At commercetools, we’re advancing gender equity with our ctDiversify initiative, which includes programs such as HERizon and Women in Tech Night Out. With 40% women in our workforce and a focus on inclusivity, we’re committed to tackling systemic barriers in tech. Learn how we're making a difference.
In 2024, we focused on promoting gender equality and equity at commercetools and within our broader ecosystem. As of Q4 2024, women make up around 40% of our global workforce — exceeding the tech industry average. That said, we recognize that increasing representation alone isn’t enough. Currently, women hold 32% of leadership roles, 24% of technical positions, and 33% of director-level and above roles. We know there’s still room for improvement in these areas.
According to one study, In the US, women represent 47% of the workforce, yet hold only 28% of IT-related roles. In the EU, this drops to 22%. Even more concerning, the percentage of women working in tech today (25%) is lower than it was in 1984 (35%). Alarmingly, half of all women in tech leave the industry by age 35, and the trend is even more pronounced for women of color and Latinas. These statistics highlight the urgency of our efforts to tackle the systemic issues that leave women feeling unsupported in the tech space.
We firmly believe that focusing on gender equality will help create advancement pathways for other underrepresented groups. This belief inspired the launch of our multi-year initiative, ctDiversify. The initiative accelerates our efforts to create a more equitable workplace for women, setting the stage for other underrepresented groups to follow in 2025 and beyond. Through ctDiversify, we’re tackling systemic issues by refining our leave processes, promoting discussions on inequality at our signature Women in Tech Night Out events and using data to track women’s representation from recruitment to offboarding. By addressing the needs of women, we’re opening up the space for broader conversations about inclusivity for all.
With a specific emphasis on women, this program has introduced a diversity of initiatives this year, including:
We launched our "Women in Tech Night Out" series with a pilot event in Berlin, where we hosted 43 commercetoolers and guests. The event featured a panel discussion led by myself, as well as Hauke Rahm, VP of Customer Success at commercetools, Adina Luetge, Head of Documentation at commercetools, and Anette Davids, co-founder of Women in Tech e.V. DACH. Attendees participated in insightful conversations about female advancement, received career advice and had the opportunity to network. Following the success of the Berlin event, we’re excited to bring the series to London, Valencia and Melbourne.
We introduced our first women’s leadership program, HERizon, focused on empowering our emerging female leaders. This six-month program combines mentoring, interactive learning days and collaborative peer projects, equipping participants with essential leadership skills. By fostering a supportive community, HERizon helps participants advance confidently in their careers.
We partnered with the MACH Alliance, a non-profit organization that advocates for and helps companies transition to a composable technology infrastructure, to promote gender equality within the Alliance’s globally growing community. Together, we developed and launched a proprietary DEIB scoring tool, which is offered for free to all MACH Alliance members. We are confident that the tool will help to drive positive change across the industry. And we are proud that commercetools is certified as “DEIB mature” based on the scoring tool results.
We signed the Women in MACH Manifesto following the “Women in MACH: Breaking Barriers, Building Futures” event in London. We are committed to the actions outlined in the manifesto and have already made progress on several initiatives. Going forward, we will focus on five key actions to further promote gender equality and equity:
We are conducting our first gender pay gap analysis in partnership with Willis Towers Watson, following the accreditation by Fair Pay Innovation Lab FPI Lab, two years ahead of the EU Pay Transparency Directive into the local law. This proactive step ensures transparency and fairness in our compensation practices. While we don’t expect to identify all systemic issues, we want to be ahead of the game and monitor our salary bandwidths closely.
We partnered with Code First Girls to train and hire six entry-level female developers for our technical teams. Through this partnership, we sponsored the career development of these women, helping them enter the tech industry. These new hires will be joining commercetools in November, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with Code First Girls, an organization that has trained more than 200,000 women in coding, transforming employability, diversity and local communities.
All of these initiatives are part of our larger commitment to supporting underrepresented groups and fostering a more inclusive environment. We will continue this focus through our multi-year ctDiversify project in 2025 and will keep you updated on our progress!
If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to our DEIB team.
Rabea Tamm, Global Director Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at commercetools Rabea is an advocate for lifelong learning and creating an equal and inclusive environment for all to thrive in. She has 15+ years of work experience in HR Consulting, Operations, Learning & Development and People Engagement functions.