By Thulani Dube
The rapid acceleration of artificial intelligence, automation, data driven decision-making and digital platforms is fundamentally changing the nature of leadership. Technology is no longer confined to specialist departments. It is reshaping strategy, operating models, customer experiences, workforce structures and the very definition of organisational competitiveness.
Within this transformation lies an important leadership question of who gets to shape the future as well as whose perspectives will be represented when that future is designed.
Women are increasingly occupying influential positions across technology, business, academia, government and entrepreneurship. Yet their progress continues to occur against structural challenges that have historically limited access to leadership. This is particularly prevalent within STEM and technology intensive sectors. The contemporary leadership environment is therefore characterised by a paradox in which women are making measurable advances in skills, leadership and technological participation, while significant barriers remain in the pathway to the highest levels of influence.
In addition, the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2025 indicated that women account for 28.1% of top management positions, up from 25.7% in 2015. This progress, however, has slowed. In STEM, the gap is more pronounced as women represent approximately 28% of the STEM workforce, while their representation at STEM C-suite level is only 12.2%. These figures demonstrate that the challenge is no longer simply about encouraging women to enter the workplace. It is about ensuring that they can progress, influence strategic decisions and lead the institutions developing the technologies that will define the future.
Leadership that builds the pipeline of skills for the future
The work of Zandile Mkhwanazi, Founder and CEO of GirlCode, illustrates how this challenge is increasingly being addressed through leadership that builds the pipeline rather than simply navigating it. Through GirlCode, she has helped equip more than 80 000 girls and women with technology and coding skills, while her work through GirlCode Talent extends this focus towards connecting women in STEM with employment and career opportunities. Her leadership demonstrates that advancing women in technology is not only about increasing representation at the top but also about deliberately creating the skills, the access and pathways that enable the next generation to reach those positions.
Challenging structural and cultural barriers
Women entering leadership have historically had to navigate a complex combination of structural and cultural barriers. These have included gender stereotypes, unequal access to influential networks, unconscious bias in recruitment and promotion, limited representation in senior technology roles, unequal caregiving expectations and the persistent expectation that women must demonstrate competence repeatedly before being afforded the same level of authority.
The proverbial leadership pipeline has consequently not always functioned as a meritocratic progression. Women may enter organisations in significant numbers but become progressively underrepresented as seniority increases. This phenomenon is particularly evident in technology, where the movement from entry level roles to executive leadership remains disproportionately difficult. The issue is increasingly being understood as a systemic rather than individual problem. Women are not necessarily lacking ambition, qualifications or leadership capability, rather, organisational systems can determine who receives the opportunities, sponsorship, high visibility assignments and strategic exposure necessary to progress.
The response emerging among successful women leaders is therefore not simply to adapt to existing leadership structures. Increasingly, women are helping to reshape those structures. This includes building professional networks, developing technological fluency, seeking sponsorship rather than relying exclusively on mentorship, creating entrepreneurial pathways, establishing communities of practice and most importantly, using leadership positions to develop other women. The result is a gradual transition from women being positioned as participants in transformation to becoming architects of transformation.
Creating networks and ecosystems that support access to skills and innovation
The work of Naadiya Moosajee, civil engineer and co-founder of WomHub, illustrates this shift. She has worked across Africa and internationally to expand access to skills, entrepreneurship, innovation and leadership opportunities for women in STEM. Her involvement in venture capital investing in women led technology businesses further demonstrates the importance of moving beyond developing talent to creating the networks, capital and ecosystems through which that talent can translate into influence and enterprise.
What the recent Africa Tech Week Awards hosted in Cape town have shown is that the contemporary technology leader does not necessarily need to be a programmer, data scientist or artificial intelligence specialist. However, technological literacy is rapidly becoming an essential component of executive competence. Artificial intelligence is already influencing recruitment, marketing, financial analysis, customer engagement, productivity and decision making. The World Economic Forum reports that 86% of employers expect AI and information processing technologies to transform their businesses by 2030, while 77% anticipate using reskilling and upskilling to prepare their workforces for this transition. This creates an important opportunity for women leaders.
Rather than viewing technology as the exclusive domain of technical specialists, women in leadership are increasingly able to position themselves at the intersection of technology, strategy, people and organisational transformation. Krista Davidson, Executive Director at Injini, Africa’s EdTech accelerator, provides a relevant example of this approach. Her work sits at the intersection of technology, education, entrepreneurship and impact while demonstrating how technology leadership can extend beyond technical development to building programmes, partnerships and teams that enable technology driven solutions to address real societal and economic challenges.
This intersection is particularly powerful because technology implementation rarely succeeds on technical capability alone. It requires leaders who can communicate change, manage resistance, interpret data, understand organisational culture and translate complex technological possibilities into meaningful business outcomes. The future therefore belongs neither exclusively to technologists nor traditional executives. It belongs increasingly to technology literate leaders who can connect innovation with people, purpose and performance.
