The technology sector is in the midst of a profound transformation. From AI to digital platforms to collaborative tools, innovation is reshaping the work we do while creating new pathways to leadership roles in the technology sector—especially for women.
As these opportunities emerge, radical changes are impacting tech careers across the board. Research by the World Economic Forum found that, among all fields, technology-related jobs will see the highest percentage growth and employer demand over the next five years, although the skills needed for those jobs are rapidly evolving: 39% of required competencies will be transformed by 2030.
Yet even as the landscape is transforming, women in tech are still facing barriers. McKinsey’s 2025 Women in the Workplace report found that women are still sponsored and promoted less frequently than men and are also still underrepresented on every rung of the corporate ladder, holding just 29% of C-suite roles. Women are gaining ground in technology entrepreneurship, but they still start fewer technology companies and have far less access to venture capital than men.
Amid these long-standing inequities, the current wave of technological change is creating new entry points and career routes. “This moment is creating opportunity for women,” says Amy Kelly, the founder and CEO of Miri, an AI-powered healthcare company. “We now have more pathways than ever to enter leadership roles.”
AI Is Changing What Work Looks Like, and What Skills Matter
Artificial intelligence is accelerating and streamlining routine tasks while increasing the value of judgment and creative thinking. That shift is changing not only who advances in the field, but what skills matter most. As AI catalyzes a broader redefinition of high-value work, it is also increasing the value of distinctly human abilities.
This shift has heightened the importance of what were once termed “soft skills,” including leadership, social influence, resilience, flexibility and other human-centered capabilities. Swetha Sunkara, a Dell Technologies director of product management, AI and cloud, says, “There’s now a big emphasis on strong cross-functional leadership, including communication skills, the ability to work in ambiguity and make strategic trade-offs. All of these are areas where women excel.”
Kelly agrees. “The most valuable career differentiators are increasingly strategic judgement, creativity and relationship building,” she says. “These skills are more coveted assets than they have ever been.”
Human-Centered Skills on the Rise
AI is also creating more opportunities for women to found their own technology companies, a traditionally male-dominated space, Kelly notes. “Women’s barrier to entry to founder or to leadership positions has historically been very high,” she says. “But now, you don’t need a couple million dollars and a tech team to found a tech company, or come up through conventional channels to rise to a leadership role. This will seriously shift the dynamics of who achieves what.”
While these developments are a boon for women in the technology workplace, there is also a note of complexity. In 2023 and 2024, women lagged substantially behind men on AI adoption in the workplace, though recent research by Deloitte found that the gap is closing rapidly—the number of women leveraging AI in their work tripled in 2025, outpacing men’s AI adoption rate.
That trend is expanding across the AI career spectrum. A World Economic Forum report found that the gender gap in AI talent has narrowed, signaling real movement in one of tech’s fastest-growing domains. Women’s participation in AI-related professions grew by 25% in 2025.
New Tools and Technologies Are Expanding Access and Career Continuity
New tools and technologies are also improving career traction for women balancing caregiving responsibilities and career demands. This evolution is sorely needed—data shows that 42% of women who leave the workforce do so because of caregiving responsibilities, draining talent from a sector that cannot afford to lose it.
Sunkara points to evolving meeting and transcription tools, along with asynchronous collaboration models, as especially valuable for women balancing caregiving and professional progression. “If I have to miss a meeting for my kids’ school event, or if the team in another time zone is having a conversation at five in the morning, I can look at this high-fidelity brain dump, and I’m caught up,” she says. Tools like these can help women maintain momentum at work by making it easier to stay informed and contribute across time zones.
Shanea Leven, the founder and CEO of Empromptu.AI, has lived through similar cycles—but never like the one we’re experiencing today. An alumnus of the heady early days at Google and eBay and the founder of multiple venture-backed technology companies, she notes that new tools and resources have reduced the barrier to entry for women who want to build new technologies and AI applications. “It’s never been easier to turn your expertise into a product, a company or a new direction,” she says.
Accessible learning channels, like online courses, digital communities and AI-assisted development tools, are breaking down barriers and helping more women translate their existing expertise into new technical products and applications. Together, these shifts are opening new pathways for women in technology innovation and entrepreneurship.
Leven expresses balanced optimism about the potential of these new tools and avenues that can support women in their careers. “There are more tools to supercharge your day-to-day, but you’re still expected to fill that time with work,” she says. “Balance is an unattainable standard. Equilibrium is the way to go. We should give ourselves more grace.”
While these new tools and access points offer real promise, alone, they are not enough to remedy the inequities within the technology sector. Distributed teams require stronger management practices, better collaboration tools and more deliberate inclusion, McKinsey’s “Women in the Workplace” report noted. To truly expand opportunity, they need to be paired with real support structures, clear advancement pathways and systems that help women stay connected and recognized.
Career Growth Areas: Governance, Trust and Responsible Tech
The future of technology leadership is not only about building tools and companies, but also about guiding how they are developed and used. Leven says women are a growing voice around both AI ethics and the practical ways the technology is showing up in daily work and consumer life. She urges women not to be intimidated by the moment. “Don’t be afraid of it, just be a part of it,” she says, encouraging them to think about their own expertise and how to connect it to emerging technologies.
Sunkara notes that women are especially well-positioned to lead in emerging areas such as AI ethics, trust, governance, policy and AI operations. As companies adopt AI and new generative technologies more broadly, the need for people who can address ethics, governance, safety and user impact is increasing.
“This is a space where women can lead,” Sunkara says. “In this AI gold rush, everyone is trying to sell shovels. We need more people selling safety goggles and ensuring that everyone is wearing them.” She notes that careers in the tech field are shifting away from coding and documentation toward intent design, prioritization and governance: precisely the kinds of roles where human judgment, collaboration and ethical oversight matter most.
At the same time, Leven says, building a career path or founding a business in the technology sphere no longer has to fit the startup stereotype: “You can do this in a way that fits within your lifestyle and builds community. It doesn’t have to be you alone in a dark basement,” she says.
Seeing more informal spaces for experimentation and connection, and tools that make it possible to move faster and at lower cost, she says women have more room to build companies, launch side ventures and create new career paths. In her view, that shift is opening new pathways into technology and entrepreneurship without the same rigid career expectations or gatekeeping that limited women’s progress in the past.
The Future of Tech Leadership
To thrive in a moment of rapid technological change, adaptability, curiosity and confidence are key. “With the pace at which everything is shifting, we need to adapt and be ready to learn and grow,” Sunkara says. “I’ve been able to make leaps forward in my career because I’ve had an eagerness to do those things.”
Leven echoes the sentiment. “We need to just be more confident,” she says. “Now, with AI in particular, is the time. The barrier to entry in this field is so low, and it’s such a new sector that it’s perfectly ok not to be an expert. Women should build the confidence to just dive in.”
That confidence matters because access alone will not remedy the broader structural gaps. Technology trends do not automatically create equity, but while new technologies do not automatically level the playing field for women, they are creating meaningful inroads. As AI changes which skills matter most, distributed work matures, and agentic tools and collaborative technologies continue to gain traction, new opportunities are emerging for women building and advancing careers in the tech sector.
