To close the gender gap in tech, focus on the pipeline, not the pinnacle

Most women in tech success stories focus on women at the top who have challenged the status quo and broken barriers to claim their seat at the table. And rightly so. These women are powerful symbols of what’s possible.

But there’s a catch.

Often, the women featured in these narratives are portrayed as superhuman and extraordinary, which creates the perception that only exceptionally fortunate women succeed. For young women entering the tech industry or girls contemplating a future in tech, these glossy success stories can feel out of reach.

This narrative also creates a false impression that gender equity has been achieved, simply because a handful of large businesses have a female CIO or CTO. To accurately assess real progress, we need to widen our lens to look at female representation across every stage of the pipeline.

For example, according to Offerzen’s 2025 South Africa Report, more women are working in tech in 2025. However, the current share of software developers identifying as women stands at only 22%. Sure, it increased from 18% over the past 12 months, but these numbers still show that there is much work to be done if we want to address gender gaps in the sector. So, how do we improve these stats?

The importance of highlighting women across the tech pipeline

In my experience, there is incredible value in driving change from the school level up. The goal is to truly show young women what a career in tech is like. Often, girls and young women have no idea what working in the tech industry entails, or they have misconceptions about jobs in tech being reserved for those who can afford to pursue a lengthy and expensive, specialised degree.

But if we want to challenge these perceptions and change this narrative, we must be intentional about it. We also need to be patient because shifting mindsets takes time. It demands that we put in the work, that we have conversations and raise awareness over and over again.

When we shine a spotlight on the daily tasks of a typical software developer, or we showcase what keeps a quality engineer or data scientist busy, we paint a realistic picture of what it’s like to do these jobs. And when the software developers or product owners we promote are female, we’re showing girls and young women that they can do jobs that have traditionally only been associated with boys and men. And they can be good at them too. Telling the stories of this ‘missing middle’ also gives young women real role models working in IT that they can look up to.

When redAcademy runs education and outreach initiatives at schools, we’re very strategic about bringing in women who have come from humble beginnings and gone through our programmes. We ask these women to share their stories so that the young girls in the room can see that pursuing a career in tech is a possibility.

When I think about the gender gap in tech, it’s actually a very simple problem to solve. But it’s not an overnight fix. It’s about creating more awareness, particularly at a school level. According to WEF’s 2021 Global Gender Gap Report, less than 13% of women choose to study in STEM disciplines, which is why it is so important to break down preconceived ideas about who can and cannot enter the tech industry. It doesn’t matter where these ideas came from – maybe they’re social norms or community expectations or based on something someone saw in a movie – but we need to challenge these ideas.

In the past, it was harder to do this because there weren’t real stories about real women working in tech. But now there are these female role models with great stories that we need to shout from the rooftops to inspire other women to explore what’s possible in tech