Article

Women talking about IT work: duality or dualism?

Authors:

Sue. H. Nielsen,

Liisa A. von Hellens,

Jenine Beekhuyzen,

Eileen M. TrauthAuthors Info & Claims

SIGMIS CPR '03: Proceedings of the 2003 SIGMIS conference on Computer personnel research: Freedom in Philadelphia--leveraging differences and diversity in the IT workforce

Pages 68 - 74

https://doi.org/10.1145/761849.761861

Published: 10 April 2003 Publication History

Abstract

This paper explores the way that professional women working in the IT industry discuss the nature of their work. The research is part of an ongoing project (WinIT) commenced in 1995, which seeks to understand the declining female participation in IT education and work. An examination of our interview data using concepts from Giddens' structuration theory shows that a number of dualisms provide the women with interpretive schemes through which they can interpret and make sense of their working lives. Such dualisms may provide ontological security as representations of the routines which women in the IT industry enact in their daily activities. This paper suggests that the way women talk about their work reinforces widely held impressions of the IT industry. The use of structuration theory helps show how this talk is not always consistent with the womens' lived experiences. The interviews reveal contradictions in these dualisms, indicating that these polarised views of women and IT work are being undermined by women in the IT industry. In order to understand better how women help configure the institutional realm of IT work, we propose that more qualitative studies of women at work in IT as well as women talking about IT are needed.

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Cited By

Hackbarth GDow KWang HJohnson W(2012)Changing Attitudes toward Women IT ManagersSocietal Impacts on Information Systems Development and Applications10.4018/978-1-4666-0927-3.ch008(114-129)Online publication date: 2012
https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-0927-3.ch008
Trauth ECain CJoshi KKvasny LBooth KAdya MHorton RHuang HQuesenberry J(2012)Embracing intersectionality in gender and IT career choice researchProceedings of the 50th annual conference on Computers and People Research10.1145/2214091.2214141(199-212)Online publication date: 31-May-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2214091.2214141
Hackbarth GDow KWang HJohnson W(2010)Changing Attitudes Toward Women IT ManagersInternational Journal of Information Systems and Social Change10.4018/jissc.20100701031:3(28-44)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2010
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.4018/jissc.2010070103
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cover image ACM Conferences

SIGMIS CPR '03: Proceedings of the 2003 SIGMIS conference on Computer personnel research: Freedom in Philadelphia--leveraging differences and diversity in the IT workforce

April 2003

201 pages

ISBN:1581136668

DOI:10.1145/761849

Conference Chair:
Munir Mandviwalla
Temple University
,
Program Chair:
Eileen Trauth
The Pennsylvania State University

Copyright © 2003 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 10 April 2003

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SIGCPR/SIGMIS03: ACM SIGCPR/SIGMIS 2003 Computer Personnel Research Conference

April 10 - 12, 2003

Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

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Overall Acceptance Rate 300 of 480 submissions, 63%

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Cited By

Hackbarth GDow KWang HJohnson W(2012)Changing Attitudes toward Women IT ManagersSocietal Impacts on Information Systems Development and Applications10.4018/978-1-4666-0927-3.ch008(114-129)Online publication date: 2012
https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-0927-3.ch008
Trauth ECain CJoshi KKvasny LBooth KAdya MHorton RHuang HQuesenberry J(2012)Embracing intersectionality in gender and IT career choice researchProceedings of the 50th annual conference on Computers and People Research10.1145/2214091.2214141(199-212)Online publication date: 31-May-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2214091.2214141
Hackbarth GDow KWang HJohnson W(2010)Changing Attitudes Toward Women IT ManagersInternational Journal of Information Systems and Social Change10.4018/jissc.20100701031:3(28-44)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2010
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.4018/jissc.2010070103
Abbate J(2010)The Pleasure ParadoxGender Codes10.1002/9780470619926.ch10(211-227)Online publication date: 5-Aug-2010
https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470619926.ch10
(2010)BibliographyGender Codes10.1002/9780470619926.biblio(275-296)Online publication date: 5-Aug-2010
https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470619926.biblio
Kuhn KJoshi K(2009)The reported and revealed importance of job attributes to aspiring information technologyACM SIGMIS Database: the DATABASE for Advances in Information Systems10.1145/1592401.159240640:3(40-60)Online publication date: 30-Jul-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1592401.1592406
Clayton Kvon Hellens LNielsen SPower NKaiser KDowney JJoseph D(2009)Gender stereotypes prevail in ICTProceedings of the special interest group on management information system's 47th annual conference on Computer personnel research10.1145/1542130.1542160(153-158)Online publication date: 28-May-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1542130.1542160
Trauth EReinert MZigner MNiederman FSumner MLending DVician C(2007)A regional IT occupational partnership for economic developmentProceedings of the 2007 ACM SIGMIS CPR conference on Computer personnel research: The global information technology workforce10.1145/1235000.1235026(112-120)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2007
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1235000.1235026
Trauth EQuesenberry JMorgan ATanniru MWeisband S(2004)Understanding the under representation of women in ITProceedings of the 2004 SIGMIS conference on Computer personnel research: Careers, culture, and ethics in a networked environment10.1145/982372.982400(114-119)Online publication date: 22-Apr-2004
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/982372.982400

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