Tech inclusion findings expose workforce barriers

The UK technology sector is still failing to reflect the breadth of the wider workforce, government findings have shown, as emerging technologies reshape skills, career pathways, and leadership opportunities.

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology has published findings from its call for evidence on building a future tech sector that works for everyone. The exercise was launched in March 2026 by the Women in Tech Taskforce and received 570 responses from across the sector, including employees, founders, senior leaders, charities, academics, students, and trainees.

The findings point to structural barriers affecting entry, retention, progression, and leadership in technology. DSIT said only 29% of tech employees, and 21% of senior tech role holders, are women or non-binary. It also cited evidence that only 9% of tech employees are from lower socio-economic backgrounds, compared with 29% in finance and 23% in law.

The report also records accounts of misconduct, harassment, and discrimination shared by respondents. Those experiences place culture and accountability alongside skills and pipeline issues, showing that inclusion in technology is not only a recruitment problem. It also depends on whether people can remain, progress, and lead once they enter the sector.

The call for evidence focused on the interventions needed to improve participation, progression, and leadership for women and underrepresented groups in tech. It also examined how emerging technologies are changing skills, roles, and career pathways, and what new barriers or opportunities those shifts create.

AI, automation, advanced connectivity, cyber security, quantum, engineering biology, and data-intensive systems are changing the work organisations need people to do. Some roles are becoming more technical, while others require hybrid judgement across product, regulation, data, risk, procurement, ethics, and operational change. Senior leaders who once treated technology as a specialist function are now expected to understand how digital systems affect customers, employees, resilience, and governance.

The findings sit alongside a wider skills challenge. The pressure created by technology disruption and weak learning pathways was examined in skills gap widens as work changes, which showed how quickly work is changing compared with the pace of retraining. DSIT’s evidence adds an inclusion dimension to the same problem. If access to emerging roles depends on prior networks, early exposure, unpaid experience, narrow recruitment routes, or workplace cultures that push people out, the tech skills gap becomes harder to close.

Technology roles are no longer confined to technology companies. Financial services, retail, manufacturing, healthcare, logistics, energy, media, professional services, and the public sector all need people who can build, buy, govern, and operate digital systems. Weakness in the tech pipeline therefore becomes a constraint on the wider economy, not only on software companies or digital start-ups.

Representation gaps can also affect product development. Teams building AI tools, customer platforms, cyber systems, health technology, workplace software, and public digital services make decisions that shape how those tools work in practice. A narrow talent base can reinforce blind spots in design, testing, accessibility, user experience, risk assessment, and deployment.

AI raises the stakes further as experimentation gives way to operational use. Research covered in AI agents outrun enterprise governance controls showed companies deploying AI agents into data, decisions, customer interactions, and financial activity faster than many governance systems can control them. That trend places greater weight on the judgement, breadth, and accountability of the people designing and overseeing enterprise technology.

Employers will be central to whether the findings lead to change. Education routes matter, but so do job descriptions, assessment criteria, promotion processes, flexible working, sponsorship, management training, pay transparency, returner programmes, apprenticeships, and the handling of misconduct. Companies that treat inclusion as a standalone HR initiative may struggle to connect it to workforce planning, product quality, risk, and commercial growth.

The report also challenges the assumption that technology opportunity will automatically widen as demand grows. Higher salaries and rapid hiring do not guarantee open access if candidates lack the right networks, credentials, career advice, or psychological safety. Emerging technologies can create new jobs, but they can also raise barriers if reskilling pathways are unclear or if automation removes entry-level tasks that once helped people learn.

Policy recommendations from the Women in Tech Taskforce will now be shaped by the evidence submitted. The most useful measures are likely to be those that connect schools, further education, universities, employers, investors, and procurement expectations. The sector needs more people entering technology, but it also needs clearer routes from entry-level roles into senior technical and commercial leadership.

The UK has a strong technology base, although the findings show that capability and inclusion are now linked strategic issues. A narrow pipeline limits growth, reduces resilience, and weakens the quality of technology deployment. As AI and automation reshape work, companies with broader routes into technical capability will be better placed to build products, manage risk, and develop future leadership.