Gender Balance: Women in Ukrainian IT

How many female private entrepreneurs are engaged in the IT sector in Ukraine, from which regions are they, what do they do exactly and where are their numbers growing the most? YouControl researched these questions.

The field of information technology in Ukraine is based mostly on private entrepreneur employees. In 2019, computer programming was the third-largest category among private entrepreneurs. By the end of the same year, the most substantial increase in private entrepreneurs’ quantity (almost 11%) was in this direction. However, is there a gender balance among these professionals? Can women compete efficiently with men in terms of numbers?

In general, women in the Ukrainian IT sector make up only 24% of the employee population at the moment. A third of them serve as junior specialists and only 12% as senior specialists (which is half the number of men). They most often come into the sector as developers, testers, designers, and so on. That is the data from the 2019 IT specialist profile from the resource Dou.ua, based on its survey.

Only upwards: the number of women in IT grows constantly

The total number of private entrepreneurs in Ukraine is growing, especially those working in IT. But the female portion not only follows these trends but sometimes even goes further. Thus, in 2019, compared to 2017, the number of female private entrepreneurs in IT increased by 62%. At the same time, the total number of micro-business representatives engaged in IT during this period grew by 47%. Compared to 2018, the number of self-employed women in IT also increased faster than the total quantity of employees (+24% versus + 19%).

Kyiv and business centres

Most women self-employed in IT worked in the capital, namely one-fourth. One can expect this for many reasons. Firstly, Kyiv, a business activity centre, attracts a lot of entrepreneurs. Secondly, about half of the IT companies were registered in Kyiv, according to the IT Ukraine Association and the Office of Effective Regulation research. Kharkiv, Dnipro, Lviv and Odesa also have a significant number of IT offices. Therefore, not surprisingly, Kharkiv, Lviv and Dnipropetrovsk regions took the next place in terms of the quantity of self-employed women.

There are more unexpected data in the geographic allocation of women in IT. The traditional business regions are in the lead in terms of their total number. But the picture is changing in terms of their increase. In 2019, compared to 2018, the largest number of female entrepreneurs was in most of the Western Ukraine regions:

• 43% in Volyn;
• 41% in Ivano-Frankivsk;
• 32% in the Ternopil region;
• 31% in Khmelnytsky.

In the Kyiv and Kharkiv regions, their number increased by 24%, in the Lviv region by 28%, in Dnipropetrovsk only by 20%. The Mykolayiv region has shown the weakest increase (only 9%). At the same time, in the occupied Crimea and Sevastopol, the number of women who were self-employed in IT decreased approximately 2% according to the registers.

Programming dominates

The majority of women self-employed in IT serve in the “Computer Programming” field. In 2019, their number turned out to be almost 60%. But few of them were engaged in “Management of computer equipment.” There are only 0.4% of the total of 44.3 thousand working in that area.

The “Computer Programming” category gained not only the largest number of women but also its most substantial growth. In 2019, compared to 2018, the increase of women almost reached 27%. The “Data processing, posting information on websites and related activities” category occupied second place (+23%), and “Publishing of other software” entered the third position (+22%).

Expert Group YouControl