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Issues and Opinion

Directions for research on gender imbalance in the IT profession

, , &
Pages 43-67 | Received 05 Jul 2014, Accepted 12 Jun 2018, Published online: 17 Sep 2018

ABSTRACT

There is a significant shortage of expert Information Technology (IT) personnel in Europe and elsewhere and a marked under-representation of women in the field. This paper identifies important gaps in research on gender imbalance in the IT profession and motivates future Information Systems research to address each of them. First among these gaps is the lack of research on the far-reaching consequences of gender imbalance in the IT profession. Second, despite a considerable body of research, there is the lack of coherent explanation for this imbalance. Third, although many intervention programmes have been implemented in this area, gender diversity in practice has not improved significantly. This research field also requires theorisation based on the cumulative research efforts in the field, comparative studies in various contexts, and longitudinal studies. We point to opportunities to investigate each of these issues and recommend directions for future research and actionable research questions.

ACCEPTING EDITOR:

Rationale and method

Over the past 20 years, the number of jobs in the Information Technology (IT) field has increased rapidly, increasing demand for qualified IT professionals. According to the European Commission (Citation2017), the gap between supply and demand of IT-skilled labour is likely to reach 500,000 by 2020. This challenge has been discussed in the academic Information Systems (IS) literature, which highlights consistently low numbers of IT/IS graduates (e.g., Downey, Bartczak, Young, & England, Citation2016; McLachlan, Craig, & Coldwell-Neilson, Citation2016; von Hellens, Trauth, & Fisher, Citation2012). At the same time, although women are 51% of the population in Europe and 47% of the workforce (Eurostat, Citation2016), they represent only around 16.7% of employed IT specialists (Eurostat Press Office, Citation2017). Therefore, women are a promising group to be encouraged to join the IT profession. Achievement of this objective is facilitated by the advancement of new kinds of work enabled by IT, such as teleworking, which provide opportunities for both women and men to balance work and family life (e.g., Boell, Campbell, Cecez-Kecmanovic, & Cheng, Citation2013; Greenhill & Wilson, Citation2006). For more than 20 years, many countries have undertaken interventions aimed at increasing gender diversity in IT education, academia, and the workforce (“interventions” hereafter), yet little progress has been made (e.g., Craig, Citation2015; Loiacono, Iyer, Armstrong, Beekhuyzen, & Craig, Citation2016; Trauth, Citation2017). We believe that IS research has an opportunity to contribute to addressing the challenge of gender imbalance in the IT profession by explaining its causes and consequences and identifying effective interventions. In so doing, research would demonstrate the IS discipline’s usefulness in solving important societal and economic challenges. This “Issues and Opinion” article proposes six directions for research on gender imbalance in the IT profession, each accompanied by actionable research questions, to guide future research efforts in the field.

Our argumentation is based on a review of the extant literature and our own practical experience from several research projects in this field and involvement in related interventions. (Details are provided in Appendix A, and .) The literature review follows Rowe’s (Citation2014, p. 246) call to reach a “good or reasonable coverage [of literature] rather than a comprehensive one that would make a review process at best ephemeral if not unachievable.” As a starting point, we investigated how the topic was considered in the “core” IS outlets – the Senior Scholars’ Basket of Journals (“the Basket of Journals” hereafter (AIS Senior Scholar Consortium, Citation2011)). We conducted the collection and analysis of the literature systematically based on Bandara and colleagues (Citation2015), beginning with the Basket of Journals based on Hirschheim and Klein’s (Citation2012, pp. 216–217) argument that it recognises the “diversity inherent in IS research [through] (1) the rigorousness of the review process, (2) the composition of the editorial board (members must be widely respected and recognised), and (3) the existence of an international readership and contribution.” The papers published in the Basket of Journals also reflect the core research interests of the IS discipline.

