In its 2016 predictions on leading high-growth industries, Deloitte Canada has highlighted one of the black marks in the tech industries: the lack of women working in the field.

The Deloitte Technology, Media and Telecom predictions are customarily a thorough examination of what innovative products will be hot with customers in a given year. But this year, Duncan Stewart, Deloitte Canada’s Director of TMT Research, and his colleagues have devoted about 4,000 words of the report to the problems facing women in the tech space. 

The report predicts that only 22 percent of information technology jobs in Canada will be held by women this year, lagging behind the 24 percent mark in the U.S. These levels are unlikely to change from 2015.

“With gender parity the goal, the solution will be complex and take time, decades even,” said Deloitte. “To get there, we need improvements to the education pipeline (only 25 percent of those studying computer science in Canada are women, down from 2009 levels of 27 percent); the recruiting and hiring process; retention rates; pay and the path to promotion.”  

One thing that the report highlights is that there is little indication that this problem is improving. There is limited data available for Canada, but the information shows that there has been little change the gender makeup of the Swedish or American tech industries in the past several years.

Stewart said in an interview that the problem is not only in attracting women to the industry but also in retaining them. Women are 45 percent more likely than men to leave an IT job after a year, and over five years are more than twice as likely to leave IT altogether.

Some problems – such as the fact that only one in four computer science students is female – are difficult for companies to correct, said Stewart. But others could be addressed quite quickly.

The Deloitte data shows that one of the big barriers to increasing the number of women in technology is the culture within the industry. Some 27 percent of female IT workers said they felt “discomfort” with the work environment, which is often oriented to male tastes. A high proportion said that they had received sexual advances.

Then there are problems of pay. In the U.S., a female web designer earns 79 cents for every dollar made by her male counterpart.

Stewart added that even the hiring process could change to encourage more women to apply for IT positions. For example, he showed a list of words that women find off-putting in job applications – words like “hierarchal” or “ninja”. If women see such words, they’re unlikely to apply for a position, so companies should avoid using them.

The Deloitte report did find some signs for hope. For example, it said that women hold 27 percent of the IT management positions in the U.S. – a higher proportion than women’s total representation across the whole IT industry. And there are definite role models now with such noted female C-level executives as Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer and Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg.

But overall, there is a lot of work to be done.

“There appears to be a problem in the industry, a hostile culture, and that has to improve,” said Stewart.