Women and IT: Recent Research
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I've been doing my own rooting around for research on women in IT, and I've been finding the Bureau of Labor Statistics data we've come up with, and the findings reported in The New York Times' recent article on college women and IT, is just the tip of the iceberg. Some of what I've found: |
The data is discouraging. The National Center for Women in Information Technology has been collecting all the data on the topic, and it has summarized it in this chart. (The most recent numbers here go back to 2004). BTW, This organization has done an enormous amount of work to address this issue, and is a resource for anyone interested in the issue.
Beware of lumping all women together. Eileen Trauth, a Pennsylvania State University professor and director of its Center for the Information Society, says that the discussion on why women leave IT often overlooks that many women do not plan to have children, and neglects to note that the motivations of women with young children are also different from women who want to get back into the work force after their children grow up. Trauth will provide more detail on the many motivational factors that cause women to leave or join the IT work force in a forthcoming paper in the Information Resources Management Journal, Understanding the 'Mommy Tracks': A Framework for Analyzing Work-Family Balance in the IT Workforce by Jeria L. Quesenberry, Eileen M. Trauth and Allison J. Morgan (all three are at Penn State)
Start young. Monica Adya and Kate M. Kaiser, both of Marquette University, have studied the reasons girls don't choose IT careers. They found:
Parents, particularly fathers, are the key influencers of girls' choice of IT careers. Teachers and counselors provide little or no career direction. Early access to computers may reduce intimidation with technology and that same-sex education may serve to reduce career bias against IT. Early determinants of women in the IT work force: a model of girls' career choices,Information Technology & People, Vol. 18 No. 3, 2005.
There are fewer women CEOs than CIOs. A study published in the Academy of Management Perspectives predicts that, based on current data, only 6 percent of CEOs will be women in 2016:
Our data suggests that we should expect to see a slow increase in the percentage of CEOs that are women in the next five to 10 years. Nevertheless, the percentage of CEOs that are women is likely to remain relatively low. As a result, our estimates suggest that if current trends continue, perhaps 6 percent of CEOs in the Fortune 1000 will be women by 2016. We also document the little known fact that almost 50 percent of the firms in the Fortune 1000 had no women as top executives as recently as the year 2000. Moreover, even firms with women executives generally had only 1 or 2 per firm.The Pipeline to the Top:Women and Men in the Top Executive Ranks of U.S. Corporations by Constance E. Helfat (Dartmouth College), Dawn Harris (Loyola University, Chicago), and Paul J. Wolfson (Dartmouth College) Academy of Management Perspectives, November 2006.
I'll report on new academic research as I learn of it.
Comments (4)
It is kind of interesting information. There are a lot of unanswered questions about this article. As an IT professional for over 20 years starting in 1977, I see many reasons why not as many women tend to go work in IT and it is not entirely sex bias. Research as shown that women think differently them men. They have a tendency to use 1 side of the brain vs. men. The side that is used reflects more in creative thinking, language and creative art skills. While men tend towards more analytical. My 2 daughters had a mild interest in computers but preferred to use creative art. Therefore, if one side is used the other side typically is not going to be as strong.
How many times can 1 think of small boys dismantling things while small girls were concentrated on other things. Is this sex bias when a boy unscrews everything in sigth while girls take things as given to them?
Should males be left out of everything in the world from creative writing to science because the girls need to cover everything in the world. We thus are trying to mold females into areas that perhaps they have no interest in.
Posted by Duane Nelson | April 24, 2007 2:13 PM
I had to stop and think a little before I answer this comment. I don't know why people think that Computer Science and Information Science is not a creative field and that there is only one school of thought dominated in this field. As a computer scientist who is involved in building art, theatre, and interactive experiences, I refute the idea that computer science and IT is not a place for creative thinkers. In fact, I think we need more of the creative and artistic thinkers in this field. However, the barrier to entry can be a problem, possibly because of the fact that the field has been dominated by people who have the same or similar school of thought.
Posted by Magy El-Nasr | April 26, 2007 2:29 PM
Interesting to read this and NY Times Op Ed Contributer Linda Hirshman's peice "Off to Work She Should Go" in the same day. In a discussion of work/family choices, "opt outs," and "on ramps," Hirshman asserts that only 40 percent of high-powered professional women get back to full-time work at all. Observing that the most educated have opted out the most, Hirshman speculates that the next generation of girls will have a greatly reduced pool of role models to draw from. Yet, if Adya and Kaiser are correct, the best predictor of a girl's choice of IT as a career may be her (most likely majority-male) father's optimism/pessimism about off-shoring IT jobs.
And what is the contribution of our intolerance to numbskullery and its many workplace manifestations? More options and a greater "sense of agency" can result in women moving themselves from less satisfactory work situations to more satisfactory work situations (not all of which are in IT). To what extent is under-representation an unintended consequence of feminism's success?
Returning to Hirshman, perhaps both parenting and labor-force participation are in the process of being dramatically -- tectonically -- redefined. The industry's success at inclusion, access, and support are moot if women are making choices using a different metric.
Posted by Kathy Volz | April 26, 2007 5:12 PM
As an African American woman who has worked in some form of IT since 1983 my story would be slightly different. I don't know about any studies or statistics. For me it isn't right or left brain oriented, it is because I analyze by nature which made IT an natural fit. What I have noticed is that my challenge is that for years it was the 'good ole' boy network', so being a female was tough, for advancement, acknowledgement, opportunities. Working for the public sector added another twist which raised the stakes moreso. My White counterparts got the plum positions, even now. I find myself at 54 trying to determine what else is there, but I keep gravitating back to some form of IT. There are less African American women working in IT and yet the spectrum of intelligence and career opportunities are vast.
Posted by D. Thompson | October 31, 2007 2:06 PM