This review identified 16 studies on gender imbalance in the IT profession (Appendix A, ). Although not the focus of this study, additional studies covering other topics related to gender and IS research (Appendix A, and ) were also identified in the Basket of Journals. Next, we searched specialised outlets that address gender imbalance in the IT profession outside the Basket of Journals (Appendix A, ). We also used Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com) to perform a forward search for all of the identified relevant studies to reveal the most recent research efforts in the field. This iterative approach to reviewing the literature provided a comprehensive view of the state of the research field, current issues in the field, and suggested directions for future research.

The remainder of the paper first provides a brief theoretical background on the topic. We then identify and discuss the issues in research on gender imbalance in the IT profession, for which we propose directions for future research. Finally, we discuss these directions and summarise the key ideas, contributions, and limitations of the paper.

Theoretical background

IS research considers the topic of gender primarily from two opposing perspectives: that of IT users’ acceptance and IT-related behaviour or that of diversity and social inclusion in the IT workforce (Craig, Citation2015; Loiacono et al., Citation2016; Ridley & Young, Citation2012). The former focuses on gender as an influence on IS design, use, and impact, while the latter focuses on human capital, IT personnel, and the wider workforce. This paper addresses the latter area, particularly the gender composition of the IT workforce. The main theoretical approaches followed in the areas of gender and IS research include gender essentialism, the social construction of gender, and gender intersectionality (in order of their emergence).

The gender essentialist approach considers the concepts of gender and sex to be synonymous, and men and women to be fundamentally different because of their biological and psychological attributes. According to essentialist research, these fundamental differences result in, for instance, differences in how men and women use technology and differences in the professions men and women choose. Gender essentialism was the dominant approach to studying gender in IS until recently (e.g., Kvasny, Greenhill, & Trauth, Citation2005). The earliest papers on gender imbalance in the IT profession stem from this perspective (e.g., Baroudi & Igbaria, Citation1995; Igbaria & Baroudi, Citation1995; Truman & Baroudi, Citation1994) and take the view of western trends at a time when society expected men to be the sole breadwinners (e.g., Baskerville, Citation2007). These studies often present the outcomes of quantitative studies and are usually limited to collecting and reporting on descriptive statistics (e.g., the percentage of women involved in the IT industry) but do not apply or generate any gender theory (Trauth, Citation2013). The essentialist approach to studying gender and IS is rightfully criticised as untenable and simplistic and as reinforcing inaccurate gender stereotypes (e.g., Howcroft & Trauth, Citation2008; Ridley & Young, Citation2012).

Theories of social construction reject essentialist views in favour of explaining the many human-capital-related issues in IS and how IT work is organised. The social construction of gender perspective considers gender to be a socially formed construct, as opposed to a matter of biology, and addresses the socially constructed differences between men and women. These theories posit that an individual’s actions are products of the culture in which he or she was born and raised (Berger & Luckmann, Citation1966) and that people are socialised to adhere to society’s norms. The turn of the millennium saw a move to these theories to explain women’s lack of participation in the IT workforce, when a string of studies presenting this perspective appeared in the IS research (e.g., Ahuja, Citation2002; Robertson, Newell, Swan, Mathiassen, & Bjerknes, Citation2001). As women are often socialised towards the teaching and nursing professions, and men are often socialised towards more technical careers, such as the IT profession, the IT industry is largely constructed socially as a male domain (von Hellens & Nielsen, Citation2001). At the same time anything constructed by society can also be changed (Wilson, Citation2004).

Social construction of gender is criticised for its lack of critical attention to the differences within, not just between, genders, which is necessary to understand individual experiences. As a result, the gender intersectionality approach emerged to develop the Individual Differences Theory of Gender and IT (e.g., Quesenberry & Trauth, Citation2012; Trauth, Citation2002; Trauth, Quesenberry, & Huang, Citation2009). Development of this approach was triggered by the new technologies and new kinds of work (such as teleworking) that have facilitated changes in how work is operationalised in the IT context (e.g., Greenhill & Wilson, Citation2006). Insights into gender intersectionality are surfacing but have not yet been explored in depth (Direction 2.1).

