Every International Women's Day (IWD), the tech industry talks about talent pipelines, hiring targets and representation statistics. But while more women are getting into tech matters, it's only part of the story.
The theme for this year's IWD is Give To Gain, challenging organisations to consider what they are willing to give to drive real progress.
In tech, that shouldn't just be opportunity, it should also be the ability to influence. That means when women are in the room, asking whether they really have a say in the products and services being created.
Because in technology, power doesn't sit in job titles. It sits in decisions, design choices, what is prioritised, what gets the funding, and what ultimately goes to market. So are women really having that influence?
Where inclusion really fits in the product lifecycle
Inclusion needs to be baked into products during early research long before launch.
What does that look like? It's about who gets recruited for interviews and focus groups. Are you speaking to women across different life stages, income brackets and cultural contexts - or defaulting to whoever is easiest to reach? Are you testing assumptions about safety, financial control, time pressure, or caregiving responsibilities?
For example, if you're training an AI tool, the data used to shape defaults and testing automated recommendation behaviour across different user contexts is vital to ensuring that the tool doesn't quietly reinforce existing biases.
If certain perspectives aren't present in early research, they rarely reappear later (if at all). What doesn't get validated doesn't get prioritised.
Beyond early research, inclusion also has a vital role to play in journey mapping and service design.
Nobody experiences tech products in isolation. They're using them between meetings, on shared devices, late at night, while likely juggling other responsibilities. If those realities don't come up in mapping sessions, you risk designing for a 'default' user who feels suspiciously convenient, and rarely representative. It's often someone who looks and thinks like the majority in the room.
Prioritisation is where power shows up. Every product team works within constraints. There's always a deadline or technical debt, so there are always things that end up getting cut. Nobody sets out to exclude women; that would be obvious. Instead, it happens in what gets labelled as urgent, or what gets framed as niche. When women have real decision-making weight in the room, different things become non-negotiable.
Those meetings move fast. Without someone willing - and empowered - to say something isn't good enough, the product ships exactly as it is. When people compiling the roadmap share similar lived experiences, blind spots don't feel like blind spots.
That's why influence at this stage is vital. It's the difference between building products that work in theory and ones that work in real life.
Moving from practitioner to product influence
You don't have to run a product studio to influence what gets built. Women across research, design and delivery can meaningfully shape product and service decisions.
If you're a researcher, influence shows up in what you choose to surface. If you're a designer, it lives in whether you challenge a persona that feels too convenient. And if you're in delivery, it's in how feedback loops are structured.
It's daunting to raise the important questions if you're early in your career, especially if you're not the most senior voice in the room. Ensuring women have the authority to raise their concerns is just as important as getting them into tech departments in the first place.
Why influence matters more than headcount
Hiring more women is visible progress because it shows up in dashboards and LinkedIn profiles. Redistributing influence, though, is quieter - and more disruptive.
It's easy to add diversity to a team while keeping the core decision-making model intact. The same people still define success, the same people still control the budget, and the same instincts still win when trade-offs get uncomfortable.
The gap lies between participation and power. Headcount can coexist with unchanged power structures, but influence cannot.
Real influence means a product roadmap might shift because someone challenged the default user. It means a launch might slow down because a risk was taken seriously. Or, it means leaders might have to admit that a long-standing assumption was wrong.
Redistributing influence may feel inefficient at first as it introduces debate and slows decisions down. That's all harder than hiring and is why it matters.
When organisations give women genuine authority over product direction - not symbolic ownership, but real decision-making weight - it improves judgement. The addition of diverse perspectives adds friction. In product development, that's often what prevents blind spots from becoming failures.
Redefining what progress looks like
If Give To Gain means anything in tech, it shouldn't stop at mentorship programmes or recruitment drives. It should mean giving up the comfort of unchanged systems, and widening the circle of people whose instincts shape the roadmap.
Presence alone doesn't change technology, authority and influence do. The future of tech won't be shaped by who is simply invited into the room, but by those who are trusted to make the decisions.