talented women are typically endowed with more highly developed verbal-linguistic skills than are men of similar mathematical ability and this versatility encourages different career choices.

 

finding Ways to increase female Participation in it

Finding that differences in occupational personality appear to explain much of the gender difference in career choice does not mean it is impossible to increase the number of women entering IT careers. Our discussions with focus group participants indicated there are important differences in how men and women entered IT, and that these offer a number of possible routes through which it may be possible to address current gender imbalances in IT.

Many of our focus group participants felt they had “fallen into” their IT careers, coming into IT by way of another career field. More systematic results from our survey echo this observation. Women in IT were significantly less likely than men or than women in non-IT careers to say their current career choice had been influenced by courses they had taken in high school or their high school teachers.

Focus group participants told us they discovered they had a natural aptitude for IT that led them to their current career field. Only six out of the 16 women in the focus groups actually had computer science degrees, suggesting the importance of maintaining multiple routes into IT professions.

In addition, conversations with the focus group participants emphasized that there are many misconceptions regarding what IT professionals actually do and that many IT jobs actually require occupational personalities that are more common among women. Several focus group participants mentioned they found the reality of their IT jobs to be different from what they had anticipated. These participants observed that their jobs often required them to act as a translator between the end user and the person actually writing the program code, something that made the job more social.

Their experiences suggest many IT jobs can be redesigned in ways that are more attractive to women by emphasizing the artistic, social, and conventional dimensions of the tasks they require.

there are many
women in other
professions with
the requisite
skills needed to
succeed in it.

There are many women in other professions with the requisite skills needed to succeed in IT. But recruiting them will require careful thought about how job responsibilities are structured and communicated. The benefits of this effort will be a more diverse and creative IT work force.

 

References

1. donnay, d.a.C., morris, m.l., schaubhut, n.a., and thompson, r. C. Strong Interest Inventory Manual, Revised Edition. Cpp, inc., mountain View, Ca, 2004.

2. holland, J.l. Making Vocational Choices: A Theory of Vocational Personalities and Work Environments, Third Edition. lutz, psychological assessment resources, 1997.

3. lubinski, d. and benbow, C.p. study of mathematically precocious youth after 35 years: uncovering antecedents for the development of math-science expertise. Perspectives on Psychological Science 1, 4 (apr. 2006), 316–345.

4. rosenbloom, J. l., ash, r.a., Coder, l., and dupont, b. Why are there so few women in information technology? assessing the role of personality in career choices. Journal of Economic Psychology 29, 4 (apr. 2008), 543–554.

5. rosenbloom, J.l., ash, r.a., dupont, b.r., and

Coder, l. examining the obstacles to broadening participation in computing: evidence from a survey of professional workers. Contemporary Economic Policy. (Forthcoming).

6. Wulf, W.a. diversity in engineering. in Moving Beyond Individual Programs to Systemic Change. Women in engineering programs and advocates network member services, West lafayette, in, 1999.

 

LeAnne Coder ( leanne.coder@wku.edu) is an assistant professor of business at the university of Western Kentucky.

Joshua L. Rosenbloom ( jrosenbloom@ku.edu) is associate Vice provost, research and graduate studies and a professor of economics at the university of Kansas and research associate, national bureau of economic research.

Ronald A. Ash ( rash@ku.edu) is a professor of business at the university of Kansas.

Brandon R. Dupont ( brandon.dupont@wwu.edu) is an assistant professor of economics at Western Washington university.

this material is based upon work supported by the national science Foundation under grant no. 0204464. any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the national science Foundation.

Copyright held by author.

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