Identified issues

Based on the literature review and our practical experience, we identified three issues in the research on gender imbalance in the IT profession to which we believe the IS discipline has an opportunity to contribute.

Issue 1: Lack of research on the consequences of gender imbalance in the IT profession

In and beyond the IS community lies a perception that the current gender distribution in the IT workforce is “normal” and that no effort is required to change it, which is discussed by, for instance, Villa and Ayoub (Citation2016) and Kirton and Robertson (Citation2018) and evidenced anecdotally. This view is also reflected in the paltry 16 articles published in the Basket of Journals on gender imbalance in the IT profession, which is less than 0.25% of more than seven thousand studies published there. What’s more, none of these studies investigate the consequences of this imbalance (Appendix A, ). As Loiacono et al. (Citation2016, p. 797) point out, “If we do not acknowledge that a problem exists, we cannot ever hope to solve it.” Therefore, we propose that future research investigate the consequences of gender imbalance in the IT profession.

Issue 2: Lack of coherent explanation for gender imbalance in the IT profession

The literature review shows that, while many studies published since the early 1980s address why so few women study or work in IT (e.g., von Hellens et al., Citation2012), there is still no consensus on these factors. Some suggest that the challenge is too complex and context-dependent (e.g., Ridley & Young, Citation2012; Trauth & Quesenberry, Citation2006), while others propose their own frameworks of factors instead of building on each other’s work and contributing to a wider body of knowledge (e.g., Khalil, Nayab, Naeed, Khan, & Khalil, Citation2015; Kindsiko & Türk, Citation2017; Nelson & Veltri, Citation2011). Therefore, future research should seek to identify and come to some consensus on the factors that cause gender imbalance in the IT profession as a prerequisite for developing successful interventions to address this challenge.

Issue 3: Lack of impact of interventions that address gender imbalance in the IT profession

Despite many countries’ efforts to solve the problem of gender imbalance in the IT industry over the past 20 years, all of which required considerable human and financial resources, the number of women working in IT or enrolling in IT programmes at universities remains low (e.g., Annabi & Lebovitz, Citation2018; Eurostat Press Office, Citation2017). The share of women in IT at each next career stage continues to decrease (the “shrinking pipeline” phenomenon (Camp, Citation1997)) and women also continue to leave the IT workforce at a high rate (e.g., Annabi & Lebovitz, Citation2018; Armstrong, Riemenschneider, & Giddens Citation2018; NCWIT, Citation2015; Trauth, Citation2017). While the number of women in IT could have been even lower in the absence of these interventions, there is a need for further investigation into why they have not changed the situation and what alternative interventions could be more effective.

In summary, the three issues related to gaps in the research deal with the consequences of gender imbalance in the IT profession (Issue 1), the factors that cause it (Issue 2), and solutions to address it (Issue 3). Among the studies published in the Basket of Journals (Appendix A, ), none address Issue 1, while 10 address Issue 2 (Ahuja, Citation2002; Armstrong et al., Citation2018; Baroudi & Igbaria, Citation1995; Igbaria & Baroudi, Citation1995; Kirton & Robertson, Citation2018; Panteli, Stack, Atkinson, & Ramsay, Citation1999; Reid, Allen, Armstrong & Riemenschneider, Citation2010; Robertson et al., Citation2001; Trauth et al., Citation2009; Truman & Baroudi, Citation1994), and six address Issue 3 (Annabi & Lebovitz, Citation2018; Clayton, Beekhuyzen, & Nielsen, Citation2012; Craig, Citation2015; Panteli, Citation2012; Quesenberry & Trauth, Citation2012; Ridley & Young, Citation2012).

Directions for future research

The directions for future research on gender imbalance in the IT profession and suggested research questions to address each of the identified issues are summarised in .

Table 1. Directions for future research on gender imbalance in the IT profession and suggested research questions.

