The Pipeline: Early Gains, Later Losses

The Women in Digital 2025 report reveals a glaring leak in the tech talent pipeline: while women are entering the sector in record numbers, far too many exit before reaching senior leadership. Despite significant investment in graduate and early-career support, only 22% of female respondents over 55 see a clear path to promotion — exposing a stark drop-off in progression that threatens the future of gender diversity in tech.

Organisations are successfully attracting and nurturing early-career women through graduate programs, scholarships, and structured entry pathways. However, this momentum fades sharply as women move into mid and senior career stages. Support diminishes notably for women over 40 and especially into their 50s, underscoring a critical failure to sustain career development beyond entry-level roles.

Confidence Gap in Pursuing Senior Roles

The report reveals a notable confidence gap between men and women when applying for senior roles. While 81% of men believe they support women’s careers, only 68% of women feel that support. This disparity suggests women may perceive less encouragement than intended, potentially impacting their confidence to pursue leadership positions.

Organisations bear a significant responsibility to bridge this gap by actively supporting, mentoring, and sponsoring diverse talent. Implementing inclusive performance management practices, offering structured mentorship programs, and fostering a culture of constructive feedback can help women feel more confident and supported in their career progression.

To balance the scales, companies can adopt strategies such as:

Structured Mentorship Programs: Pair women with senior leaders to provide guidance and boost confidence.
Inclusive Leadership Training: Equip leaders with skills to support diverse teams, fostering an inclusive environment.
Clear Promotion Criteria: Establish transparent pathways to advancement to demystify the process and encourage women to apply for senior roles.

By taking these steps, organisations can empower women to pursue and attain leadership positions, fostering a more equitable workplace.

Structural Barriers Holding Women Back

This decline is driven by structural barriers such as the absence of part-time progression routes, hidden biases, and the “caregiving penalty” that disproportionately impacts women balancing family responsibilities. Moreover, part-time employees are significantly less likely to feel encouraged to pursue leadership roles, compounding the challenge.

Concrete Actions to Fix the Pipeline

To fix this leaky pipeline, organisations must move beyond generic development initiatives and embed targeted, actionable strategies at every career stage:

Career Path Audits:

Require leaders to map and regularly review clear development and promotion pathways for all employees, ensuring transparency and accountability beyond entry-level roles.
Leadership Shadowing:

Provide mid-career women with structured opportunities to gain visibility into executive decision-making and strategic leadership, preparing them for senior roles.
Sponsorship Programs:

Establish active sponsorship where senior leaders advocate for women in promotion discussions, moving beyond mentorship to tangible career advancement support.

Fixing the pipeline demands sustained, structured support—not just at entry but throughout every stage of a woman’s career. Only by closing these gaps can we build a tech workforce where women don’t just enter, but rise, lead, and thrive.

The 2025 Women in Digital Report is now available!

The conversation around gender equity in tech has never been more urgent or more important. The 2025 Women in Digital Report “Driving Change in Tech 2025” dives deep into the lived experiences of people in digital and technology roles across Australia, providing a powerful data-driven overview of where we are, and where we need to go.

Click to download the report!

The Missing Middle: Career Progression Isn’t Stalling, It’s Being Blocked

The Women in Digital  2025 report spotlights a structural breakdown: mid‑career progress stalls for women, not from a lack of drive, but because systems aren’t aligning with their complex realities, especially around caregiving and flexible work.

The Human Cost: A Narrative from the Middle

While the report doesn’t name individuals, survey responses collectively convey a powerful story. This sentiment captures the lived experience reflected across responses: ambition is intact, support is not. What did one anonymous respondent have to say?

“After returning from maternity leave, I was eager to contribute, only to find part‑time leadership paths didn’t exist. The support evaporated, and despite my efforts, progression felt out of reach.”

Key Barriers, as Revealed in the Report

1. The Caregiving Penalty

Women balancing caregiving, especially for children or school‑age responsibilities, report facing lower visibility and fewer promotion opportunities, highlighting a lingering caregiving penalty even in digitally-forward industries.

2. The Part-Time Penalty

Flexible arrangements are increasingly common. Yet, the report reveals that part‑time work often stalls progression, leaving women locked out of leadership paths when working less than full-time.

3. Embedded Biases in Evaluation

Performance and promotion systems still favour traditional markers of commitment, long hours, physical presence, meaning those working flexibly or managing caregiving duties face hidden bias, even when outcomes are on par.

Parental Leave is Progressing, but is it Enough?

The Women in Digital 2025 report shows a significant rise in employer support: about 68% of organisations in Australia now offer paid parental leave. This expansion is more than policy, it’s a cultural shift.

However, real change hinges on equal uptake across genders. Without balanced participation, women continue to shoulder the brunt of caregiving, reinforcing the “motherhood penalty” that holds back women’s career progression and earnings.

Ensuring men take their parental leave is vital. Doing so helps dismantle stereotypes around caregiving, normalise shared responsibility, and shift expectations at both home and work.

