Black Women in Tech: The Strides They Are Making Right Now

When we talk about Black women in technology, the conversation usually starts with a number, and it is usually a discouraging one. That number matters, and we will get to it. But if that is all we ever share, we miss the more important half of the story. Black women are not only underrepresented in tech. They are also building companies, leading major corporations, founding organizations, and creating the very spaces that are changing the numbers. This post is about both halves, because you need both to understand where things actually stand in 2026.

Let us start with the honest data, because real progress has to be measured against a real starting point. Women overall hold roughly 28 percent of jobs in science, technology, engineering, and math in the United States, up from just 8 percent in 1970, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That is real, decades-long progress. But inside that number, the picture gets sharper. In the United Kingdom, the professional body BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, has been tracking this closely. Their 2025 report found that Black women make up just 0.6 percent of IT specialists in the UK, less than one in a hundred, and a figure that has barely moved since they started measuring it in 2022. In the United States, studies of major tech companies consistently find Black women in the low single digits of the tech workforce, often around 2 to 3 percent, despite being roughly 7 percent of the working population.

The gap is not only about who gets hired. It is about what happens after. Research compiled by groups like Lean In and McKinsey, and reported by organizations such as the WomenTech Network, finds that Black women in tech are far more likely than their white colleagues to have to prove themselves repeatedly to earn the same respect, and a meaningful share report being paid less than peers in similar roles. Only about 5 percent of C-suite leaders in corporate America are women of color. And in the tech industry specifically, women leave at higher rates than men, citing a culture that too often feels unwelcoming. So the problem is not a myth. It is measurable, and it is persistent.

Now here is the part that too often gets left out. Alongside those numbers, Black women are doing some of the most exciting work in technology today, and they are doing it at every level. Consider leadership. As of 2025, Thasunda Brown Duckett is the CEO of TIAA, a Fortune 500 financial services company with tens of billions in revenue. She is one of only a handful of Black women in history to lead a Fortune 500 company. Toni Townes-Whitley led SAIC, a major technology and engineering firm, as CEO. These are not symbolic appointments. These are women running enormous, complex, technology-driven organizations, and their presence at that level opens a door that statistical data alone cannot open.

Then there are the founders and builders. Kimberly Bryant founded Black Girls CODE, an organization that has taught computer programming to thousands of girls of color across multiple countries since 2011. Aisha Bowe, a former NASA engineer, founded STEMBoard, an engineering and data analytics company, and raised funding to build LINGO, an education company that creates coding kits for kids. Janice Bryant Howroyd built ActOne Group into the first billion dollar company owned by a Black woman. Jamika Burge co founded blackcomputeHER, a nonprofit focused on supporting Black women and girls in computing. These are not exceptions to a rule. They are evidence of what happens when talent meets opportunity.

There is also a growing layer of organizations built specifically to support and connect Black women in tech. Groups like Black Women in Tech, based in the UK, and similar networks across North America, exist to do what the broader industry has been slow to do, which is to provide community, mentorship, visibility, and opportunity. The reason these organizations matter is grounded in research we have written about before. The role model effect is real and measurable. When a girl sees someone who shares her identity doing the work, her own belief that she can do it rises, and so does her persistence. Every Black woman who builds, leads, or teaches in tech makes it easier for the next one to imagine herself there.

So what should you take from all of this? First, that the gap is real and the numbers are still too low, and pretending otherwise does not help anyone. Second, that the gap is closing, slowly, in part because of the women we just named and thousands more like them who are less famous but no less important. And third, that the closing of the gap is not something that happens to us. It is something that gets built, person by person, organization by organization, workshop by workshop. That is exactly what we are doing at TechnovateHer, and it is exactly why representation is not an afterthought in our work. It is the work.

If you are a Black woman or girl reading this and you have ever been curious about technology, the data says the field is not yet built for you. The women in this post, and the community we are part of, are proof that it can be. You do not need to wait for the numbers to improve before you start. You can start now, with us, in a room where you are not the only one, where the facilitators look like you, and where the only requirement is curiosity. That is how strides get made. One person at a time, beginning with you.