Female Retention in Post-Secondary IT Education

Abstract

The historical gender stratification in technical disciplines has been an area of study for many years and researchers have concluded that women are alarmingly under-enrolled in post-secondary information technology (IT) education (e.g., Camp, 1997; Teague, 2002; von Hellens, Nielsen, Greenhill, & Pringle, 1997). One challenge facing the IT gender gap discourse is the application of theories that focus on a variety of levels of analysis (Korpela, Mursu, & Soriyan, 2001; Walsham, 2000). Recently, the Individual Differences Theory of Gender and IT has been proposed by Trauth (Trauth, 2002; Trauth, Huang, Morgan, Quesenberry, & Yeo, 2006; Trauth & Quesenberry, 2006, 2005; Trauth, Quesenberry, & Morgan, 2004) to explain the underrepresentation of women in the IT workforce at both the societal and individual levels of analysis. To date, the majority of the Individual Differences Theory of Gender and IT research has focused on improving our understanding of the underrepresentation of women in the IT workforce.1 Hence, in an attempt to build on the theoretical foundation, this article reports on a literature survey of the influences on American women’s retention in post-secondary IT education.