Do economic recession and gender influence the likelihood of entry job in IT for IT graduates?

Abstract

Attracting and retaining women is a major concern in the IT profession. Existing literature has noted that female students are less likely to choose IT as an undergraduate major, while female IT professionals are more likely to leave the IT workforce. There is little study of an intermediate step i.e., if gender affects whether IT graduates take up their first job in IT. At the same time, the recession in developed economies has prompted research interest on its effects on IT jobs. This paper examines the intersection of these two phenomena i.e., it seeks to understand the influence of both gender and the recent recession on the likelihood of IT graduates taking up their first jobs in IT. It hypothesizes direct and interaction effects of gender and recession on the dependent variable. The hypotheses are tested through analyzing data from annual surveys of undergraduate students majoring in IT at a large public university over a 5-year period from 2007-2011 that includes the recent recession. As hypothesized, female IT graduates were found to be 7.5% less likely to enter IT jobs over this period than their male counterparts. We also found that the economic recession of 2009 has significant interaction with gender i.e., female IT students were 20.9% less likely to enter an IT job in 2009 than male IT students. We contribute to the literature by demonstrating that economic downturn and gender could significantly affect likelihood of entry job in IT, while most of the previous research considers the effects of individual characteristics. Our findings provide implications for IT students, IT employers, and government policy makers.