Twenty-first Century Australian Women and IT: Exercising the power of choice

Abstract

This paper investigates the Australian literature relating to female under-representation in the information technology (IT) sphere of careers and education. This summary of the current body of literature presented through the lens of the nature of the discipline includes emerging theories that explore the masculinization of the discipline, followed by a discussion of the lack of a sustainable impact on declining female student numbers of earlier Australian intervention programmes. A position is presented on the marginalization of this line of research within the IT discipline, as well as media representations of gendered messages about IT. Finally, student career choice literature is used to explore the author's premise that many young women in 21st century Australia, when faced with an array of career choices, appear to be exercising this power of choice to exclude IT from their list of possible futures.