Driving Change: The culture I’d build for tech tomorrow

Imagine a world where women would no longer have to justify their ambition and life choices.  

A recent study published by PeerJ shows that when a woman’s gender is identifiable on GitHub, her pull request acceptance drops by about 10%. So, when talking about the future of tech, one big question remains: where do we want to see women in tech tomorrow?  

How come we still haven’t succeeded in fostering a culture where everyone feels equally empowered to share their perspective? What’s holding us back? 

In this insightful piece, our CTO’s Chief of Staff, Virginie Lefebvre, takes us behind the scenes of today’s tech culture to better understand current patterns, identify persisting bias, and see what answers we may find there. 

If you had a magic wand, what would your ideal tech culture look like tomorrow?  

I’d build a culture where we women don’t have to constantly prove that we deserve to be in the room. Women’s input would be heard the first time around, and not only after someone else repeats it. Our skills, judgment, and life choices would be respected, assumed, and not questioned automatically. 

On a technical note, women wouldn’t be deemed as “less technical” and “less capable” of using the same tools as their male peers. An interesting study led by Harvard Business School shows that women are about 25% less likely than men to adopt generative AI tools, partly because they expect to be judged more harshly for it, as if they were cheating when using it.  

My ideal tech culture would be one where every journey, voice, and perspective is heard and seen as real added value.  

Where would you like to see women in tech in the next 5–10 years?  

In 5–10 years, I don’t just want to see more women in tech, but more women present at every level of tech; from entry roles to senior engineers and product leaders, all the way up to the top leadership that sets the technology and AI strategy.  

In my role as Chief of Staff to the CTO, I’m still one of the very few women in the room when we discuss our most strategic topics and I want the next generation to experience something very different. I want them to find it completely normal seeing women leading the hardest technical topics: data, AI, infrastructure, and platforms. 

Any idea on what still holds us back? 

Things are going in the right direction, but they’re not going as fast as we might think. Today, women are still less than one third of people in technical roles, and only about one in eight of the top leaders in those areas. In Criteo’s case, women held just 21.2% of technology roles and only 17.3% of technology manager roles in 2025, a clear reminder that we still have work to do. 

Criteo has set a goal to reach 26% women in tech by 2030. In my opinion, success doesn't lie in hitting that target only. It’s lies in making it possible for women to be fully present in the most strategic technical roles, including AI. 

What biases or systemic challenges persist still, inside or outside organizations?  

Inside organizations, women are often judged more harshly for using AI or other tools. A recent experiment cited by Harvard Business Review showed that female engineers who used AI to write code were rated about 9% less competent than male engineers, even when the code was identical. This is evidence of how persistent gender bias remains in our industry. 

Now, from a broader perspective, I’d say we must drive impact earlier in the pipeline starting with education and the rhetoric that perpetuates tech as a male dominant industry. International studies (UNESCO) show that women are about 25% less likely than men to have basic digital skills and four times less likely to have advanced programming skills. In France for instance, it starts very early in the process with the way we talk to girls about math, science or engineering; what we present as careers “for them” or not. These silent patterns quietly shape what occurs in tech roles later for women.  

That’s why initiatives like Women in Tech / Women meetups, early-career programs and Tech Together play an important role in progressively helping us change systemic foundations and unconscious patterns in the workplace. They also help rewrite the story we tell young girls and women about where they belong and what they can achieve. 

What are we still missing today to foster a tech culture built on true belonging for all? 

Embedding inclusion deep into the company's culture is important, but recognizing and rewarding this work properly is just as essential.  

Women in tech carry many initiatives like mentoring, onboarding, and DEI initiatives in general to raise awareness and this shouldn’t be treated as an invisible extra but be part of our performance objectives. Many of us dedicate their time to do a disproportionate share of this “invisible work” — supporting teams, onboarding newcomers, holding the culture — and yet it rarely appears in their performance reviews or promotion cases. Many articles are starting to point out this “glue work” pattern which, while vital for team health, is still not measured nor reflected into career progression.  

What should Criteo prioritize to set itself up as an example?  

I’d like Tech Together stories, including this Tech Tomorrow series, to be treated as a listening channel for leadership. What women share here about belonging, AI, and culture shouldn’t nurture just our employer brand but rather shape how we make our ways of working and our tech strategy evolve. 

In a moment where AI is tremendously reshaping how we work, these stories are a very concrete way to hear where women feel left out — of tools, projects, or decisions — and to adjust roadmaps, training, and leadership expectations accordingly.

A gap still exists and we must all partner to bridge it once and for all, turning inclusion into tangible action and progress for women everywhere.