Barriers facing women in the IT work force

Abstract

The percentage of women working in Information Technology (IT) is falling as revealed by the 2003 Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) Blue Ribbon Panel on Information Technology (IT) Diversity report; the percentage of women in the IT workforce fell to 34.9% in 2002 down from 41% in 1996. Several studies have indicated this issue is reaching a crisis level and needs to be explored. Women working in IT at a Fortune 500 company were asked what workplace barriers they faced that had influenced their voluntary turnover decisions or the decisions of their female counterparts. Revealed causal mapping was used to evoke representations of the cognitions surrounding the barriers women face in the IT field. A causal map was developed that indicated women's actual turnover was linked to their views of their family responsibilities, the stresses they face within the workplace, various qualities of their jobs, and the flexibility they were given to determine their work schedule. Their statements regarding the barriers they faced in terms of promotion opportunities (both perceived and actual) were linked to the same four concepts. Interestingly, there was no link between promotion opportunities and voluntary turnover. Reciprocal relationships were identified between managing family responsibility and stress, work schedule flexibility and stress, managing family responsibility and job qualities, and job qualities and stress. Discrimination and lack of consistency in how management treated employees, while important, were not central to how the women in this sample thought about issues related to promotion and voluntary turnover.