It goes without saying that technology has drastically changed our world – from the way we communicate, work and study, to the way we spend our free time and access information. Ever since the global pandemic, technology has found even more ways to establish itself in our lives. However, despite the industry’s undoubted growth and impact on society, there is still one big issue that often goes unnoticed: the gender gap. In the tech industry, women are severely underrepresented, which not only is detrimental to their own professional aspirations, but also to companies’ potential for innovation and creativity.
Being a Data Science student myself, I find it extremely important to shed light on the issue of gender disparity within the tech industry. To do so, I will analyze the annual Machine Learning and Data Science surveys provided by Kaggle (Kaggle, 2022), using AWS QuickSight – a highly powerful business intelligence service – in order to gain a better understanding on how this situation has evolved in recent years and if we can expect it to change for the better in a near future.
Kaggle’s annual industry-wide survey is a key element for understanding the state of the tech world. By taking an in-depth look at the survey data of the last four years (2019-2022), we can gain valuable insights into how the gender gap has evolved in the industry. The surveys cover a wide range of topics related to the sector, gathering answers from thousands of people from all parts of the world who offer a useful outlook on how the industry works. It is worth mentioning how Kaggle’s surveys are primarily filled by Data Scientists, Analysts and Engineers, given its renown in the data sector. Although the surveys are not limited to any particular tech area, these professionals are more likely to respond due to the website’s reputation.
To accurately analyze the gender gap using Kaggle’s surveys, I had to first identify which questions I believed were the most relevant to the analysis. As the questions were so varied, I decided to focus on those where the gender disparity could be clearly detected, such as age, salary and education. Once I had selected those, I proceeded to the data preparation phase, where I concatenated all the survey datasets for each year into a single dataset in order to begin plotting the results. Quicksight has an in-built data preparation section, which allowed me to change the data types of the attributes and create new features based on the ones already uploaded. These proved to be highly useful actions when preparing the data.
Now, the biggest question we all might be asking ourselves is: how bad really is the gender gap in the tech world? Let’s break it down into the fields: gender, age, country, salary, highest education and work role, in order to understand its prevalence in society better.
Out of the 24 thousand respondents, 18.270 were male (76%) and 5.290 were female (22%), representing an approximate 3:1 ratio of male to female respondents. Less than 1% of the respondents identified as non-binary or not provided an answer.
As discouraging as the gender gap in 2022 looks, in comparison to the last 4 years, things clearly have been looking up since 2019 .
Each year displays a small but still significant increase in the number of women in the field. In 2022, there was a 3.25% increase since 2021 and an overall 5.84% increase since 2019. Even though this might be a sign that more opportunities are gradually being offered to women, the disparity still remains. This is why it is beyond important to raise awareness on the matter, so that newer generations of women can grow without limitations and achieve everything they set their minds to!
Now we will analyze the origins from which participants come from, in order to see if any countries in particular are offering more opportunities to women in tech.
By far, India and the United States of America show the highest numbers of answers. India’s female and male answers amounted to 58% and 54% respectively, whilst the United States’ answers amounted to 20% women and 17% men. It is intriguing to note how, regardless of gender, India and the US have the highest percentages of professionals from the tech industry among the survey respondents.
Of the remaining countries on the continents of South America, Africa and Asia each contribute 5% or less of female and male answers. Even though these countries have a lower female response rate, it is important to consider that the socio-economic and cultural context, as well as the resources to participate in the survey or even be a part of the tech world, vary greatly among these. Thus, identifying countries where female participation is more likely to increase is essential.
As evidenced in the plot above, the number of respondents in India, Nigeria and the USA has increased over the years, making it worthwhile to analyze the industry’s development in some of these countries. For instance, the information and communication technology (ICT) sector in Nigeria contributed 18.44% to the country’s GDP in the second quarter of 2022, showing a 6.55% growth from the first quarter (NAN, 2022). To further encourage female participation in the ICT sector, Nigeria has implemented the Girls in ICT program which provides mentorship, training and career guidance for young women (United Nations, 2016). Similarly, India’s tech industry is expected to grow 8.4% in 2023 after the sector attained revenues of around $226 billion in FY2022 (Bagchi, 2023). Additionally, WITI (Women in Technology International) is an Indian organization set to help in the inclusion of women in business and technology (WITI, n.d.). These statements help to demonstrate the potential for more inclusion of women in the tech industry.
