Women in tech and AI in Europe
Can the region close its gender gap?

he tech industry around the world is in transition, with AI reshaping both organizations and the very nature of tech work. For Europe, the implications extend beyond productivity and innovation and touch economic growth, competitiveness, and inclusion. McKinsey analysis estimates that sovereign AI could add more than €480 billion in annual value to Europe’s economy by 2030. Yet the region continues to trail the United States, which is defining the pace and scale of global AI innovation.

Today, women could play a decisive role in strengthening Europe’s tech talent base, yet they face a triple threat from AI. First, they are underrepresented in tech: In our previous report on women in tech, we found that women accounted for 22 percent of employees in core tech roles. Today, according to McKinsey analysis, that share has fallen to 19 percent—an indication that efforts to address the persistent lack of representation have failed to make progress (see sidebar “About the research”). Second, many of the tech layoffs attributed to AI to date have been in roles disproportionately held by women (such as product and design), suggesting that without interventions, the share will drop even further. Finally, these developments come as the women who remain in tech are bumping up against a glass ceiling and contemplating leaving the industry altogether, with significant drops at the management and senior management levels (in software alone, the share of women falls 15 percentage points from the entry level to the C-level).

About the authors

This article is a collaborative effort by Anna Lieser, Henning Soller, Kristin Tuot, Lieven Van der Veken, Martina Gschwendtner, Melanie Krawina, and Sven Blumberg, representing views from McKinsey Technology and QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey.