Past research has blamed the gender pay gap in IT on promotion barriers and workplace culture. But new Wharton research points to another major cause: access to new technologies, such as artificial intelligence.

A recent study from Wharton professors Prasanna (Sonny) Tambe and Tiantian Yang finds that learning and working with tools like AI and cloud systems has become one of the biggest drivers of pay in tech. Because fewer women work with these newer technologies, the gap in access is now helping to widen the gap in earnings.

“We already knew about promotion gaps and culture gaps,” said Yang, an assistant professor of management. “What we’re showing is that access to emerging technologies is now one of the biggest drivers of earnings in tech.”

The paper, published in the MIS Quarterly journal in June, finds that women are much less likely than men to apply for jobs that require expertise with emerging tech, and slightly less likely to hold them. Because these jobs pay more, that pattern widens the existing gender pay gap in the IT sector.

Emerging technologies are defined in the study as tools that came about in the past decade and have grown quickly in usage, such as AI, blockchain, and programming tools like Golang and Flutter.

Structural Barriers for Women in IT

Yang said that structural barriers, rather than any lack of ambition, are to blame for keeping women out of the lucrative tech jobs. “These are good jobs, they pay well,” she said. “The issue is not that women don’t want them.”

The issue is that many of the jobs are clustered in places where companies have invested heavily in IT, creating hubs of skilled workers. Women are often less able to move for work because many live in dual-career households where relocating could disrupt a spouse’s job, the study noted. So they often pass up on the high-paying IT roles.

Another structural barrier is that these jobs often require workers to constantly update their skills or switch roles to stay ahead, given how fast these technologies are evolving. That can mean long hours and frequent relocation, acting as a barrier to women with family commitments, since they often take on more childcare responsibilities.

As a result, many pass up these tech jobs, and the bigger paychecks that come with them. “Staying on the frontier of new technologies depends on learning by doing,” said Tambe, a Wharton professor of operations, information and decisions. “If you’re not in those jobs, you cannot pick up the latest skills. That is where the pay gaps start to grow.”

“If you’re not in those jobs, you cannot pick up the latest skills. That is where the pay gaps start to grow.”— Prasanna (Sonny) Tambe

Higher Pay for New Tech Skills

On average, people working with newer technologies earn about 6% more than those using older systems, ​​and the study suggests that this pay premium contributes to the gender gap in tech.

Having advanced tech skills gives workers more leverage to ask for higher pay when they change jobs. Because fewer women have these skills, they have less room to negotiate for better salaries, the study found.

The researchers tested whether workers earned more just because their companies paid higher wages overall. But even after adjusting for those company differences, the pay gap stayed about the same, showing that the extra pay comes from actually using new technologies.

The researchers studied millions of job applications for more than 20,000 tech roles at U.S. startups between 2015 and 2022, along with career and pay records for about 5,000 IT workers at big firms from 1997 to 2005. They found that job ads mentioning new technology skills attracted fewer female applicants, and they were also less likely to be in those jobs.

About 16% of women in the sample worked with emerging technologies, compared with roughly 17% of men. The results were the same even when the researchers compared men and women with the same types of jobs and similar backgrounds, showing that the gap is not explained by differences in qualifications.

“More reasonable hours and flexible work schedules would make a real difference.”— Tiantian Yang

How to Close the Gender Pay Gap in Tech

The research also highlights practical steps companies and policymakers can take to help more women enter and stay in tech jobs.

It said companies should offer childcare support, flexible hours and options like job sharing to make it easier for people to balance work and family. This would help more women take on jobs that use new technologies.

“More reasonable hours and flexible work schedules would make a real difference,” Yang said.

The study added that managers can also help by creating formal training programs that give women the same opportunities as men to learn and work with new technologies. Women often miss out on these skills because they are usually gained on the job, in roles that are harder for women to take.