Investigates Why Women Are Not Attracted to the Information Technology Industry

Women and the Information Technology Industry: Where is the Attraction?

Opportunities in technology companies are fueling the economy, yet few women pursue them. A recent Pittsburgh Technology Council panel discussion revealed that there are many reasons for women's lack of interest in IT, as were personal priorities (Czetli, 2003). "It might be an issue of self-selection -- women might not be risk takers," said Robin Steif, chief financial officer of Maya Design. "It might also have something to do with the work/family issue, because entrepreneurs work way more than 40 hours per week."

Acknowledging that women seeking careers in technology industries faced barriers, there was no evidence that those roadblocks were any more significant than those encountered by minorities or even by men. "I think there is certainly a glass ceiling," said Joy Evans, a management consulting partner at Deloitte & Touche (Czetli, 2003). "But I tend to think of the business world as a pyramid which also limits everyone, including men, as you make your way to the top."

While one major issue was equality and judging people the same, the women on the panel said there were differences between the sexes when it comes to business thinking. However, they added that those differences should be seen as positives, enabling women to bring something new and different to the table. "There are differences, whether you want to believe it or not," Evans said (Czetli, 2003). "Men and women have a different thought process, and that is not a disadvantage. At different levels it gives us something to offer that may not be there."

The majority of the panel's speaker agreed that although women are increasingly working their way throughout the technology and business world, it is still a "man's world," requiring either men or women to change to succeed.

Hypothesis

Experts are drawing the same conclusion they did years ago: Women still have to deal with a "good old boys" network keeping them from senior management's ranks (Weinstein, 2001). However, despite the persistence of this problem, the fact is that the overall career outlook for women in IT has improved a great deal the past few decades. Still, despite the great increase in the number of high-level positions now open to women in IT, few women seek the jobs.

The paper examines the under representation of women in IT, why females constitute such a small percentage of employment in the industry. Computer literacy is not the problem. Young girls do demonstrate high levels of computer literacy but that is not translating into interest in IT as a career. The industry has attracted an image of being a stereotypically male and drab industry, which is an unexciting career path for young women. It appears that teaching methods in IT are discouraging girls from pursuing further study in the IT area and there is a lack of information available to young students on what a career in technology means. The paper hypothesizes that there is more than one reason that women are not attracted to the IT industry, and pinpoints paths that could be explored to increase the numbers of girls in the industry.

Delimitation

This study was limited in that it concentrates on the findings of existing studies. As there is no empirical research, it is difficult to summarize a true opinion of why women are not attracted to IT jobs.

Definition of Terms

CIO-Chief Information Officer

CTO-Chief Technology Officer

IT-Information technology

Programmer -- an individual who writes programs

Software Engineer- a licensed professional engineer who is schooled and skilled in the application of engineering discipline to the creation of software.

Assumptions

There are all kinds of careers that have more women than men. More nurses and elementary school teachers are women. Many people mistakenly make the assumption that If women are not choosing careers in IT, perhaps it because they are choosing things that are better for them. This can be detrimental to the IT industry, which is currently lacking a significant female presence, as it is an assumption that is keeping women from entering the IT industry.

Importance of Study

If few women are in the positions of CIO, IT manager, software designer, engineer, or database administrator, it is difficult to find and honor women as leaders in those roles. That results in a lack of role models who might encourage women to pursue careers in technology, and the cycle is ongoing.

That cycle can be broken, but it will take work, and current statistics explain why. In the United States, women are 47% of the total U.S. workforce, yet they represent only one-quarter of the technology sector workforce, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. In parts of Europe, the numbers are even lower. Recent research suggests that in some Western European countries, women comprise less than 10% of the total IT workforce. These numbers are not changing. According to a study published in 2003 by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), even though women are now as likely as men to receive a four-year college degree, less than a third of them are studying in a field that will prepare them for work in science, engineering, and information technology.

It is important for women to enter the world of IT for many reasons. Having technology skills opens doors to hundreds of thousands of well-paying positions. As Julie Basu, senior manager of JSP and XML midtier development at Oracle, says, "IT is an integral part of pretty much every industry, and in addition to good pay, it affords you intellectual stimulation."

In addition, business today is built on technology, and having knowledge and skills in technology means having power in today's corporations and enterprises. Finally, technology is a basic part of our daily lives. Technology today shapes us, just as we shape it, and women cannot and should not be kept out of the process of influencing and building the technology-based world of the future.

Chapter Two -- Literature Review

Information technology (IT) has become a major a potent force in transforming social, economic, and political life globally. Despite efforts to increase the number of women working in IT, the gender gap has only got wider in the industry (Carr, 2004). Recent statistics show that women hold less than one-quarter of IT jobs. Of the women who do chose to brave the male-dominated IT world, the majority choose project management roles over more technical positions such as programming, design or development.

