Women’s representation in the tech sector is improving across the country, even amid other drops in diversity.
That’s according to a Wednesday report from the Vancouver-based Tech and People Network (TAP), which found that women’s representation in Canada’s tech sector made some progress over the last year, increasing from 36.9 per cent to 38.6 per cent among 149 employers surveyed.
Nevertheless, the management-level gender pay gap still remains at 17 per cent, with all B.C. employers with over 50 employees required to report gender pay discrepancies by 2026, said the release.
Women were represented most in tech companies’ human resources departments (84 per cent), while representation lacked in technology, design and support (27 per cent).
Entry-level jobs for (45 per cent) had the highest representation, while women made up a meagre 5.8 per cent of jobs at the specialist level (5.8 per cent). Representation in those categories remain the same as last year, according to TAP’s 2024 Diversity in Tech Dashboard.
But broader diversity in the tech sector has taken a considerable blow since 2023, with representation of persons of colour dropping by 4.4 percentage points to 33.1 per cent.
The report found that the most significant proportion of people who self-identify as a person of colour were in the manufacturing sector (54 per cent), with the lowest being in the executive/corporate level (19 per cent) – those figures remain unchanged since 2023.
Entry-level jobs (46 per cent) had the highest representation of this group, with the lowest being the specialist level (16 per cent).
TAP Network CEO Stephanie Hollingshead said in Wednesday’s release that declining representation of people of colour and/or Black people is cause for concern, urging organizations to review recruitment/retention strategies.
Underrepresented groups like persons with disabilities slightly increased by one percentage point from 4.2 per cent compared with 2023, with the largest numbers coming from those working in human resources.
Representation of 2SLGBTQIA+ also increased annually by one percentage point to 9.9 per cent.
However, representation for Indigenous persons was the lowest (0.8 per cent) and even saw a decrease of 0.1 percentage points in the last year.
The tech sector experienced a mixed bag of improvements and declines over the last year – this was also the case for equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging (EDIB) policy building in the workplace.
Just over half (57 per cent) of the 181 organizations who provided information stated they ask employees for their accessibility needs, with close to half providing EDIB training and analyzing pay gaps.
However, only 18 per cent of senior leadership in these companies has set accountability to match these goals.
While companies made progress in developing inclusive policies, significant steps forward in diversity and pay equity remain painfully slow, said Hollingshead.
“Our 2024 findings serve as an urgent wake-up call for Canada's tech sector. We need decisive, bold action in 2025 to close these persistent representation and gender pay gaps in our sector."
The data for TAP Network’s 2024 Diversity in Tech Dashboard was compiled from their tech salary and total rewards survey, which includes data from 27,000 participants at 202 Canadian tech companies.
