Explore 2025 Compensation Trends Download the Report

Pay equity in European tech

Pay equity, representation, and women’s opportunities in the tech industry

Compensation Report

There’s more to the pay equity story than the gender pay gap

‘Equal pay for equal work’ is the core principle behind pay equity: employees who perform work of equal value should receive similar compensation for it.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the case across the European tech industry today.

Despite progress in closing the gender pay gap, it does still exist. What’s more, the tech industry today suffers from an even bigger problem: a severe lack of women in senior positions compared to men. This is the main driver of the gender pay gap discrepancies we see today, with only 21% of executive women compared to 79% of executive men.

We’ve analysed over 1000 companies and 300,000 datapoints to bring to you the most up-to-date, realistic view on pay equity today. That means breaking down what the “unadjusted” and “adjusted” gender pay gap looks like. It also means exploring the implication of representation across European tech industries, diving deep into how this varies across different countries, functions, and job levels.

Keep scrolling to explore insights from the 2024 report ↓

Compensation Report
Gender Pay Gap

Despite pay equity progress, European tech companies still have a gender pay gap

In European tech, the “unadjusted” gender pay gap is 25%. This is the figure generally reported in major headlines, representing the median earnings across all job functions, levels, and countries. It is designed to be a straightforward comparison of all men and women, without reflecting any differences in roles or other factors.

In comparison, the “adjusted” gender pay gap is 2.5% – meaning that the average man earns 2.5% more than the average woman for doing the same role, in the same country.

While this may seem like good news on the surface, it underscores a representation issue in the tech industry, highlighting that there are more women in lower paid, junior roles than in more higher-paid, senior roles.

Representation

Women are underrepresented in European tech, especially at the senior levels

The discrepancy between the industry’s unadjusted and adjusted gender pay gap highlights the crux of the pay equity problem: a lack of female representation, particularly in senior positions.

Ravio has found that female representation is below 50% across the majority of job levels, and that only 21% of C-suite positions are held by women. After diving deeper into why, Ravio discovered that male tech executives stay in their role 46% longer than female executives.

Hiring

Where there is a gender pay gap, it’s introduced at the point of hire

What can tech companies do to improve pay equity in their organisation? Ravio’s data shows there is a consistent problem with women being offered lower compensation than men at the point of hire, which is evident across multiple roles and points of entry.

This can be seen across roles, especially in Engineering. According to Ravio data, a male software engineering professional receives a new hire salary 3.3% higher than their female equivalent. Further, women receive similar rates of promotions and pay increases to men indicating that, once in an organisation, men and women are valued equally.

Country

Europe has a mixed leaderboard when it comes to pay equity

European countries vary significantly when it comes to pay equity. For some, there is a clear representation issue that is driving the discrepancy between the “unadjusted” pay gap and the “adjusted” pay gap. For others, there is a genuine pay equity issue, meaning that women are genuinely paid significantly lower than men for doing the same role.

This can be in part due to legislation. The UK for example has one of the worst unadjusted pay gaps at 31%, but one of the best adjusted pay gaps at 1.4%. With the highest proportion of women in senior positions (26%) compared to other countries, coupled with strong legislation, the UK is leading the way when it comes to pay equity.

Compensation Report

Read the full report

Download the PDF to get all the insights ↓

When downloading the report, you agree to our Terms of Use. Learn how we collect, use and share your data in our Privacy Policy.

Attract, retain, and motivate world class talent with Ravio

Ravio gives People & Reward leaders the highest confidence possible that they are comparing their total reward practices to real-time data that reflects today’s compensation market.