ITWF: Women in the IT Workforce: How Level is the Playing Field?

Pennsylvania State Univ University Park, University Park PA

Investigators

Abstract

EIA-0204253 Wardell, Mark L., Rogers, Jacqueline K., Sawyer, Steven B. Pennsylvania State University Title: Women in the IT Workforce: How Level is the Playing Field? This ITWF award provides support to study institutional contexts and their related factors that are theorized to affect the work-related outcomes of women after they enter the information technology (IT) workforce. By work-related outcomes is meant job tenure, job satisfaction, job mobility, and job status, earnings and workforce retention. The project will focus on the IT specialties of software and information systems (as opposed to hardware or telecommunications) because they represent one of the fastest growing segments of the computer and IT industry. The expanding employment opportunities in IT work have encouraged a popular view that possession of IT skills should level the playing field for all workers. In effect, this perspective implies that job opportunities, or alternately the lack of opportunities, are correlates of levels and types of skill workers possess. Collectively, the bundle of skills and experiences individuals bring to employers is known as human capital. The human capital view says little about the institutional contexts that circumscribe IT work, or about IT workers and their gender. This project theorizes that the job-related outcomes for women entering the IT workforce will be influenced by various institutional factors and that the outcomes of women will be different from those of men.