Along with being outnumbered, women earn significantly less than their male counterparts. Of those female project managers, most have job titles at the lower end of the hierarchy, meaning they're more involved with coordination and administration than with making technical and business decisions.

It appears that recent initiatives to increase women's role in IT, such as school programs that try to get girls involved in math and science and organizations that promote networking among women in tech, just are not working. Stewart Coia, director of HCM practices at Parity, says companies that want to attract and retain women in IT roles need to take a different approach. Women simply are not attracted to careers in IT.

There are many reasons that women may avoid the IT reasons. For instance, women, who often bear more family responsibilities than men, typically value flexibility in the workplace. Therefore, unless companies offer benefits like flexible hours and the ability to work from a variety of locations, women will go elsewhere. These are things that are often missing in the upper echelons of IT positions.

However, IT companies that don't pursue female workers may be subjecting themselves to increasingly unbalanced teams. In the end, says Coia, IT is "wasting a tremendous resource. A large number of university graduates are women, but only a small percentage is going to the top in IT." That means they're going into other industries - and IT's could be missing out on a major portion of the educated population.

Many female and male writers including Sofia (1995), Wajcman (1991), Edge (1995) and MacKay (1995), argue that society largely shapes technological development and processes, and that the relationship between technology and society is a reciprocal one, an interaction in which technology and society are codependent (Davey, 1995). Similarly, gender and gender relations of power are a key part of the conception and design of communication technologies. Traditionally, science and technology have defined technologies in terms of male activities, male culture and male values. As a result, women's access is restricted. However, many studies have revealed that women are actively resisting entering technological fields as a result of the male values associated with it.

Women's alienation from technology can be explained by how technology is perceived by society (Davey, 1995). According to Wajcman (1991), technology is male cultured. "Men want to win over a machine whereas women want to use it as a tool and work with it. Why would women want to model themselves on men, to enter a field that is currently dominated by men with increasingly male influenced values and culture?" For instance, computer programmers are portrayed in society as smart, innovative young men who have disheveled appearances and a lack of interest in the world outside technology. They are seen as loners and losers -- two things few women find appealing.

Some feminists argue that lack of female interest in IT is strongly related to issues of education, equity in access, employment barriers and policies (Davey, 1995). Once women have equal access to the knowledge and tools of technology, they will become proficient in their use and there will be an increased interest in IT. According to Davey (1995): "This argument, however, is a little too simple. Working within traditional liberal structures, it locates the problem with women. It assumes that women need the same type of access and it also assumes that given this access, the balance will occur. What it fails to take into account though, is the male culture and values that are inherently associated with computer and communications technology."

According to Wajcman (1991:19), "this reluctance to enter into typically male dominated fields is to do with the sex-stereotyped definition of technology as appropriate for men" (Davey, 1995). Wajcman (1993:203) believes that the male dominance of technology secures itself by the active exclusion of women. As a result, women's contribution has been minimal and thus, so has their inventiveness. Rather than recognizing equal access to technology, the focus should be differentially privileged access, and on increasing the number of women in the conception and design phases.

Cockburn (1985:20) sums up the argument by stating that it is important "to understand the different relation the sexes have to technology, it is important to recognize the relevance of technology to power and to the emergence of power systems in the past (Davey, 1995)." According to Wajcman (p. 37), in order "to understand any specific process or product, we must ask: who developed it, and why; in whose interest?"

Statistics show that the approach to technology education may be to blame. What seemed like an attractive career option in the 1980s is no longer an attractive option for young women. "In the early 1980s, women were turned on by technical careers because they were new and challenging," explained Susan Metz, executive director of the Lore-El Center for Women and Engineering and Science at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ (Robb, 2003).

However, since then, the number of women earning computer science degrees has declined steadily, according to the Women's Commission on the Advancement of Women and Minorities in Science, Engineering, and Technology Development (Robb, 2003). Studies suggest women are losing interest because of how colleges approach technology education. According to a recently completed four-year study of 100 Carnegie Mellon students pursuing computer science degrees, there is a major gender gap in teaching technology these days.

The study, Unlocking the Clubhouse, Women in Computing, was a four-year study of 100 Carnegie Mellon students pursuing computer science (CS) degrees to learn what they thought of the CS curriculum, method of teaching, and how the choices of men and women differ. It revealed that women want a broader picture of the technology field. Unlike male students, who focused on mastering technological skills, women wanted to know how technology fit into a company's bigger picture and how it played a part in daily life. According to the study, this is evidence of a gender gap in technology education and shows that men and women relate to technology differently.

Girls are under-represented when it comes to technology and education" (Shaw, 1999). Gender difference is seen in society, and extends to family and school. Technologies are still not equally accessible to male and female students. Thus, as girls enter adolescence, large numbers of them tend to lose interest in science, math, and computer science. Girls are narrowing the gender gap in science and math, but not in technology. Girls' test scores and course enrollments have increased in these areas, with the exception of computer science.

