If you were to ask anyone working in India’s corporate sector to name the top leaders in tech industry, you are likely to hear a list dominated by men. This is not because women have not made their mark; it’s because our collective imagination has been shaped to see tech leadership as a male domain. From classrooms to boardrooms, social conditioning subtly but powerfully reinforces the idea that coding, tech innovations and executive decision-making are masculine pursuits. As a result, even the most accomplished women in tech are often overlooked, not for lack of merit, but because they don’t fit the stereotype we have been taught to expect.
Riding on a strong growth momentum, with revenues estimated to reach $283 bn, India’s tech industry has been growing from strength to strength. This growth comes in the wake of India steadily climbing the innovation index – impressively improving its rank from 81 to 39 in less than a decade. However, even as technology transforms the face of the Indian economy, the narrative seems somewhat incomplete because women are remarkably missing from this picture.
Currently, women’s workforce participation rate in India’s tech industry hovers just around 11% or 1.92 million to be precise. India’s much celebrated tech startup ecosystem isn’t very accommodative of women either. This under-representation in the tech workforce reflects a rather strange paradox because girls’ gross enrolment ratio in India has significantly improved not only at the school level but also in STEM courses – increasing from 38.4% in 2014-15 to 43%.
What is it then that stops women from ascending to leadership positions in India’s tech industry? Often, the reasons for these are deep and cut across, societal norms, allocation of family resources skewed towards the male child and women being the default primary caregivers in families often at the cost of their careers.
This highlights the need for an action-oriented approach that addresses this disparity in the early years of a woman’s life.
More often than not, girls are deprived of certain opportunities that are relevant for achieving professional success later in life. Patriarchal oppression and exclusionary power structures arrest the progress trajectory of girls and women. Those who manage to get degrees often find themselves lacking the confidence to enter the professional arena. This is generally due to lack of access to employability skills like the English language, digital skills and other relevant life skills. Economic vulnerability hits girls harder than boys.
This discrimination eventually mirrors in the form of skewed gender representation in various sectors, including tech. Having basic knowledge of English, enables women to take on international assignments in their profession, understand company finances better, build a global outlook, and provides them more flexibility in their career transitions and choices.
Driving change through language
English is the global language for science and technology. Proficiency in the same is, therefore, desirable for a career in tech industry. Majority of the textbooks, research articles, coding documentation, programming languages, online resources are in English. Gaining conceptual clarity demands a grasp over scientific vocabulary. And a language is best learnt, not in isolation, but in a circle of peers.
With that in the purview, British Council introduced the English Skills for Youth project. It supports young students especially women in developing their English and communication skills for the workplace by practicing with peers through English Practice Clubs. The project has now been extended to 16 Government Engineering colleges in Karnataka. 96 English Practice Clubs, facilitated by 143 peer leaders are also currently active in India.
Cross-cultural international collaborations are also being forged for designing policies on gender equality and gender mainstreaming. In fact, the India-UK Science & Technology collaboration has rapidly grown, with the joint research programme inching up from zero to close to £400 million.
The British Council’s EDGE (English and Digital for Girls’ Education) programme is tailored to enhance the English proficiency and digital skills of adolescent girls from socio-economically marginalised communities. Through self-access learning resources installed on a range of digital devices, it has empowered more than 1550 girls across 16 states in India by building their confidence, digital fluency, and communication skills that are essential for future careers in tech.
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to enable educators to integrate gender-responsive teaching practices are also conducted. Research shows that STEM curricula that is free from prejudices and stereotypes can go a long way in encouraging girls to pursue careers in tech. The Going Global Partnerships programme, spanning 120 institutions across the world, too, is catalysing gender equality in higher education systems by enabling access and tackling subject segregation, particularly in the area of STEM.
Creating a gender inclusive future
These initiatives are playing a crucial role in helping girls in developing skills that are, soon enough, going to become non-negotiable. The Future of Jobs Report 2025 anticipates AI and big data, networks and cybersecurity, and technological literacy, to be the three fastest-growing skills. The existing gender gap represents an opportunity that can be mined by preparing women to take on the roles of data scientists, machine learning engineers, security analysts, AI research scientists et al.
To trace the women missing from India’s tech revolution and to ensure their equal representation in future, demands a multi-dimensional approach. One that addresses the social, cultural, economic and institutional barriers with strategic action plans.
Stereotypes, gender related unconscious biases, and the ‘masculine default’ plaguing the space must be removed – from our mindsets and from the curricula. Equal opportunities for funding, recruitment, and career advancement must be accorded to women. An enabling ecosystem that provides training, mentoring, and networking opportunities must be created so that women opt for STEM education and enter STEM-related careers.
(The author is the Head of English and School Education for India at the British Council)
Published – July 23, 2025 12:33 pm IST
