Women in hi-tech R&D roles soar by 130% in last decade

• Published date: 08 March 2024
• Author: MAAYAN JAFFE-HOFFMAN
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

The report, prepared in collaboration with the Aaron Institute for Economic Policy at Reichman University, was released ahead of International Women's Day

It showed that 38% of women in the tech industry held R&D positions in 2023, up from 28% in 2013. Since 2014, 28,000 women have been added to the field of R&D.

More men also hold R&D roles. However, the growth was more moderate, the report showed – from 43.7% of men in R&D positions in 2014 to 53.5% in 2023.

When looking at the gender segmentation of each position, women still lag behind men. The relative share of women among all jobs in R&D increased by 0.3% from 23.1% in 2014 to 26.1% in 2023. This means that it would take until 2035 for women to fill around 30% of R&D positions and almost 50 years to achieve gender equality in R&D positions.

The report added that the proportion of women in hi-tech has stayed the same in the past few decades.

According to the criteria established by the Perlmutter Committee for Human Capital in High-Tech, there were about 561,000 female and male employees in hi-tech positions in Israel in 2023 – around a third of them women, mostly Jewish and non-ultra-Orthodox.

The role of Arab and ultra-Orthodox women

Only a tiny fraction of Arab...