AI and emerging technologies – addressing new barriers
Technology is also changing the nature of the barriers women face. Some traditional barriers remain, but new ones are emerging. Artificial intelligence, for example, creates both opportunities and risks. Women are acquiring AI skills at an increasing rate and the gender gap in AI talent has narrowed across many economies according to the World Economic Forum. Yet women remain disproportionately represented in occupations more exposed to disruption and underrepresented in many of the roles shaping AI systems. Women cannot simply be prepared to use technology. They must increasingly be positioned to design, govern, evaluate and lead it. A workforce in which women primarily consume technology while men disproportionately determine its architecture, governance and strategic application risks reproducing existing inequalities through new systems. Scholar and researcher Zinhle Novazi’s work demonstrates the importance of women occupying precisely these decision making spaces. As a lawyer, technology and international trade finance lecturer and researcher examining automated decision making in financial services, her work brings together law, data protection, artificial intelligence and consumer protection. This intersection illustrates how women can contribute not only to the adoption of emerging technologies, but to the frameworks that determine how those technologies are governed and their impact on society.
Gender responsive technology leadership therefore requires women to participate in decisions about data, algorithms, AI governance, cybersecurity, digital policy, automation and the future design of work. This leadership places a firm emphasis on the importance of inclusive, safe and trustworthy AI alongside greater support for women in AI leadership and entrepreneurship.
The new face of the contemporary technology leader
The traditional image of the technology leader has often been associated with technical authority, individual achievement, competitiveness and decisiveness. The future demands a broader definition. Effective leadership in a rapidly changing environment requires intellectual curiosity, adaptability, emotional intelligence, ethical judgement, collaboration and the capacity to operate without complete certainty. These capabilities are not inherently feminine or masculine. However, women leaders have an opportunity to challenge the assumption that authority must always be demonstrated through traditionally masculine leadership behaviours.
The contemporary leader can be decisive without being authoritarian, collaborative without being indecisive, empathetic without sacrificing accountability and ambitious without adopting an unnecessarily competitive leadership style. This broader leadership model is increasingly relevant in technology environments where successful transformation depends on multidisciplinary collaboration.
The most effective technology initiatives often bring together people from technology, finance, human resources, marketing, operations, academia, government and civil society. Leadership consequently becomes less about possessing the most technical knowledge and more about connecting different forms of knowledge around a shared objective.
Redefining career progression for women
Women who have progressed into leadership have often had to develop a particularly strong capacity for adaptability. Career trajectories are no longer necessarily linear. Women are more likely than men to experience career breaks. They are also more likely to spend longer periods away from work on average, with caregiving responsibilities being a significant factor. This makes traditional definitions of career progression increasingly inadequate. A career interruption should not automatically translate into a leadership penalty. As work becomes more fluid, organisations have an opportunity to recognise diverse career pathways, including lateral moves, entrepreneurship, portfolio careers, reskilling periods and re-entry after career breaks. This should not merely be viewed as a gender equity intervention but a talent strategy. Organisations that continue to equate leadership potential with uninterrupted career progression risk excluding experienced professionals whose capabilities have developed through different forms of work and life experience.
The value of sponsorship for women in tech
One of the most important developments in women’s leadership is the movement from passive representation to active sponsorship. Mentorship provides advice, guidance and encouragement. Sponsorship goes further: sponsors advocate for individuals, create access to opportunities and use their influence to accelerate career progression.
For women in technology, sponsorship can be particularly important because senior technology environments remain disproportionately male. When leadership teams are predominantly male, informal networks can unintentionally reproduce themselves. Breaking this cycle requires deliberate organisational action.
Women need access to strategic projects, executive exposure, international opportunities, technology transformation initiatives and decision making forums. They also need leaders, both women and men, who actively identify emerging female talent and create pathways into senior positions. Importantly, women who reach leadership positions increasingly have a responsibility to become sponsors themselves. The objective should not simply be individual advancement. It should be the creation of a stronger leadership pipeline.
Baratang Miya’s career and mentorship initiatives illustrate the value of building leadership across different contexts. From founding GirlHype, an initiative focused on advancing digital literacy and participation among women and young people, to leadership roles in AI and digital public infrastructure, her trajectory demonstrates how experience across entrepreneurship, technology, organisational strategy and policy can accumulate into a broader form of leadership capability. A capability that was translated to talent development across different industries.
The most significant opportunity for women in technology leadership is not simply to occupy existing leadership positions. It is to influence what leadership and technology will become. The technology driven organisation of the future will require leaders capable of navigating several tensions simultaneously
The future of leadership
The future of leadership will ultimately be determined by the ability of organisations to move beyond representation towards genuine participation, influence and shared responsibility. Women cannot be expected merely to enter technology driven environments designed without them. They must be empowered to shape the technologies, policies, cultures and institutions that will define those environments.
This requires a fundamental shift in how leadership potential is identified and developed. Organisations must look beyond traditional career trajectories and recognise capability in its broader forms such as technological curiosity, strategic thinking, resilience, creativity, adaptability, ethical judgement as well as the ability to mobilise people around a shared purpose. Leadership pipelines must become intentional rather than incidental, with sponsorship, access to strategic opportunities, continuous learning and meaningful representation embedded into organisational practice and culture.
For women already occupying leadership positions, the responsibility extends beyond personal achievement. Their most enduring contribution may be measured by the leaders they develop, the systems they change and the opportunities they create for those who follow. Leadership becomes transformational when success is no longer defined by being the exception, but by making it increasingly possible for others to succeed.
The leaders who will define the next era will not necessarily be those who know the most about technology. They will be those who understand what technology makes possible, recognise what it makes necessary and possess the courage to ensure that progress remains inclusive, ethical and most importantly human centred.
