Dr. Tarika Barrett, CEO of Girls Who Code, has issued a stark warning to the tech industry: while nearly 70% of teen girls express interest in pursuing cybersecurity careers, the vast majority abandon those ambitions before ever entering the field, a missed opportunity that could help close a global workforce shortage of 4.7 million professionals.
In an opinion piece published in Fortune magazine, Barrett called for urgent investment in early-career pathways for girls and young women, emphasizing that interest in computer science and cybersecurity peaks around age 16 before dropping dramatically.
“Our strongest defense will require both A.I. tools and human judgment,” Barrett wrote. “That means building an inclusive, better-prepared, and more representative workforce, on hiring and promotion practices that do not filter women out, on pathways that open well before college, and on educators who show students the full breadth of this field”.
a national survey of more than 2,000 U.S. teens ages 13–18, found that while 70% of teen girls report moderate to high interest in cybersecurity, most never take concrete steps toward a career in the field.
The urgency of her message is underscored by a series of recent high-profile cyberattacks, including the hack of the Canvas learning management system, used by approximately 40% of U.S. universities, that exposed student names, email addresses, and personal communications. Meanwhile, Google’s Threat Intelligence Group disclosed that criminal hackers had used an AI model to discover and weaponize a previously unknown software flaw with the potential for “a mass vulnerability exploitation operation”.
Research from Girls Who Code, based on a national survey of more than 2,000 U.S. teens ages 13–18, found that while 70% of teen girls report moderate to high interest in cybersecurity, most never take concrete steps toward a career in the field. The study identified three primary deterrents: lack of confidence in their abilities, limited exposure to what the field actually involves, and little awareness of the range of careers cybersecurity offers.
“You can’t be what you can’t see, and right now, girls aren’t seeing themselves in cybersecurity,” Barrett has previously said.
Currently, women make up less than a quarter around 22% of the global cybersecurity workforce, and representation drops sharply at senior leadership levels. In the UK, women account for just 17% of the cyber workforce, falling to 12% in senior positions compared to 48% representation in the wider workforce.
The global cybersecurity workforce gap has reached 4.7 million unfilled roles, according to the ISC2 Cybersecurity Workforce Study and the 2025 Fortinet Cybersecurity Skills Gap Report. Nearly nine out of ten organizations experienced a cyber breach in 2024, with more than half reporting damages exceeding $1 million. The shortage has been called a “risk multiplier” as attackers increasingly deploy automation and AI to scale their efforts.
Barrett argues that tapping into the massive pool of interested teenage girls is one of the most underutilized solutions to the crisis. Research shows that teens are 16 times more likely to learn about cybersecurity careers through out-of-school programs than through traditional classrooms.
“The deeper question is who is defending against them,” Barrett wrote, referencing the growing frequency and sophistication of cyberattacks. “If the people building and protecting our systems do not reflect the people who rely on them, those systems will be weaker for it”.
As the 2026 school year progresses and cybersecurity threats continue to evolve, industry leaders and educators face a critical choice: invest in early intervention to capture the interest of millions of teenage girls, or watch the global workforce gap widen further.
“Seventy percent of teen girls already say they are interested,” Barrett concluded. “Our job is to make sure the door is open by the time they get there”.
Research by Women in Cybersecurity demonstrates that women in the field tend to outperform their male peers in communication, coordination, and risk evaluation, core capabilities in a profession that depends on technical knowledge, judgment, and collaboration. Companies that adopt panel-based promotion decisions, structured mentoring, and internal skills profiles have increased the number of women in management by as much as 20%.
