London remains a top destination for women in STEM, but the cost of living continues to pose a challenge, according to a new study by CoworkingCafe.
As of March 2026, women make up 30.7% of STEM roles in London, and this significantly exceeds the national average of 25.3%.
The capital currently sits in fifth place for this metric, behind Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Glasgow, and is one of only a handful of cities where women make up more than 30% of the STEM workforce.
Balazs Szekely, a Senior Creative Writer with CoworkingCafe, authored the study and explained the factors driving female STEM employees to London, despite financial challenges.
He said: “London has an outsized concentration of fintech, AI and biotech employers, and the sheer volume of roles creates a pull that smaller cities can’t match.
“For many women at the earlier stages of their careers, that breadth of opportunity may outweigh affordability concerns.
“The cost problem usually bites later, once financial priorities shift, so London works best as a chapter in a woman’s STEM career, not necessarily the whole book.”
Crucially, London offers the highest median raw salary at £52,877 annually and remains among the top-paying cities after applying regional STEM-to-overall pay ratios to local women’s income.
However, rent cuts 58.2% of median full-time earnings from women in the capital, which is by far the highest figure of any major city in the study.
Second place Oxford sits at 51.7%. Meanwhile, Cambridge and Stevenage, which are the closest to London in terms of income, have a rent burden of 48.6% and 39%, respectively.
In addition, London’s 12.1 price-to-income multiple for house prices offers further challenges for the retention of women in the city’s STEM workforce.
Szekely added: “The headline salary looks impressive until you account for what it actually buys.
“London offers unmatched sector diversity but pairs that with the highest housing burden we measured.
“Over time, I’d expect to see more women build credentials in London, and then move to cities where those credentials buy a genuinely better quality of life.
“Edinburgh, Manchester and Glasgow are all well positioned to benefit from that.”
The gender pay gap remains another drawback for women in London’s STEM workforce, with female professionals earning 82.4p for every £1 earned by men.
This places the capital behind other cities in the study and well below leaders Edinburgh, where pay parity is close to equal.
While Szekely noted that factors such as career progression, childcare availability and transport costs must be explored in subsequent studies, London still has ground to cover to match better-performing cities.
As a result, the capital may increasingly serve as a stepping stone for women in STEM, rather than a long-term destination.
Join the discussion