Given that today’s International Women’s Day and all, one might think that some of the world’s more prominent tech companies would take the opportunity to highlight whatever it is they’re doing to promote women’s rights in the workplace. But not so with Microsoft and Google, both of whom have apparently refused to disclose how many female members of staff they employ.

The question was posed to them by UK Labor MP Chi Onwurah, on the day in which the world collectively celebrates the advancements made by women in areas such as politics, equality, education and employment.

Given that Microsoft and Google are at the cutting edge of all things tech, one would think that these two companies would want to take a leading role in the promotion of women’s equality, particularly when it comes to the workplace. But out of the ten technology and engineering firms surveyed by Onwurah, the two tech firms were the only respondents that refused to answer any questions relating to their female staff numbers.

Both companies cited “confidentiality” as the reason for their refusal to hand over any data. But could it be that they’re just attempting to save face because the real reason is they haven’t actually made much progress in reversing one of the world’s most male-dominated industries?

Onwurah certainly seems to think so, and she didn’t mince her words with her critical assessment of the two companies:

“That suggests that either Google and Microsoft do not know how to aggregate and anonymize such information, in which case one might be legitimately concerned about their involvement in Big Data, or alternatively that they have so few women employees it is impossible to anonymize their data,” she writes.

In its defense, Google argued that it had a number of schemes in place to attract female computer science students, and had seen more than 200 applicants over the last year. Meanwhile, Microsoft insisted that it had more women in its IT staff than the UK average of 14%, although it didn’t offer anything to back up these claims.

However, Onwurah says that the issue is still quite concerning:

“I am worried that Microsoft and Google, role models in their own right, do not appear to want to let anyone know how well, or badly, they are doing. The challenge is in seeing real change in the medium and longer term. With technology playing an increasing part in all of our lives, we cannot continue to fish in a single gender pool when it comes to the skills we need.”

Thankfully, not all of the companies surveyed were quite so secretive, with IT players ARM and BAE Systems both stating that women made up around 5% of their workforce. However in the case of ARM, the chip maker, it doesn’t have a single female in the upper echelons of its management. The situation is a little better at Ford’s automotive division at least, where females make up 16% of its IT staff with one woman sitting on its board of directors.