Age is also an important factor when it comes to analyzing the gender gap.
Quicksight’s useful feature called “small multiples” allows us to visualize and compare the differences in age distribution between genders across the years. For instance, when examining the female age distribution, the majority of female surveyees fall into the 18-21, 22-24 and 25-29 clusters. Interestingly, since 2019, the number of women between the ages of 18-21 has increased significantly, indicating how younger women are starting to get more involved in the industry as the years progress.
Despite both genders’ age distributions being right skewed, with the majority of respondents being between the ages of 18-40, the male distribution reveals a disproportionate amount of male respondents over the age of 40 in comparison to females respondents. This disparity could suggest how, historically, the gender bias was even stronger, and it was not as welcomed for women back then to pursue technological or mathematical careers.
As it would be expected, younger women are prevalent in the tech industry throughout the top 10 countries with the highest number of female answers.
Although it is no secret that the younger generations dominate the sector, it is compelling to see women from all age groups contributing to the surveys and representing women in tech, proving that anyone can be a part of the technology world!
When comparing the 2021 and 2022 survey results, India presented a more age diverse answer rate, with increased rates of older female participants. In contrast, the United States shows more of a uniform response rate across the various age groups. It is noteworthy that the US had one of the lowest number of responses from women in the 18-24 demographic amongst all age groups, representing only 6.08% of all surveyees from the US. Similarly, it is the country that shows a higher percentage of answers from people over the age of 40.
Overall, the gender gap persists regardless of age. Despite the perception that the tech industry is dominated by the younger generations, the crucial contributions of the older generations of women who paved the way should not be overlooked.
When it comes to the gender gap analysis, salary is undoubtedly one of the most important features to consider. In the tech industry, these disparities are particularly noticeable, with women earning significantly less than their fellow male counterparts.
In order to get a more comprehensive understanding of the differences in pay between women and men in the tech industry, the salaries for both genders have been grouped into six salary ranges.
From the graph displayed above, we can observe that nearly 50% of women are paid an annual salary of less than $10.000, while only 36% of men earn less than this amount.
Although the gender wage gap persists, we can observe an encouraging trend in the data from the last two years. The percentage of women earning less than $10,000 annually has decreased, indicating that women in the industry are being paid more for their hard work. This is a positive sign that progress is being made towards closing the pay gap.
Furthermore, it might be enlightening to explore what educational backgrounds are associated with higher-paying job opportunities in the tech sector for women.
In 2022, women with a Master’s degree dominated each salary range, with those holding a Bachelor’s degree or Doctoral degree following behind.
Though possessing a Master’s degree might not guarantee a six figure job, it could potentially increase the probabilities of achieving higher wages. What’s more, women who lack any formal education beyond high school – although rare cases – can still earn an annual salary of over $125.000, demonstrating that although higher levels of education can open more doors, the tech world is not limited to those with the most prestigious educational backgrounds.
Finally, let’s analyze the most frequent work roles in the last year, and see what differences gender has on them.
The survey results for 2022 show that the most popular work roles across both genders are Data Scientist, Data Analyst, Software Engineer, Teacher/ professor and Research Scientist, respectively. Although these professions are in high demand nowadays, we should be mindful of possible biases in the survey results, considering that Kaggle is a site primarily used by data scientists/analysts.
While the percentage difference between genders is not significant, some insights can be derived from them. For instance, it can be observed that the female to male respondents working as teachers or professors ratio is approximately 2:1. Additionally, the results showed that 3% more women work as Data Analysts than men.
Overall, female Data Scientists have the most potential to earn the highest salaries when compared to other tech roles. Data Analyst and Software Engineer follow closely behind, with these roles also having a significant presence in highly rewarding salary ranges.
