Theoretical approaches to gender and IT: examining some Australian evidence

Authors:
Gail Ridley;Judy Young
Affiliations:
School of Accounting and Corporate Governance, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, email: gail.ridley@utas.edu.au;School of Computing and Information Systems, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, email: judy.young@utas.edu.au
Venue:
Information Systems Journal
Year:
2012

Citing 7
Cited 3

Why don't men ever stop to ask for directions? Gender, social influence, and their role in technology acceptance and usage behavior

MIS Quarterly
Examining gender differences in IT professionals' perceptions of job stress in response to technological change

SIGMIS CPR '03 Proceedings of the 2003 SIGMIS conference on Computer personnel research: Freedom in Philadelphia--leveraging differences and diversity in the IT workforce
Understanding the under representation of women in IT: toward a theory of individual differences

Proceedings of the 2004 SIGMIS conference on Computer personnel research: Careers, culture, and ethics in a networked environment
Barriers facing women in the IT work force

ACM SIGMIS Database
Environmental influences on gender in the IT workforce

ACM SIGMIS Database
The nature of theory in information systems

MIS Quarterly
Understanding the "Mommy Tracks": A Framework for Analyzing Work-Family Balance in the IT Workforce

Information Resources Management Journal

The (dis)placement of women in the IT workforce: an investigation of individual career values and organisational interventions

Information Systems Journal
A structured review of IS research on gender and IT

Proceedings of the 2013 annual conference on Computers and people research
The role of theory in gender and information systems research

Information and Organization

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Researchers have sought a theoretical perspective to explain the under-representation of women in the information technology (IT) workforce of many nations. Gender imbalance limits the size and skill sets of IT human resources. The essentialist theory, social construction theory and individual differences theory of gender and IT have been proposed to account for the IT gender gap. This study examined evidence for these theories to explain this gap through content analysis of articles published in the national newspaper, The Australian, over three time periods. Newspaper articles report implicit theoretical perspectives on IT and gender and influence the views of the Australian public, including women. While evidence to support all theories was found over the three periods, the essentialist theory was dominant. Increased utility of the individual differences theory to account for the IT gender gap was seen in 2007–2008. The primary contribution of this study is to provide evidence that suggests that theoretical approaches, whether implicit or explicit, shape how people understand the under-representation of women in the IT workforce. Media interventions are proposed to help redress the imbalance through increased awareness. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.