Each quarter, we release our research on the demographic makeup of IT leadership, looking at race and sex by reviewing public company websites. The goal is to track how leadership representation changes over time.
For Q4 2025, we surveyed 300 companies, covering just over 4,100 IT leaders. The sample is evenly split between vendors and technology providers.
At a high level, the numbers remain consistent with what we’ve seen all year.
IT leadership is still overwhelmingly White and predominantly male.
In this quarter’s data, about 83 percent of IT leaders are White, and just over three percent are Black. Roughly four out of five IT leaders are men, with women representing just over 21 percent of leadership roles.
When we break this down by company type, the story doesn’t change much. Vendors and technology providers look remarkably similar in their leadership makeup. The composition shifts slightly, but not in any meaningful direction.
Where we do see some movement is by company size. Among publicly traded and Fortune 1000 companies, representation for women improves, landing in the upper twenties. That’s higher than the overall average — but still well short of parity. Racial representation, however, changes very little, staying within a few percentage points of the broader dataset.
Zooming out, this quarter fits squarely into the long-term pattern. Since the dataset expanded in late 2020, the composition of IT leadership has remained largely stable. Across 2024 and 2025, the trend lines are essentially flat.
The takeaway from the data is straightforward:
whatever movement occurred in earlier years has not continued.
The numbers are holding steady — not improving, and not meaningfully shifting.
That makes Q4 2025 another confirmation point in the series, keeping us on track for very little demographic change in IT leadership.
Why do we care?
This data matters because IT leadership determines how technology is used — and for the last five years, that leadership makeup hasn’t meaningfully changed. Stability brings consistency, but it also limits perspective. And in a period of rapid technological change, that tradeoff is worth paying attention to.
I’ll also answer that with other people’s research.
A recent report from Acronis reveals that a significant 82% of women in the technology sector believe that increasing the number of female leaders would enhance workplace culture.
The number of women in technology roles in the UK has risen by just 1% over the past year, according to research from BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT. Currently, women make up 22% of the total IT workforce, totaling 441,000 individuals. Despite this slight increase, the report highlights a concerning trend: the slow growth may hinder the UK’s ability to fully leverage artificial intelligence as outlined in the government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan.
And despite all that, Microsoft is discontinuing its annual diversity and inclusion report and has removed diversity initiatives from its employee performance reviews. This decision comes just months after President Donald Trump issued an executive order aimed at dismantling workforce diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
So I’ll ask again, Why Do We Care?
Because this data tells us something uncomfortable: the IT leadership pipeline has stalled.
For five years, across thousands of leaders and hundreds of companies, the composition hasn’t meaningfully changed. That’s not a blip. That’s equilibrium.
And equilibrium matters, because IT leadership doesn’t just reflect who holds titles — it shapes how technology decisions are made, what risks are prioritized, and which problems get surfaced early versus ignored.
Stability has benefits. Consistency reduces churn. Familiar leadership profiles often align with existing vendor ecosystems and operating models. But in a period defined by rapid shifts — AI adoption, security pressure, regulatory complexity — stability also narrows perspective.
What’s notable here is that scale doesn’t solve the problem. Publicly traded and Fortune 1000 companies show modest improvement in gender representation, but racial representation barely moves. That suggests this isn’t a pipeline issue alone — it’s a selection and promotion issue.
Now layer in external signals.
Research from Acronis shows that more than 80 percent of women in tech believe increased female leadership improves workplace culture. UK data shows women still represent only about 22 percent of the IT workforce, with growth so slow it’s now being flagged as a potential constraint on national AI ambitions.
And at the same time, major vendors are pulling back. Microsoft discontinuing its diversity reporting and removing DEI from performance reviews isn’t just a cultural shift — it’s a signal that accountability mechanisms are being relaxed.
Put together, this creates a real risk:
A leadership structure optimized for yesterday’s problems, governing tomorrow’s technology.
For IT service providers and vendors, this matters because leadership homogeneity doesn’t just affect fairness — it affects judgment. It influences how risk is assessed, how automation is trusted, how workforce impact is modeled, and how customer needs are interpreted.
The data doesn’t argue for quotas or programs.
It argues for awareness.
If leadership composition remains static while technology accelerates, the gap isn’t just demographic — it’s strategic. And that’s the part the industry can’t afford to ignore.