Job characteristics and quality of working life in the IT workforce: the role of gender

Authors:
Pascale Carayon;Peter Hoonakker;Segolene Marchand;Jen Schwarz
Affiliations:
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI;University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI;University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI;University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI
Venue:
SIGMIS CPR '03 Proceedings of the 2003 SIGMIS conference on Computer personnel research: Freedom in Philadelphia--leveraging differences and diversity in the IT workforce
Year:
2003

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Abstract

Women are largely underrepresented in the Information Technology (IT) workforce. Our research examines the factors related to the work environment that may contribute to the high turnover of women in the IT workforce. There is substantial research providing support for the relationship between job and organizational factors, on one hand, and quality of working life (QWL) (e.g., low job satisfaction and high job strain), on the other hand. In this paper, we conduct secondary data analysis of questionnaire survey collected from a sample of 1,278 employees of a single organization. We examine the impact of gender and job type (i.e. IT job versus non-IT job) on various indicators of quality of working life, as well as on the relationship between job and organizational factors (i.e. feedback, autonomy, skill variety, task significance, task identity and work pressure) and QWL. Results show that IT workers reported higher job satisfaction and lower job strain than non-IT workers. Gender had no impact on QWL. Feedback and autonomy were consistently related to job satisfaction, and work pressure was consistently related to job strain, irrespective of gender and type of job. On the other hand, women IT workers' job satisfaction was affected by work pressure, and women IT workers' job strain was affected by task significance. Women IT workers' job strain was not affected by autonomy, whereas job strain experienced by non-IT workers was affected by autonomy.