponsors and less likely to have been promoted than women working mostly on-site. Among women, 54% of those working mostly on-site reported having a sponsor compared with only 37% of those working mostly remotely. So the answer cannot simply be “let women work from home.”
It must be: Give women flexibility without making flexibility a career penalty.
The future workplace should not force women to choose between being present at home and being visible at work.
The next decade conversations need to be around career continuity.
Companies should establish structured re-entry programmes, AI-enabled reskilling and transparent promotion criteria. They could maintain professional networks with employees during career breaks and provide access to new technologies when they return.
This cannot be a women’s initiative.
The responsibility for creating the next generation of women technology leaders has to belong to every technology leader.
Women are already showing us what is possible
The future is not hypothetical. Women are already responsible for some of the technologies and discoveries that are transforming our world.
Fei-Fei Li helped pioneer modern computer vision through ImageNet and has become a leading advocate for human-centred AI.
Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier developed CRISPR-Cas9, the “genetic scissors” that transformed genome editing and earned them the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Joy Buolamwini, founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, exposed gender and skin-tone bias in facial-recognition systems through her research. Her work demonstrated that technology can fail precisely because the people represented in the data are not sufficiently diverse.
And Reshma Saujani, founder of Girls Who Code, has challenged another barrier: the expectation that girls should strive for perfection rather than take risks. Her TED message is simple:
“Teach girls bravery, not perfection.”
These women represent different dimensions of technology AI, biotechnology, scientific discovery, responsible innovation and education.
Together they demonstrate something important: Women are not simply another demographic that technology needs to employ. They can change what technology chooses to solve, how it is designed and how it affects society.
What could technology look like in 2035?
Imagine a woman who enters the technology industry in 2026. In 2035, she is not an exception.
She may be leading an AI business from a city that was never considered a traditional technology hub. Her AI assistant handles routine work while her team collaborates across countries. She has taken a career break without losing her professional identity. When she returned, technology helped her rebuild her skills.
Her company measures performance through outcomes rather than hours spent in an office. Flexible work is normal, but flexibility has not made her invisible. She has access to the same stretch assignments, sponsorship and leadership opportunities as her colleagues. She is not simply using AI.
She helped design it.
And she sits at the table that decides, that influences – not just develops.
She mentors and sponsors the generation coming after her.
That is the real opportunity of the next decade.
Success in 2035 should not simply be measured by whether women represent a larger percentage of the technology workforce.
It should be measured by whether women have meaningful influence over the direction technology takes.
The goal should be to build tomorrow’s technology workplace differently.
Indra Nooyi said “Women represent the biggest emerging market opportunity. We must build an infrastructure that enables them to succeed.”
So, “How do we make it easier for women to stay, lead, create and contribute meaningfully towards shaping our future?”
If we get that right, the technology landscape of 2035 may not simply have more women in it.It may be better technology because women helped shape it.