Gendered firewalls: Intersectional barriers to women’s cybersecurity Careers in East Africa

Abstract

East Africa faces a critical paradox: despite nearly equal STEM graduation rates, women hold only 9-14% of cybersecurity positions, drastically diminishing the region's digital defensive capabilities. Current research ignores the unique, field-specific combination of institutional gatekeeping and sociocultural barriers that prevent women from entering and progressing in this high-stakes arena. This groundbreaking mixed-methods study investigates these impediments directly through a comprehensive analysis that includes a quantitative survey of 457 women in technology from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Rwanda, in-depth life-history interviews with 38 female cybersecurity professionals, and rigorous HR policy audits of 42 companies. Our findings suggest widespread entry hurdles, with 68% of respondents facing gendered assumptions that questioned their technical abilities. A serious mid-career retention dilemma exists, with 52% leaving owing to unfriendly work cultures, such as exclusion from critical debates and sexualized commentary during incident response. Critically, 89% of businesses lack gender-responsive incident response processes, disproportionately burdening working mothers who face rigid on-call schedules. Theoretically, this work integrates feminist organizational sociology into cybersecurity in a novel way, presenting it as a masculinized institution with interlocking biases. Urgent legislative imperatives include the implementation of gender-aware incident response structures with flexible rotations and explicit harassment reporting, as well as strategic retention quotas. This study, which focuses on women lived experiences, provides an effective blueprint for reforming cybersecurity cultures in East Africa, turning gendered firewalls into gateways for inclusive digital resilience and leadership.