Directions to address Issue 1: Lack of research on the consequences of gender imbalance in the IT profession

Direction 1.1. Collect, analyse, and disseminate comprehensive statistics and data on gender distribution in the IT profession

The discourse on gender imbalance in the IT profession must be based on facts. Therefore, comprehensive worldwide statistics on gender distribution in the IT profession must be collected, analysed, and disseminated to enhance the awareness and understanding of the issue. Fragmentary statistics show that this challenge might be less acute or even irrelevant for some countries. For instance, while in Western societies women are under-represented in the IT profession (e.g., European Commission, Citation2016; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Citation2013; van Welsum & Montagnier, Citation2007; VCAA, Citation2014), the situation differs in other cultural and economic contexts like India (Government of India, Citation2015; Varma, Citation2016), post-Communist countries (e.g., Trauth, Citation2002), and countries with high gender inequality in society (Stoet & Geary, Citation2018). Some countries’ statistics might not be well-documented and reflected in IS research, so the documentation or even collection of the statistics might be required as a first step. If only high-level statistics are available – for instance, in China IT is part of the engineering and technology category, in the US it is part of computer and mathematical occupations, in Australia and New Zealand it is part of business faculty, and in some European countries it is aggregated with the natural sciences – it is necessary to single out the statistics about the IT field in specific. The next step is to collect and analyse detailed statistics for the various job areas in the IT profession in order ensure contributions are directed and specific. Comprehensive statistics on gender distribution must also be collected for fields adjacent to IT, such as business process management (Gorbacheva, Stein, Schmiedel, & Müller, Citation2016) or geographic IS (Betancourt Mazur, Citation2015). According to Frehill and McGrath-Cohoon (Citation2015), another potential challenge is that the overlap and similarities among the IT, IS, Information and Communications Technology (ICT), computing, and computer science disciplines frequently cause confusion, so what the IT profession constitutes must be defined before conducting a comparative analysis across countries. Then, these authors suggest, these statistics must be compared to the gender distribution in non-IT professions. Subsequent comparative analysis of the collected data in various contexts must be done with caution to avoid comparing statistics for countries where women still lack basic human rights and have limited access to education and technology with statistics for countries that have overcome these challenges.

Within the IS community itself, gender-disaggregated statistics regarding members of IS’s peak body, the Association for Information Systems (AIS), editors of leading IS journals, authors of top-tier IS publications, keynote speakers at IS conferences, and so on remain to be captured systematically (Loiacono et al., Citation2016). Finally, comprehensive gender-disaggregated statistics on indicators of career success (salary, job level, promotability, etc.) must also be collected, analysed, and disseminated. In Citation1995, Baroudi and Igbaria (p. 181) showed that female IT professionals tended to “be employed at lower levels of the organisation, make less money, and have greater intentions to leave the organisation” than men, even when controlling for the differences in education, work experience, and other characteristics. Collecting these statistics would help to determine whether the situation has improved since then and how these differences vary by country.

Direction 1.2. Investigate the implications of gender imbalance in the IT profession

Increased awareness of the practical importance of gender balance in the IT workforce may also increase attention to this topic and motivate IS researchers to study how this challenge can be addressed and practitioners to implement effective interventions. Therefore, in addition to the collection and analysis of comprehensive statistics (Direction 1.1), researchers should provide empirical evidence for each of the following arguments for the value of gender diversity in the IT workforce (Trauth, Citation2011a, pp. 561–562).

  1. The demographic argument contends that qualified IT professionals are in great demand but are in short supply at all stages of the pipeline, at least in Western societies (e.g., European Commission, Citation2017; Kirton & Robertson, Citation2018). This argument is confirmed by statistics, but awareness about it (as well as about the other arguments) must be raised before the issue can be resolved.

