Why mid‑career women are still leaving tech and what HR can do about it

Coinciding with International Women’s Day, HR leaders across the tech and cybersecurity sectors are being confronted with a familiar paradox: more women are entering the field, yet too many are still disappearing before they reach senior leadership.

Drawing on insights from Nicole Ivory, chief people officer at xAmplify; Rachel Jin, chief platform and business officer at Trend Micro; and Courtney Guss, director of crisis management at Semperis, a clear message emerges: the barriers holding women back in tech are less about entry, and far more about culture, systems and how we define “talent” in an AI‑driven, cyber‑exposed world.

The quiet toll of mid‑career

The most fragile point in the pipeline isn’t entry level – it’s mid‑career.

Ivory pointed out that women rarely exit tech because they’ve become less capable or less ambitious. Instead, it’s “because the pressure quietly builds over time.” Mid‑career often collides with bigger leadership roles at work and rising complexity outside it – caring responsibilities, family, and the sheer weight of life admin.

At the same time, women at this stage are frequently shouldering invisible leadership: mentoring junior staff, carrying team culture, smoothing conflict, onboarding new hires. It is essential work – but it is not always what is formally counted when salary and promotion decisions are made. Over time, this misalignment breeds fatigue and disillusionment.

For HR leaders, this is a red flag. Retention strategies that focus only on pay or hybrid work risk missing the deeper issue: whether women feel they can progress without having to continually “overperform just to stand still,” and whether the non‑glamorous but critical work they do is explicitly recognised and rewarded.

Progression is not a program – it’s a system

Ivory is blunt that there is no single initiative that will “fix” progression for women in tech. What actually shifts outcomes is a system built on three pillars: stretch, clarity and belonging.

Stretch: Are women consistently given meaningful opportunities that matter to the business – not just the “safe” or operational work? Do they get ownership of high‑visibility projects, client‑facing responsibilities, or new product lines, or do those chances still default to a familiar few?

Clarity: Do people clearly understand what “good” looks like, how promotion decisions are made, and which skills matter next? Regular development conversations and transparent criteria turn advancement from a mystery into an achievable path. Without that, ambitious women can waste energy trying to read the room instead of building capabilities.

Belonging: Perhaps the most underestimated factor. If a woman spends her days quietly wondering whether she fits in, whether she’s being taken seriously, or whether she’s “earned” her place at the table, her cognitive load rises and her appetite to stay falls. Psychological safety – being able to ask the “dumb” question, push back, or admit a mistake without penalty – is not a soft concept. It’s a pre‑requisite for growth.

For HR, this means moving beyond women’s leadership programs as a standalone solution and interrogating the everyday mechanics of progression: who gets tapped on the shoulder, who gets air‑time in meetings, who gets sponsored behind closed doors.

Culture is built in moments, not memos

All three leaders agree: culture doesn’t shift because a statement went out on Slack for International Women’s Day.

Ivory emphasised that managers are the real culture carriers. The way they run a meeting, whose ideas they ask for, how they respond when someone makes a mistake, and whether they close the day with a simple “thank you” has an outsized impact on whether people feel safe and valued.

She encouraged leaders to focus on “inflection points” in employees’ experiences – first week on the job, first major project, return from parental leave, or navigating a personal crisis alongside work. These are the moments people remember, and they can either cement loyalty or quietly push someone to start looking elsewhere.

For HR leaders, this is a call to double down on manager capability: coaching leaders not only on performance management and compliance, but on how to create trust in the everyday. Culture programs that sit in HR will always be limited if the mid‑level leader experience is inconsistent.

Cybersecurity, AI and the problem with “non‑traditional” women

In cybersecurity specifically, the framing of women’s careers is increasingly out of step with the reality of the work.

Guss notes that while women now make up a growing share of the cyber workforce, they are still less than a quarter of it globally. Much of the industry commentary, she argues, still centres on male‑dominated environments and pay gaps, while describing many women as coming from “non‑traditional” backgrounds – as if they are the exception to a technical norm.

She sees this as outdated. Cybersecurity “is no longer an IT problem alone – it is a business risk, an operational resilience challenge, and in some cases, a matter of national security.” As the function has matured, so too should our definition of a “cyber” skillset.

From her perspective, people who bring strong business, risk and operational capabilities are not a nice‑to‑have – they are essential complements to technical expertise. Women who arrive via risk, operations, legal, communications or other disciplines often bring different perspectives and highly collaborative, systems‑thinking approaches. These are exactly the capabilities needed to manage complex threat environments and coordinate responses across the business.

For HR, the implication is clear: recruitment, job descriptions and promotion frameworks that still privilege narrow, linear technical pathways risk shutting out the very talent needed to build resilient programs. Expanding the definition of what a cyber career looks like – and stopping the use of “non‑traditional” as a backhanded compliment – will be key to attracting and retaining more women.

AI, cyber risk and who gets a seat at the table

Jin underscored that diversity in tech and cyber is no longer only an equity question – it is now a governance and resilience imperative.

As AI systems are woven into core business, she argues they must be treated as critical infrastructure. The threat landscape is growing more complex, and cyber risk has become an explicit business risk discussed at board level. In that context, “diverse representation on our boards and executive positions is needed to drive an innovative collaboration.”

In practice, that means boards and executive teams that understand security, AI ethics, regulation, business continuity and human behaviour – and that reflect the diversity of the markets and communities they serve. Homogenous leadership teams, however technically proficient, will have blind spots around real‑world use, misuse and impact.

Jin would like to see industry and government working more closely to address systemic barriers and biases that hold back equal representation and to build the capability of women in this era of AI disruption. For HR, that means engaging externally as well as internally: partnering on scholarships, leadership programs, and policy initiatives that broaden the funnel.

The cost of losing women – and the opportunity ahead

Ivory drove home that tech skills are in short supply and losing experienced women mid‑career is not just an inclusion issue – it’s a hard business problem. Every departure is lost domain expertise, lost customer insight and a considerable cost to rebuild capability.

At the same time, she sees reasons for optimism. Women’s overall participation in tech has risen; more young women are choosing STEM subjects and starting technology careers than a decade ago. Critically, the conversation inside organisations has become more mature. Leaders are paying closer attention to how promotions are decided, how pay equity is monitored, and how inclusive leadership is developed. Change is still gradual and uneven, but momentum is building.

For HR leaders marking International Women’s Day, the challenge is to convert sentiment into structural progress. That means:

• Designing roles and workloads that are ambitious but sustainable, with flexibility that goes beyond location to how outcomes are measured

• Making invisible labour – mentoring, culture‑building, informal leadership – visible in performance and promotion decisions

• Equipping managers to create psychological safety and belonging in the everyday, especially at critical career and life inflection points

• Rethinking career paths in cyber and AI‑adjacent roles, valuing transferable skills and strategic thinking alongside deep technical expertise

• Championing diverse representation not just in junior talent pipelines, but in executive and board roles where cyber, AI and business risk now intersect

If International Women’s Day is to be more than a moment on the calendar for the tech sector, it must be a catalyst for these kinds of systemic shifts. The women already in your organisation are not a pipeline problem to be solved – they are a competitive advantage to be protected, empowered and heard.