vrouwelijk leiderschap IT-sector
Why does female talent leak out of IT leadership?
Fewer than 1 in 5 leadership positions in IT is held by a woman. The problem does not sit only in intake, but in the leaking pipeline: according to VATO, 30 to 35 per cent of women flow out again each year. Visibility, a safe team culture and concrete employment terms decide who stays.
MSP Late Night · 31 July 2026
Where is the real bottleneck: intake or retention?
The IT industry has two separate problems often thrown onto one pile. On the intake side, some applied IT courses have only 2 women among 50 students. On the retention side, women more often leave technical roles for project management or IT management. MSP owners who want to turn this around steer on three dials at once: visibility of female role models, merit-based selection without symbolic quotas, and team safety that makes a culture of direct feedback possible.
Why do career changers work better than graduates?
MSPs that train women within 3 weeks for first and second line support draw intake from other industries. Backgrounds range from psychology to airline pilot, and nobody in that kind of team comes from a classic IT course.
What keeps women 14 years at the same MSP?
Market-level pay for sales, a four-day week as an option, and direct matching on what someone needs to perform. Unlimited leave and permanent contracts score higher than generic inclusion programmes.
Do quotas help or do they damage quality?
Quotas speed things up when candidates are equally suitable, but stamp a label on women who would have been hired without one. Awareness, a platform and visible role models do more in the long run than a numerical obligation.
We have no problem keeping women. We have trouble getting them in.
Frequently asked questions
What is the leaking pipeline in the IT sector?
The leaking pipeline describes how women do enter IT roles, but leave again at an above-average rate before reaching a leadership position. According to research by VATO, the outflow of women is 30 to 35 per cent higher than of men. Causes range from team culture and safety to limited progression and the absence of female role models at higher levels.
Why do women apply less often for IT leadership roles?
Research shows women on average only apply when they meet 80 to 90 per cent of the job requirements, while men do so at around 55 per cent. In IT that widens the gap, because vacancies are often written technically. Rewriting vacancies and inviting people actively through a network measurably lowers that threshold.
How does AI change intake opportunities for women in IT?
AI lowers the weight of pure coding and systems administration skills and raises the weight of judgement, communication, advice and team composition. At the first large AI fairs in the Netherlands the share of women was visibly higher than at classic IT events. That opens intake through business, psychology and advisory backgrounds without a classic IT education.
Does a quota for women work in an MSP?
A quota speeds up change when the under-represented group is deliberately chosen among equally suitable candidates. The risk is stigma: capable women get the label of having been hired for the quota. MSP owners who want to avoid that combine selection on quality with active external visibility of female staff, so that the intake pool itself grows.
What can male MSP leaders do concretely?
The most important contribution is a safe team environment where direct feedback and mistakes are allowed. That means calibrating jokes and physical behaviour to the context, and not filling in assumptions for colleagues but asking directly. Men also help by giving female colleagues the floor in client conversations and sales moments instead of automatically speaking themselves.