Experts believe that teachers and the educational system help to cause the gender gap in computer use. A common argument states that the gender separation in the use of the Internet starts as early as kindergarten. Boys gravitate toward computer games and mechanical toys, while girls are more likely to play with dolls or be involved in more social games. Instructors often treat boys differently than girls causing unequal expectations.

In addition, girls in adolescence frequently experience weakening self-perceptions (Miller, Chaika, & Groppe,1996). Many girls in adolescence undergo changes that negatively affect self-image and future choices. As a result, girls may refrain from asking questions and sharing answers. Poor self-image also discourages some girls from taking classes in math, science, and computer science.

The percentage of women has been slowly but surely rising in most formerly male-dominated professions. According to the Census Bureau, women have received more bachelor's degrees than men every year since 1982 (Robb, 2003). In terms of higher degrees, the American Bar Association's Commission on Women in the Profession reports that in 1970, women made up only 10% of first-year law students, but by 1999 they comprised 49% of the freshman class. In many ways, women have conmen a long way.

However, in the IT industry, women are seriously lagging behind men in terms of pursuing IT careers. While the number of women online may outnumber men, the number of women being trained in the field has decreased. "When it comes to today's computer culture, the bottom line is that while more girls are on the train, they aren't the ones driving," says Pamela Haag, director of research for the American Association of University Women's Educational Foundation Commission on Technology, Gender and Teacher Education (Robb, 2003).

The Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) Taskforce on Workforce and Education's study, Building the 21st Century Information Technology WorkForce: Underrepresented Groups in the Information Technology Workforce, revealed that while women comprise about 40% of the total IT workforce, when data entry is eliminated, only 25% of computer professionals are female (Robb, 2003)

To get girls 'under the hood' of technology, they need to see that it gets them where they want to go," Haag continues. "And for a large part of the population, that process must start in the classroom." However, this process has yet to begin. Unlike other professions where women are underrepresented, the situation has been worsening, rather than improving.

While women comprise 55% of those studying toward bachelor's and master's degrees, only 21% are pursuing IT degrees (Robb, 2003). In 1984, 40% of all computer science degrees were awarded to women, but only 29% in 1996. According to the College Board, only 17% of those taking the Advanced Placement test for Computer Science were women.

Some experts believe the lack of strong female role models is another reason for the gender gap in IT between males and females. Dr. Janese Swanson Ed.D suggests that speakers in schools and IT programs must include both genders in nontraditional careers (Swanson, 1999).

One major barrier to getting more women interested in pursuing an IT career is one of perception. "Girls tend to imagine that computer professionals or those who work heavily with information technology live in a solitary, antisocial world," says the AAUW report Tech-Savvy: Educating Girls in the New Computer Age (Robb, 2003). "This is an alienating -- and incorrect -- perception."

Research shows that many girls think of technology as belonging to the "male" world (like football and toying with car engines) (Swanson, 1999). At home, three times as many girls as boys said they did not use their computers at all. Five times as many boys as girls used the technology more than anyone else in the family. Parents purchased technology twice as much for their sons as their daughters.

Many initiatives are underway to provide a more accurate and human face of high-tech professionals, and show that women are present in these fields (Robb, 2003). These programs are targeted at computer science alone, as well as many other types of science or technology.

Hollywood's Women in Film organization, for instance, produced two television public service announcements, with sponsorship from the U.S. Department of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, to encourage women and minorities to pursue IT fields. One announcement was directed at teenage girls and the other was directed toward adults, encouraging them to mentor children.

On an ongoing basis, the Labor Department's Women's Bureau has joined forces with NASA in hosting conferences and events throughout the country to attract women to technology professions. Through this program, four Girl Scouts were invited to act as reporters the 100th space shuttle launch, interviewing women working for NASA. Their reports were then web cast by NASA.

Still, beyond transforming the image of the field, ongoing guidance is needed to help someone along their career path. "You need to find a mentor, even if it is a man, who can advise you on career steps and growth along the way," says Mountain View, Calif.-based Catherine Kitcho, formerly director of new ventures at TRW and now a successful consultant who has helped companies such as Cisco Systems, Nortel and NCR launch new products (Robb, 2003). The man who hired her at TRW has been her mentor for the past 12 years.

Finally, the roles that men and women typically assume in society appears to be a major deterrent for women to IT positions. Women looking to build a career in technology find they have to grapple with combining family and work, which may discourage them from the fast pace and demanding schedule of a career in the IT industry. "Women must make difficult choices," said Metz (Robb, 2003). "Once a maternity leave is over, do they quit their jobs or go back to work? And, if they do return to a fast-track career, their job takes over their life."