I thought long and hard about writing this piece, and to be completely honest, I very nearly didn’t. But I have noticed a pattern in the conversations I’ve been having with women who are leaving tech, and it’s impossible to ignore.
Whenever we talk about attrition, it is often put down to burnout. And that’s not surprising. More than two in five tech workers in the UK suffer from it, and it would be wrong to overlook the pressure, relentless pace, and scale of responsibility. However, based on the conversations I’ve been having, I am convinced that burnout isn’t the only answer.
The UK cyber sector continues to grow, yet businesses continue to report skills gaps and struggles finding talent. On one hand, we’re saying that we don’t have enough people, but on the other, we’re losing people.
And when you look a bit closer, there’s a pattern.
Women remain underrepresented in the workforce, with only 12% holding positions at senior levels, and we continue to lose them right when they become most valuable. That doesn’t feel like a simple burnout story.
Following recent networking and panel events where I have shared my lived experience working in the sector, what stood out to me were sentiments from women who had left like “I couldn’t see where my career was going” and “the culture just wasn’t something I wanted to stay in anymore”.
These women didn’t leave because they couldn’t cope, they left because they didn’t see the point anymore. When you look closely at how careers are structured in tech, the long hours, and what actually gets recognised in the workplace, it builds a very different picture. People are moving on, not because they can’t do the job, but because they no longer want that specific version of it.
If we are genuinely committed to solving the industry’s talent crisis, we have to look past the burnout narrative. We are bringing women into tech slowly but surely, however we are failing to build the roles, environments, and long-term career paths that make them want to stay.
Why are there less women in tech?
The data tells a consistent story. According to the BCS Gender Diversity in the Tech Sector Report 2025, women account for just 22% of all IT specialists in the UK. Similarly, when we look at cyber, the UK Government’s Cyber Security Skills Report 2025 highlights that women make up a mere 17% of the total workforce.
The common argument is that we simply need to inspire more young women to pursue STEM subjects. Yet data compiled by Women in Tech UK reveals that between 40,000 and 60,000 qualified women exit UK tech and digital roles annually. We don’t just have a recruitment issue, we have a retention issue. Interestingly, when quizzed on their motives, family caregiving was cited by only 3%. Instead, the primary drivers were lack of career growth and recognition.
Women are making a conscious decision to leave based on these friction points:
1. Policy-only flexibility
In tech, flexible working policies are often hidden in HR documents and don’t see the light of day. This creates an unsustainable all or nothing environment where choosing balance means sacrificing ambition.
2. Culture misalignment
High-performing individuals often find themselves navigating unhelpful workplace behaviours and corporate politics.
3. Lack of recognition
When women in tech hit an invisible ceiling despite delivering results, they feel that their hard work is undervalued.
4. Unclear progression pathways
Mid-career pathways in tech are often narrow, poorly defined, or have highly subjective criteria, making it difficult to navigate up the ladder.
5. Attractive external alternatives
Other sectors are actively designing frameworks that offer better structural flexibility, transparent progression, and good reward structures.
We are mislabelling attrition and it’s costing us talent. When a capable tech professional at the peak of her career potential hands in her resignation, it is not always burnout. She has likely assessed the traditional tech sector model against her life, looked at alternative options available in other sectors, and made the bold decision to take her skills elsewhere.
How to support women in tech
I didn’t come into tech with a mapped-out plan. I simply enjoyed solving complex problems. I wasn’t thinking about specific career paths or titles. I figured things out as I went and didn’t expect the industry to flex around me.
But the sector has changed, and I don’t believe that the all-or-nothing culture is one that people tolerate anymore. The women entering and navigating the workforce today use their feet. They expect flexibility, they are clear on what they want from their employers, and they possess a strong willingness to move if an environment does not fit their goals or work-life balance.
This shift typically occurs when women reach their mid-to-late 30s. This is when leadership expectations are escalating and life outside of the office demands more focus. People start making active choices about their future. The internal question shifts from “can I do this job?” to “does this career structure actually work for the life I want to build?”
If our industry continues to be tied to linear progression, increasing hours, and limited flexibility, it will continue to serve a very narrow demographic, and those that it doesn’t serve will leave.
To genuinely support and retain women in tech, organisations must move away from assuming people are breaking under pressure. When we label every exit as burnout, we treat it as a temporary workload problem. But when we recognise it as a conscious choice, the responsibility lies on leadership.
Retaining top talent requires us to hold leadership accountable for creating environments where value is recognised transparently. Ultimately, we have a retention problem, and sustainable growth depends on treating this as a priority.
Tech leaders are asking the wrong question and that’s exactly why nothing is changing. We need to stop asking why people are burning out, and start asking: does the way we have built careers in tech still work for the very people we want to keep?
