Abstract
Two key aspects of the Information Technology sector are the focus on clients and the 'new' organisational forms of teamwork and management by project. Both require employees who are able to combine technical and communication skills in the form of 'hybrid' jobs. We discuss the gendered development of hybrid jobs in the IT sector, proposing two overarching types of hybridity: inward-facing, tending to be done by women; and outward-facing, tending to be done by men. The 'boundaryless' career model, argued to be the model for successful careers in the IT sector, may link more to the outward-facing type. The gendered differentiation of hybrid jobs could therefore be one reason for women's segregation in IT employment and the attendant gender pay gap.
Highlights
The Need for Social and Women's Representation in IT Employment in Interactive Skills in IT the UKThe global IT sector is changing in key ways that affect the employment of IT professionals
Typically being in consultancy, require technical expertise as well as skills of communication and empathy with clients and the ability to be geographically mobile, since clients may demand the on-site presence of consultants. It is an empirical question, ripe for future research, whether a) these two broad types are meaningful to practitioners and b) the extent to which different types of hybrid roles are gendered, both from the perspective of employees’ identities and that of organizational constructions. How does this relate to our previous discussion of different types of hybrid job, where we developed the binary of inward- and outward-facing? Our argument is that by its nature, the outward-facing hybrid role has more potential to acquire, and the necessity to have, the kind of mobility, flexibility, networks and contacts that the boundaryless career requires
The external facing type is likely to be of higher status than the internal facing type and appropriately rewarded
Summary
The Need for Social and Women's Representation in IT Employment in Interactive Skills in IT the UK. One result of this vertical segregation is a marked gender pay gap: the hourly full-time median pay of women in the 'computing and related' sector is 79% of that of men, i.e. a gender pay gap of 21% (authors' calculation from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, 2009, www.statistics.gov.uk). Jubas and Butterwick (2008:523) suggest that women deliberately try to move out of core IT areas into more feminised ‘peripheral, feminised niches’ such as website design, project management or technical writing This raises the issue of what it is about the IT employment sector that could make women do this. There is evidence of growing practitioner interest (for example Evans et al, 2007; Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, 2009) This developing work focuses on understanding the types of employment that women and men are concentrated in. This may have the potential to provide a new explanation of horizontal and vertical segregation amongst women and men in professional IT employment, as well as the gender pay gap
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