  2. The innovation economy argument posits that innovation is fuelled by brainpower and creativity and that “the ‘best brains’ can come in a variety of bodies” (Trauth, Citation2011a, p. 562). The argument that involving more women would lead to gaining access to more talent is self-evident and relevant to every industry. Another aspect of this argument that is yet to be researched is that diversity positively impacts teams’ innovativeness and problem-solving ability (e.g., EIGE, Citation2016; Kirton & Robertson, Citation2018; NCWIT, Citation2015). Olbrich, Trauth, Niedermann, and Gregor (Citation2015) highlight that, while the benefits of diversity have been explored in social science (e.g., van Knippenberg & Schippers, Citation2007; Yu, Citation2002) and management science (e.g., Foldy, Citation2004; Saloman & Schork, Citation2003), few empirical studies research the value of gender diversity in IT teams. Panteli et al. (Citation1999, p. 180) propose to conduct a “longitudinal study of an IT organisation with initially a male-dominated workforce and which is moving towards gender equality” to explore the value of gender diversity in IT, but either the study has not been conducted yet or its results have not been widely disseminated. Nelson (Citation2014) reports on inconsistency in the findings of studies on the value of diversity in teams. For instance, Woolley, Chabris, Pentland, Hashmi, Malone (Citation2010) find that gender diverse teams are both high-scoring and low-scoring in terms of the overall assessment, and Choi (Citation2015, p. 832) reports that, although the coding output of mixed-gender pairs did not differ significantly from that of same-gender pairs, same-gender pairs showed “higher levels of compatibility and communication.” Such contradictory findings indicate that further rigorous investigation is required. Further research on the consequences of gender diversity in IT teams, in combination with other forms of diversity (e.g., ethnicity, cultural background, age), is also needed (Direction 2.1).

  3. As addressed by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (Citation2004) and Adya and Kaiser (Citation2005), the consumer argument focuses on diversity in IT design teams and argues that members of technology-development teams should represent the differing needs of the entire consumer base. These authors point out that, at least in Western societies, women are half of consumers of technologies, but few participate in the development of these technologies, so bringing women into technology-development teams would improve developers’ understanding of consumers’ needs and result in the creation of IT artefacts that do a better job of satisfying those needs, thereby benefitting society and the economy. However, we found no empirical research supporting this argument. According to Olbrich et al. (Citation2015, p. 774), “a gender balanced design team does not guarantee that the ultimate product or service will be more accessible,” so the authors call for investigation of “the mechanics of how such diversity of design team would influence outcomes.”

  4. Based on the research of Reid et al. (Citation2010) and Trauth, Cain, Joshi, Kvasny, and Booth (Citation2012), among others, the equality argument criticises existing world power structures, where men occupy most of the top positions in the IT field and elsewhere. As these authors point out, IT jobs are amongst the best-paid jobs in the world, which is not surprising since professions in which women are under-represented (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, the STEM fields) are predominantly prestigious and well-paid, while professions in which men are under-represented (teaching, nursing, etc.) are not. The authors suggest that addressing gender imbalance in IT would contribute to the empowerment of women in social and economic life, which would help to solve the grand challenge of social inclusion. This argument requires investigation in order to determine to what extent gender discrimination remains in the IT field, as reported in earlier studies (e.g., Robertson et al., Citation2001; Truman & Baroudi, Citation1994). Many companies and universities have introduced equal opportunity policies to curb direct discrimination, yet recent studies report that indirect and often deep-rooted gender discrimination persists in the IT profession such that women in IT may perceive themselves as unwelcome (e.g., Armstrong & Zaza, Citation2016) and be excluded from informal networks (“the old boys’ club” phenomenon (e.g., Kirton & Robertson, Citation2018)). Women might also still experience gender pay gap (e.g., Joseph, Ang, & Slaughter, Citation2015) and invisible structural barriers that prevent them from advancing (the “glass ceiling” phenomenon (e.g., Armstrong et al., Citation2018)). Investigation of the degree of (implicit) gender discrimination in IT is required to address these issues.

  5. The employment brand argument proposes that organisations that demonstrate their support of gender equality, diversity, and work-family balance are more appealing for potential employees than are those that do not, which helps them to attract and retain employees (e.g., Annabi & Pels, Citation2016). Future research should investigate the validity of this argument as it applies to the IT industry by investigating to what extent IT professionals, independent of gender, value such support.