Though future salary expectations play a key part when it comes to choosing a career path in tech, the opportunities that come with these jobs are endless, allowing for women to pursue their passions and make a real difference in the world.
To conclude, I would like to share a famous quote from Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani female activist who fought for women’s rights. This quote, taken from one of her speeches at the United Nations in 2013 (Yousafzai, 2013), I believe captures the essence of this blog flawlessly.
“We call upon all communities to be tolerant — to reject prejudice based on cast, creed, sect, religion or gender. To ensure freedom and equality for women so that they can flourish. We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back.” – Malala Yousafzai
A person’s gender should never be a limitation or indicator of what one can amount to. It is essential to abandon any stereotypes or prejudice we might have in order to succeed as a society, because as Malala pointed out: “We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back.”
The gender gap is an immensely complex issue that deserves further exploration. In this post, we have analyzed the past and the current state of affairs. In our next post, we will continue our analysis using advanced AWS Quicksight technologies, such as Quicksight Q, and we will try to get a glimpse of the future, using QuickSight’s Forecasting features, so stay tuned for more!
Bagchi, S. (2023, March 1). Indian tech industry to grow 8.4% to $245 billion in FY23: Nasscom. Mint. Retrieved March 7, 2023.
Kaggle. (2022, October 16). 2022 Kaggle Machine Learning & Data Science Survey. Kaggle. Retrieved March 7, 2023.
NAN. (2022, August 27). ICT sectors contribute 18.44% to Nigeria’s GDP, says NBS. The Guardian Nigeria News. Retrieved March 7, 2023.
United Nations. (2016, 04). “Girls in ICT Day” highlights need to promote technology careers for women. the United Nations. Retrieved March 7, 2023.
WITI. (n.d.). About – WITI. Women in Technology International. Retrieved March 7, 2023.
Yousafzai, M. (2013, July 12). Malala Fund. Malala Fund. Retrieved March 7, 2023.
It goes without saying that technology has drastically changed our world – from the way we communicate, work and study, to the way we spend our free time and access information. Ever since the global pandemic, technology has found even more ways to establish itself in our lives. However, despite the industry’s undoubted growth and impact on society, there is still one big issue that often goes unnoticed: the gender gap. In the tech industry, women are severely underrepresented, which not only is detrimental to their own professional aspirations, but also to companies’ potential for innovation and creativity.
Being a Data Science student myself, I find it extremely important to shed light on the issue of gender disparity within the tech industry. To do so, I will analyze the annual Machine Learning and Data Science surveys provided by Kaggle (Kaggle, 2022), using AWS QuickSight – a highly powerful business intelligence service – in order to gain a better understanding on how this situation has evolved in recent years and if we can expect it to change for the better in a near future.
Kaggle’s annual industry-wide survey is a key element for understanding the state of the tech world. By taking an in-depth look at the survey data of the last four years (2019-2022), we can gain valuable insights into how the gender gap has evolved in the industry. The surveys cover a wide range of topics related to the sector, gathering answers from thousands of people from all parts of the world who offer a useful outlook on how the industry works. It is worth mentioning how Kaggle’s surveys are primarily filled by Data Scientists, Analysts and Engineers, given its renown in the data sector. Although the surveys are not limited to any particular tech area, these professionals are more likely to respond due to the website’s reputation.
To accurately analyze the gender gap using Kaggle’s surveys, I had to first identify which questions I believed were the most relevant to the analysis. As the questions were so varied, I decided to focus on those where the gender disparity could be clearly detected, such as age, salary and education. Once I had selected those, I proceeded to the data preparation phase, where I concatenated all the survey datasets for each year into a single dataset in order to begin plotting the results. Quicksight has an in-built data preparation section, which allowed me to change the data types of the attributes and create new features based on the ones already uploaded. These proved to be highly useful actions when preparing the data.
