47% of Women in Tech Report Discrimination—Authority Gaps Persist

On October 13, 2026, ISACA published findings from a survey of 1,025 technology workers worldwide: 47% of women said they had experienced workplace gender discrimination, up from 42% in 2024, while 53% said they had sufficient authority to contribute to company strategy, compared with 66% of men. The findings put two workplace questions side by side: how women are treated and how much influence they believe they have over decisions.

The release was issued from London, but the respondents worked in technology around the world. Its results describe their experiences and perceptions, including satisfaction with their jobs and prospects. The change from the earlier discrimination figure compares survey results across years; it does not track the same women through their careers or explain why the percentage changed.

Purchasing decisions have the widest authority gap

The ISACA decision-rights analysis puts women and men at 53% and 66% on sufficient authority over strategy, 48% and 59% on personnel decisions, and 32% and 52% on purchasing; for satisfaction, the pairs are 52% and 65% on workplace culture, 59% and 69% on job security, and 67% and 73% on career progression. Purchasing has the largest gender difference in that group of authority measures, at 20 percentage points. The strategy and personnel gaps are 13 and 11 points, respectively.

Those distinctions matter because contributing to a company’s direction, making decisions about people and authorizing spending are separate forms of influence. Someone may be invited to offer a view on strategy while having little say over the resources needed to carry it out. The purchasing result therefore identifies a more specific divide than the broad discrimination figure alone can convey.

The authority questions measure whether workers feel they have enough influence; they do not examine employers’ formal approval rules. The results also do not identify whether the women who experienced discrimination are the same women who feel excluded from decisions. The survey establishes a pattern across respondents, not a causal chain between mistreatment and any particular decision right.

Job security and career prospects show further differences

Women’s lower satisfaction with workplace culture and job security places the authority gap in a wider account of working life. Job security in this survey means satisfaction with that aspect of work. It is not a measure of layoffs, contract losses or an employer’s financial position. Career progression is another satisfaction measure: it captures how respondents view their opportunities, rather than counting promotions received.

The differences are not identical across these measures. Satisfaction with career progression is closer between women and men than satisfaction with workplace culture, while purchasing authority shows a wider separation than either. Reading them together prevents a single headline percentage from standing in for every part of a technology career. The survey points to distinct questions about treatment, confidence in a job and influence over consequential choices.

Perceptions of authority can matter even when a job title appears to confer responsibility. A person who helps shape a plan but cannot decide on staffing or spending has a different role in its execution from someone who can approve those decisions. The survey does not establish how often that situation occurs at a particular employer, but its separate questions make the distinction visible.

Burnout and unclear advancement raise the retention stakes

In TNW’s October 13 account of the findings, an unclear path to advancement was cited by 41% of women and 33% of men, while work-related stress or burnout affected 64% of women and 57% of men; ISACA SheLeadsTech adviser Julia Hermann said, “Retention rates are still a challenge.” An unclear route forward concerns what workers believe is possible next. Burnout describes strain in their current work. Both bear on retention, though neither percentage is a count of employees who left.

The higher burnout figure for women adds a different dimension to the findings on authority and advancement. A worker may be satisfied with parts of a role yet still find the workload difficult to sustain or see limited room to progress. That combination gives employers a reason to examine retention beyond current job satisfaction, while leaving open how any individual respondent will act.

The survey cannot show that discrimination caused burnout, that limited authority caused job insecurity, or that workers who expressed concern will resign. It does show why the findings cannot be reduced to one measure of workplace culture: women described unequal treatment, less influence over decisions and greater work-related strain across separate questions. For women weighing a future in technology, the consequential issue is whether those conditions change within the workplaces where they can build a career.