  6. The financial benefits argument is based on the positive correlation studies show between female representation in an organisation’s senior positions and its financial performance (e.g., Loiacono et al., Citation2016). Research is required to establish the validity of this relationship for the IT field (Nelson, Citation2014). Therefore, empirical investigation of the economic and social consequences of gender diversity not only in IT teams in general and in the teams of IT artefact designers, but also among managers of IT organisations would be of value.

Directions to address Issue 2: Lack of coherent explanation for gender imbalance in the IT profession

Direction 2.1. Examine the individual differences theory of gender and IT

According to Ridley and Young (Citation2012), among others, the Individual Differences Theory of Gender and IT (IDT), developed by Eileen Trauth (Trauth, Citation2002, Citation2006), is the most recent framework of the factors that could help to “(1) explain the under-representation of women in the IT field; and (2) account for those women who overcame barriers and entered the IT field” (Trauth, Cain, Joshi, Kvasny, and Booth, Citation2016, p. 15). It would be beneficial to explore, build upon, test, and extend this theory because IDT is “a gender theory anchored in the information systems field” (Joshi, Trauth, Kvasny, & McPherson, Citation2013, p. 2) that supports the gender intersectionality approach to investigating the under-representation of women in IT. The theory “accounts for both gender group-level influences and within-gender variation” (Trauth et al., Citation2016, p. 15), such that, “while all females in a particular society may be exposed to the same messages about gender roles and IT careers, both the interpretation of these messages and the response to them will vary as a result of individual factors” (Joshi et al., Citation2013, p. 5). The theory recognises the concepts of exposure (“the amount of gender bias which a particular woman actually encounters”), experience (“a woman’s consciousness of bias and the extent to which she notices and internalises it”) and response (“coping mechanisms”) (Trauth, Citation2011b, p. 3). Thus, IDT avoids both seeing women in IT as “completely free agents” and embracing social determinism of gender roles (Joshi et al., Citation2013, p. 2). IDT, which emerged from qualitative studies that are based on interviews, argues for the need to consider the intersection of gender with such constructs as individual identity, individual influences, and environmental influences. Each theory construct contains elements that encompass a variety of factors that explain the under-representation of women in IT (e.g., Joshi et al., Citation2013; Quesenberry & Trauth, Citation2012; Trauth et al., Citation2016). According to Trauth (Citation2017), only individual influences can be changed by interventions, while individual identity and environmental influences cannot. Taken together, the three constructs “can explain within-gender variation in participation in the IT profession” (Trauth et al., Citation2016, p. 16).

Trauth (Citation2017), Trauth et al. (Citation2016), Joshi et al. (Citation2013), and Trauth et al. (Citation2012) mention some of the research efforts to investigate the influences of various combinations of IDT’s elements on the experiences of women in IT (Appendix B, ). These studies focus on the intersections of gender with personal demographics (the individual identity construct), gender with personal characteristics and personal influences (the individual influences construct), and gender with cultural, economic, and infrastructure influences (the environmental influences construct). However, most of these studies call for more nuanced examinations of their findings. Moreover, a comprehensive overview of research on operationalisation and testing of different factors of IDT could not be found. Such study could reveal existing gaps in research on the causes of gender imbalance in the IT profession. According to Ridley and Young (Citation2012), most empirical studies that apply IDT are largely interpretive in nature and tend to employ qualitative methods. The first steps in testing some IDT elements using quantitative methods are reported in Trauth et al. (Citation2016) and Joshi et al. (Citation2013). However, appropriate measurement instruments for the IDT factors that have not yet been operationalised remain to be developed and tested using quantitative methods. All such studies should be conducted in various contexts and by different groups of researchers to achieve triangulation and reliability.

