UK Labour’s 2025 Budget has sparked the usual headlines about tax, spending and growth. For women in tech and STEM, the real question is: will any of this actually shift the gender imbalance in our sector?
On paper, the Budget introduces measures that could support women founders, technologists and early-career talent. But as with most broad, economy-wide policies, the impact on gender equity depends less on the high-level promises, more on how these measures are actually implemented and whether women are explicitly considered in that process.
This Budget touches on areas that could reshape careers, access and opportunity. But it also leaves major questions unanswered:
1. Stronger backing for innovation and R&D
The Government’s renewed commitment to R&D and emerging technologies is a positive step. Greater support for innovation accelerators, research fellowships, and the Women in Innovation Awards could develop more formalised routes into deep-tech roles for women who have traditionally been underrepresented.
But these initiatives are still relatively small compared to wider R&D spending. Without targeted criteria or even basic reporting on the gender split of recipients, it’s difficult to know whether women will actually benefit from this new funding or whether it will default to existing networks that already tend to be male-dominated.
The investment alone doesn’t move the pipeline unless there’s accountability, outreach, and transparent selection processes.
2. Improved capital pathways for women-led start-ups
The Budget extends schemes like EIS, VCT, and updated EMI to make investment more attractive for early-stage tech companies.
This should theoretically be good for women founders, particularly those in knowledge-intensive or deep-tech areas. In practice, we know that women-led teams still receive less than 2% of UK VC funding. Expanding the pot doesn’t automatically change who investors choose to fund.
The Rose Review highlights the structural nature of the issue: women make up just 6% of UK founders, yet even this small group receives disproportionately low investment compared to male-led teams.
Fintech founder Laura Ng summarises it well: “Without incentives or accountability, investors revert to what’s familiar, and the familiar founder profile in the UK is still male.”
What’s absent in this Budget is a gender-focused capital strategy. There are no incentives for funds that support diverse founding teams and no requirement for investors using EIS or VCT to report who they back.
There is still no dedicated gender-focused capital programme, no incentives for investors to back diverse founding teams, and no requirement for funds using these schemes to report who they are supporting. All these levers could meaningfully shift investor behaviour, but are absent from the Budget.
3. A chance to boost female representation in frontier Tech
AI, quantum, data engineering, and advanced computing are all highlighted as national growth priorities, and increased national investment of £2bn here could create pathways for women who want to shape the next wave of technology.
But the reality is that frontier tech is already where the gender gap is widest, without parallel investment in inclusive recruitment, mentorship, and leadership development we risk funnelling more resources into sectors where women remain underrepresented and under-promoted.
At the very least, there should be clarity on how women, older workers, returners, and people from non-traditional backgrounds will be supported into these roles.
4. £1.5bn+ skills investment could reshape the talent pipeline for women
Put together, the Growth & Skills Levy and the Youth Guarantee create more than £1.5bn of new skills funding, with considerable allocations for digital and engineering (£182m for engineering skills, £187m for digital skills, major packages for wider STEM training).
This is important because the UK can’t close the tech gender gap without strengthening the talent pipeline. Expanding access to funded training in engineering, digital skills and wider STEM subjects gives women and girls, particularly those from underrepresented or disadvantaged backgrounds, a clearer, more realistic pathway into high-growth tech careers. It also creates vital opportunities for women who want to upskill, retrain or re-enter the workforce through technical roles.
This gives the investment unusually strong potential to shift gender representation in the tech workforce over the long term.
UK Labour’s 2025 Budget gaps: a gender strategy that still isn't there
Despite the positive signals, this Budget still lacks a clear, gender-focused strategy for the tech sector. There is no dedicated fund for women founders, no specific targets for representation, and no clear roadmap for closing the gender gap in tech leadership or investment.
The government’s message is that innovation will power economic growth. But innovation doesn’t happen in a vacuum; it happens in teams. And women are still too often missing from the rooms where frontier tech decisions are being made
A foundation for shaping the future
The UK Labour’s 2025 Budget isn’t a silver bullet. But it does create a platform: investment, skills, and a growing national focus on tech. What it doesn’t offer, though, is a clear and intentional plan to close the gender gap. That will be in the hands of the investors, employers, universities, policy makers and, above all, the women-in-tech community itself.
There is momentum. There’s investment. And there’s a growing community ready to shape what comes next.
