Canada’s digital economy is booming, employing 2.4 million people in 2024 after a massive 51% surge in the past ten years. Yet, the benefits of this growth have not been shared equally, both in terms of access to opportunities and earnings. ICTC's research reveals a dual crisis in the barriers that stop women from entering tech, and an invisible ceiling that blocks those inside from climbing the ladder.
Women’s representation in the digital economy has barely moved despite years of growth
ICTC's recent Quarterly Digital Economy Pulse on the composition of workforce development in Canada’s digital economy shows that while women made up close to half of the total Canadian workforce, they accounted for only 32.6% of Canada's digital economy in 2024. Although Canada's tech sector has expanded considerably over the prior 20 years, its gender composition has only moved roughly two percentage points.
Women’s representation declines even more sharply at more senior levels. The low share of women in senior roles is visible across the broader economy but is even more apparent in the technology sector. Across private-sector businesses in Canada, women hold 44.7% of all management positions as compared to 37.4% of senior management roles. Within the ICT sector specifically, women’s representation in executive and senior management is just 9%.
The challenge for women’s representation in the digital economy contains two equally important gaps
A single data point of representation in the workforce can mask two entirely different workplace realities: one where few women enter, and another where many enter but few advance. This distinction is crucial to formulating an effective response, as solely improving entry may do nothing to shatter the glass ceiling once women are within their roles.
Compensation data supports this finding. According to Canada's Got Tech Talent: Diversity of Canada's Tech Workers, the gender pay gap in Canadian technology roles has widened rather than narrowed: according to the 2021 Canadian Census, men in these roles earned on average $20,000 more than women in the same occupations, up from a gap of $7,200 in 2016. Because compensation is directly tied to seniority, this widening gap proves that women remain concentrated in less senior roles even as their overall industry participation share holds steady.
The barriers behind this advancement gap – including hiring and promotion bias, caregiving penalties, and limited access to mentorship – operate after women have entered the tech sector as earlier ICTC research has shown. As a result, companies that rely solely on overall diversity numbers risk misdiagnosing the problem.
This gap is consequential for both the women it excludes and the sector itself. The digital economy is among the fastest-growing and most productive parts of the Canadian economy, and a workforce that does not draw in women proportionally forgoes both individual opportunity and the fuller talent base a growing digitally enabled economy depends on.
Closing both gaps requires measuring and acting at both stages
Achieving gender equity in Canada’s digital sector requires moving past one-size-fits-all solutions. Because women face distinct obstacles at both the entry point and the promotion stage, organizations and policymakers must deploy a multi-layered strategy that not only expands opportunity for women but also enables employers to draw on the fuller talent base the sector depends on. Recommendations from ICTC’s research include:
- Track representation at both levels. Headline diversity numbers and seniority breakdowns diagnose entirely different problems, and neither are substitutes for the other. Organizations that only monitor overall gender composition cannot identify where advancement stalls, while organizations that measure only their leadership teams cannot detect where advancement stalls.
- Align interventions with the specific issue. Attraction and recruitment programs fix pipeline access, whereas mentorship, sponsorship, and caregiver support drive career advancement. Both are necessary, and treating them interchangeably risks under-resourcing one while over-relying on the other.
- Use compensation data as a diagnostic tool rather than just an outcome. A widening pay gap over time may indicate where women are trapped within the organizational structure. Rather than just viewing it as a harm that warrants action, organizations should use it as an early warning system to identify precisely where advancement is breaking down.
Closing these gaps can broaden access to the sector’s opportunities, strengthen the talent available to Canadian employers, and improve Canada’s competitiveness in an increasingly digital global economy.