Direction 2.2. Conduct a comparative analysis of existing models of the factors that cause gender imbalance in the IT profession

In addition to IDT (Direction 2.1), several other theoretical models of the factors that influence IT career intentions, choice, persistence, and advancement among women have been defined (e.g., Adya & Kaiser, Citation2005; Ahuja, Citation2002; Armstrong et al., Citation2018; Clayton et al., Citation2012). All of these models are related, but no overview or a comparative analysis of how these models overlap and differ has been performed. Ahuja (Citation2002) finds that women who work or intend to work in IT face social and structural barriers that can affect their IT career intentions, choice, persistence, and advancement. Thus, this research follows the social construction of gender approach. Armstrong and Riemenschneider (Citation2014, p. 85) in the follow-up study include among the social barriers (“the social and cultural views/biases held by society in general”) social expectations and work-family conflict and include among the structural barriers (“the structure/hierarchy of the institution”) occupational culture, institutional structures, lack of role models, lack of mentors, and lack of informal networks. They propose a revised version of Ahuja’s model and call future research “to further explore Ahuja’s model moving from a more exploratory perspective to a more explanatory one” (p. 93). A high-level comparison of Ahuja’s (Citation2002) model with IDT shows that IDT extends Ahuja’s (Citation2002) model by adding the individual dimension to it, although a more detailed comparative analysis is required.

Researchers argue that the central reason for gender imbalance in IT is the number of women who choose IT to study and work, rather than the number of women who leave IT (LeRouge, Wiley, & Maertz, Citation2013; McKinney, Wilson, Brooks, O’Leary-Kelly, & Hardgrave, Citation2008). Therefore, research on the factors that influence women to choose IT as a career can help to address the gender gap. As career choice is preceded by career intentions, a focus is also needed on the factors that influence IT career intentions among female students who are in the process of initial decision-making about their careers (Cohen & Parsotam, Citation2010; Quesenberry & Trauth, Citation2012; von Hellens et al., Citation2012). One prominent model of such factors is conceptualised by Adya and Kaiser (Citation2005) and reworked and extended by Clayton (Citation2007). Both models incorporate the individual attributes from IDT but retain the terminology of social and structural factors from the Ahuja’s (Citation2002) model, detailing and adapting these factors for girls and young women in school. Future research should investigate the differences between these models and IDT and whether they add value.

Another area for future research is to examine why women choose certain study programmes and occupations as alternatives to IT, the aspects of IT study and work women dislike (as compared to the programmes and professions they choose), and the benefits of these alternatives that IT lacks (e.g., LeRouge et al., Citation2013). Joshi et al. (Citation2013) make the first step in applying IDT to an investigation of the influence of its constructs on young women in school who decide to study IT as opposed to those who choose a non-IT major. LeRouge et al. (Citation2013, p. 52) is another study to pursue this course, by evaluating “satisfaction differences between women in IT jobs and women in multiple non-IT jobs.” Furthermore, studies of women’s IT career persistence and advancement should compare the factors that influence their decision to stay in the IT field with those that cause them to leave, as these factors are not necessarily direct opposites. Armstrong and Riemenschneider (Citation2014) call also for information about the characteristics of women who leave the field. Armstrong and Zaza (Citation2016, p. 1) summarise the research issue in this area, arguing that “even though the topic has been a focus of study for years, researchers are still grappling with the antecedents of turnover for women in technology-related fields.”

Directions to address Issue 3: Lack of impact of interventions that address gender imbalance in the IT profession

Direction 3.1. Investigate the reasons behind interventions’ lack of impact

According to Trauth (Citation2017, p. 13), the goal of research on the factors that cause gender imbalance in the IT profession is to develop theoretically informed interventions that can be “deployed to address, and ideally overcome, the barriers to participation in the IT field.” Several studies propose explanations for the interventions’ long-run failure to be as effective as hoped (e.g., Craig, Citation2015; Trauth et al., Citation2009; von Hellens et al., Citation2012). However, no comprehensive overview and analysis of these explanations has been performed.