Looking ahead, watch for this shift: as uptake by both parents becomes the norm, parental leave will transform from a benefit into a marker of progressive workplaces. Over the next few years, organisations that support and expect equal leave to be taken by all parents will lead the way in binding equity, retention, and cultural change.

Beyond Policy

Return‑and‑Rise Programs: Structured re‑entry initiatives, offering reskilling, structured mentorship, and clear advancement pathways, enable women to re-engage after career breaks with confidence and clarity.
Inclusive Performance Practices: By embedding transparent promotion criteria, flexibility-aware evaluation, and bias mitigation training, organisations can ensure fair assessment—regardless of WFH patterns or caregiving responsibilities.

The Opportunity Ahead

Fixing the Missing Middle isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s smart business:

Stronger Leadership Pipelines:

Retaining mid‑career women means nurturing experienced, diverse leaders for the future.
Innovation Through Inclusion:

Research underscores that diverse leadership teams drive better decision-making and creativity.
Retention & Savings:

Addressing mid‑career exits reduces costly turnover—saving on recruitment and training while keeping institutional knowledge intact.

What next?

The message is clear: mid‑career women aren’t lacking ambition, they’re lacking structural support. Organisations that invest in targeted re‑entry programs and flexible leadership pathways not only retain critical talent but also future‑proof their leadership bench, building stronger, more diverse, and more resilient teams.

The 2025 Women in Digital Report is now available!

Leaders, Act Now! Support the Missing Middle.

Download the report today!

Path to Progress: Flexibility Is Step One, Not the Finish Line

The Women in Digital 2025 Report revealed that Australia’s tech sector has embraced flexible work, 77% of employers now offer it. It’s a critical foundation, especially for caregivers. But flexibility alone won’t fix inequity. What leaders think they’re doing to support women isn’t always what women experience. And in that gap, talent is being lost.

“Flexibility helped me stay initially, but without real career support, I felt stuck and invisible,” shared one survey respondent.

This candid reflection underscores a key insight from the report: flexibility is necessary but not sufficient. While flexible work arrangements provide crucial support, especially for caregivers, they don’t address deeper issues, such as career development and visibility. Without intentional efforts to create meaningful opportunities and recognition, women risk feeling sidelined, highlighting why cultural change must go hand in hand with flexible policies.

Without deeper cultural change, flexible policies risk masking persistent challenges: career stagnation, presenteeism, and lack of access to leadership. True progress means reshaping how we define value, performance, and inclusion, not just how and where people work.

Equal Pay Day and the Trust Gap

As Equal Pay Day was recently on August 19th, it’s promising that 66% of female respondents in tech now believe they have equal financial opportunity, up from 43% in 2024. But equity isn’t just about pay, it’s about trust.

A major trust gap remains, as found in just one survey in our report:

81% of total male respondents believe their male colleagues support women’s careers.
Only 62% of our total female respondents agree.

This disconnect reveals a core truth: culture can’t be measured by policies alone. It must be reflected in lived experience. If people don’t feel supported, they won’t stay, no matter how “flexible” the policy is.

Perception gaps also impact culture. Leaders may believe they’ve built inclusive environments, but if women don’t experience that inclusivity, progression stalls and organisations risk losing key talent. When employees, particularly women, see policies like flexibility or pay equity in place but don’t experience real inclusion or support, trust erodes. This misalignment fosters a sense of isolation and disengagement, making people less likely to speak up, stay, or strive for advancement. Worse, it can create a sense of “false progress”, where leaders believe equity has been achieved because the metrics look good on paper, so momentum stalls.

3 Things Leaders Can Do Now

Industry leaders show how to do better. In our report, Cathie Reid Am, founder of Arc31, stated “one of the key opportunities to continue to uplift the number of women working in tech comes via amplifying the voices and stories of the women who are already there.”

ACS CEO Josh Griggs similarly said “Our future depends on creating inclusive and flexible environments that support all stages of women’s careers. Employers have to act now by ensuring equitable pay, transparent progression pathways, and supportive leadership programs.”

The takeaway? Allyship must be active, consistent, and felt. Closing the perception gap starts with listening, action, and embedding inclusion into everyday decisions.

To move beyond surface-level inclusion and embed real equity, leaders can:

Audit and act:

Conduct regular pay and promotion audits and be transparent about the outcomes.
Value impact, not hours:

Train managers to recognise and reward output, not presenteeism or visibility.
Mentor and sponsor:

Actively support mid-career women with access to high-impact projects and leadership pathways.

Measure What Matters

Culture isn’t what’s written in a handbook, it’s how people experience their workplace every day. That’s why leaders must go beyond policy checklists and measure what really matters: inclusion, trust, and equitable opportunity.

These perception gaps aren’t just statistics, they shape whether women stay, grow, and thrive in tech. Our 2025 Women in Digital Report unpacks the Path to Progress, the Missing Middle, and the Pipeline, offering leaders a roadmap to close the gaps for good. Together, they form a roadmap for turning momentum into measurable, lasting change.

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