Now, the biggest question we all might be asking ourselves is: how bad really is the gender gap in the tech world? Let’s break it down into the fields: gender, age, country, salary, highest education and work role, in order to understand its prevalence in society better.
Out of the 24 thousand respondents, 18.270 were male (76%) and 5.290 were female (22%), representing an approximate 3:1 ratio of male to female respondents. Less than 1% of the respondents identified as non-binary or not provided an answer.
As discouraging as the gender gap in 2022 looks, in comparison to the last 4 years, things clearly have been looking up since 2019 .
Each year displays a small but still significant increase in the number of women in the field. In 2022, there was a 3.25% increase since 2021 and an overall 5.84% increase since 2019. Even though this might be a sign that more opportunities are gradually being offered to women, the disparity still remains. This is why it is beyond important to raise awareness on the matter, so that newer generations of women can grow without limitations and achieve everything they set their minds to!
Now we will analyze the origins from which participants come from, in order to see if any countries in particular are offering more opportunities to women in tech.
By far, India and the United States of America show the highest numbers of answers. India’s female and male answers amounted to 58% and 54% respectively, whilst the United States’ answers amounted to 20% women and 17% men. It is intriguing to note how, regardless of gender, India and the US have the highest percentages of professionals from the tech industry among the survey respondents.
Of the remaining countries on the continents of South America, Africa and Asia each contribute 5% or less of female and male answers. Even though these countries have a lower female response rate, it is important to consider that the socio-economic and cultural context, as well as the resources to participate in the survey or even be a part of the tech world, vary greatly among these. Thus, identifying countries where female participation is more likely to increase is essential.
As evidenced in the plot above, the number of respondents in India, Nigeria and the USA has increased over the years, making it worthwhile to analyze the industry’s development in some of these countries. For instance, the information and communication technology (ICT) sector in Nigeria contributed 18.44% to the country’s GDP in the second quarter of 2022, showing a 6.55% growth from the first quarter (NAN, 2022). To further encourage female participation in the ICT sector, Nigeria has implemented the Girls in ICT program which provides mentorship, training and career guidance for young women (United Nations, 2016). Similarly, India’s tech industry is expected to grow 8.4% in 2023 after the sector attained revenues of around $226 billion in FY2022 (Bagchi, 2023). Additionally, WITI (Women in Technology International) is an Indian organization set to help in the inclusion of women in business and technology (WITI, n.d.). These statements help to demonstrate the potential for more inclusion of women in the tech industry.
Age is also an important factor when it comes to analyzing the gender gap.
Quicksight’s useful feature called “small multiples” allows us to visualize and compare the differences in age distribution between genders across the years. For instance, when examining the female age distribution, the majority of female surveyees fall into the 18-21, 22-24 and 25-29 clusters. Interestingly, since 2019, the number of women between the ages of 18-21 has increased significantly, indicating how younger women are starting to get more involved in the industry as the years progress.
Despite both genders’ age distributions being right skewed, with the majority of respondents being between the ages of 18-40, the male distribution reveals a disproportionate amount of male respondents over the age of 40 in comparison to females respondents. This disparity could suggest how, historically, the gender bias was even stronger, and it was not as welcomed for women back then to pursue technological or mathematical careers.
As it would be expected, younger women are prevalent in the tech industry throughout the top 10 countries with the highest number of female answers.
Although it is no secret that the younger generations dominate the sector, it is compelling to see women from all age groups contributing to the surveys and representing women in tech, proving that anyone can be a part of the technology world!
When comparing the 2021 and 2022 survey results, India presented a more age diverse answer rate, with increased rates of older female participants. In contrast, the United States shows more of a uniform response rate across the various age groups. It is noteworthy that the US had one of the lowest number of responses from women in the 18-24 demographic amongst all age groups, representing only 6.08% of all surveyees from the US. Similarly, it is the country that shows a higher percentage of answers from people over the age of 40.
Overall, the gender gap persists regardless of age. Despite the perception that the tech industry is dominated by the younger generations, the crucial contributions of the older generations of women who paved the way should not be overlooked.
When it comes to the gender gap analysis, salary is undoubtedly one of the most important features to consider. In the tech industry, these disparities are particularly noticeable, with women earning significantly less than their fellow male counterparts.
In order to get a more comprehensive understanding of the differences in pay between women and men in the tech industry, the salaries for both genders have been grouped into six salary ranges.
From the graph displayed above, we can observe that nearly 50% of women are paid an annual salary of less than $10.000, while only 36% of men earn less than this amount.
Although the gender wage gap persists, we can observe an encouraging trend in the data from the last two years. The percentage of women earning less than $10,000 annually has decreased, indicating that women in the industry are being paid more for their hard work. This is a positive sign that progress is being made towards closing the pay gap.
Furthermore, it might be enlightening to explore what educational backgrounds are associated with higher-paying job opportunities in the tech sector for women.
In 2022, women with a Master’s degree dominated each salary range, with those holding a Bachelor’s degree or Doctoral degree following behind.
Though possessing a Master’s degree might not guarantee a six figure job, it could potentially increase the probabilities of achieving higher wages. What’s more, women who lack any formal education beyond high school – although rare cases – can still earn an annual salary of over $125.000, demonstrating that although higher levels of education can open more doors, the tech world is not limited to those with the most prestigious educational backgrounds.
Finally, let’s analyze the most frequent work roles in the last year, and see what differences gender has on them.
The survey results for 2022 show that the most popular work roles across both genders are Data Scientist, Data Analyst, Software Engineer, Teacher/ professor and Research Scientist, respectively. Although these professions are in high demand nowadays, we should be mindful of possible biases in the survey results, considering that Kaggle is a site primarily used by data scientists/analysts.
While the percentage difference between genders is not significant, some insights can be derived from them. For instance, it can be observed that the female to male respondents working as teachers or professors ratio is approximately 2:1. Additionally, the results showed that 3% more women work as Data Analysts than men.
Overall, female Data Scientists have the most potential to earn the highest salaries when compared to other tech roles. Data Analyst and Software Engineer follow closely behind, with these roles also having a significant presence in highly rewarding salary ranges.
Though future salary expectations play a key part when it comes to choosing a career path in tech, the opportunities that come with these jobs are endless, allowing for women to pursue their passions and make a real difference in the world.
To conclude, I would like to share a famous quote from Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani female activist who fought for women’s rights. This quote, taken from one of her speeches at the United Nations in 2013 (Yousafzai, 2013), I believe captures the essence of this blog flawlessly.
“We call upon all communities to be tolerant — to reject prejudice based on cast, creed, sect, religion or gender. To ensure freedom and equality for women so that they can flourish. We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back.” – Malala Yousafzai
A person’s gender should never be a limitation or indicator of what one can amount to. It is essential to abandon any stereotypes or prejudice we might have in order to succeed as a society, because as Malala pointed out: “We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back.”
The gender gap is an immensely complex issue that deserves further exploration. In this post, we have analyzed the past and the current state of affairs. In our next post, we will continue our analysis using advanced AWS Quicksight technologies, such as Quicksight Q, and we will try to get a glimpse of the future, using QuickSight’s Forecasting features, so stay tuned for more!
Bagchi, S. (2023, March 1). Indian tech industry to grow 8.4% to $245 billion in FY23: Nasscom. Mint. Retrieved March 7, 2023.
Kaggle. (2022, October 16). 2022 Kaggle Machine Learning & Data Science Survey. Kaggle. Retrieved March 7, 2023.
NAN. (2022, August 27). ICT sectors contribute 18.44% to Nigeria’s GDP, says NBS. The Guardian Nigeria News. Retrieved March 7, 2023.
United Nations. (2016, 04). “Girls in ICT Day” highlights need to promote technology careers for women. the United Nations. Retrieved March 7, 2023.
WITI. (n.d.). About – WITI. Women in Technology International. Retrieved March 7, 2023.
Yousafzai, M. (2013, July 12). Malala Fund. Malala Fund. Retrieved March 7, 2023.
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