One argument, reported by such researchers as Trauth et al. (Citation2009), Panteli (Citation2012), and Trauth et al. (Citation2016), is that many early interventions focused on women as a homogenous group; however, just as not all women in IT face the same barriers (e.g., Olbrich et al., Citation2015), one intervention might not have the same effect on all women. Therefore, interventions’ planning and framing should be nuanced. In addition, sustainability plans are missing from many interventions, so any intervention that depends on one key individual who lacks stable funding and an implementation structure has little chance to persist long enough to make an impact (e.g., von Hellens et al., Citation2012). Sustainable and systematic intervention programmes are likely to be more successful than a one-time endeavour, as participants cannot be expected to enter an IT career after exposure to a single intervention event (e.g., Klawe, Whitney, & Simard, Citation2009; Trauth, Citation2002). Therefore, future research should provide comprehensive recommendations for how intervention design and evaluation should deal with within-gender variations (Direction 2.1) and sustainability (e.g., Panteli et al., Citation1999; Quesenberry & Trauth, Citation2012).

According to such researchers as Quesenberry and Trauth (Citation2012), Craig (Citation2015), and Annabi and Pels (Citation2016), interventions may be ineffective if they are not evaluated so they can be improved. Intervention evaluations usually include surveys that ask participants about their attitude towards and level of satisfaction with the intervention (e.g., Clayton et al., Citation2012; Fisher, Lang, Craig, & Forgasz, Citation2015; Trauth, Citation2012). However, as these authors point out, those who organise the interventions often lack the necessary expertise or face time or funding limitations that preclude in-depth evaluations and revisions. This situation could be changed if intervention sponsors/decision-makers request the implementation of theory-informed evaluations and provide the required resources. The authors suggest that, in the best case, an evaluation would involve all intervention stakeholders, such as participants, organisers, and sponsors/decision-makers, and would be performed by professional evaluators at several points in time. Longitudinal evaluations have almost never taken place, although they are crucial in revealing the long-term impact, which is not possible with immediate post-intervention evaluations. What’s more, the results of evaluations, especially those that are unsuccessful, are rarely published academically. Craig (Citation2015) introduces a gender and computing evaluation framework to assist intervention organisers in the evaluation process and advance the theorisation of the research on interventions. Future research could test this framework in various contexts and adjust and extend it if necessary. The next challenge is to motivate intervention organisers to adopt and apply this framework.

While all the interventions are ultimately aimed at getting more women into IT, each intervention programme or event has a more specific problem it intends to solve. Future research should summarise these specific problems and derive respective success (and failure) factors (e.g., Annabi & Lebovitz, Citation2018; Craig, Citation2015; Trauth, Citation2017). For each type of interventions a database could be developed that collects links to relevant materials and information about such interventions so researchers can determine why some interventions are more successful than others and how future interventions can replicate success. The context in which an intervention took place (country, culture, environment) should be considered so recommendations can be derived concerning how future interventions should be adjusted to fit their context. The impact of the presence of intervention evaluations on their effectiveness needs to be investigated as well. A critical examination of existing interventions, focusing on their mistakes and achievements, should result in a set of propositions for the design of future interventions.

That interventions have been ineffective suggests that the recommendations proposed in the gender and IT intervention research are staying on paper and not reaching practice (DuBow & Ashcraft, Citation2016), perhaps because the information reported in scholarly publications is often difficult for a busy layperson to comprehend fully (Trauth, Keifer-Boyd, & Trauth, Citation2016). Therefore, future research should explore the mechanisms that would foster the practical implementation of recommendations. According to Trauth (Citation2017, pp. 9–10), research on gender imbalance in the IT profession should be action-oriented in such a way that the ideas from research are translated into “actionable behaviours that can make a difference” and that the “real lives of real people” permeate the research.

Direction 3.2. Investigate promising interventions based on target groups

Interventions that seek to increase gender diversity in IT can target society overall, women in IT at various stages of their careers, men in IT, IS scholars, and decision-makers. None of these target groups, as highlighted in Direction 3.1, is homogenous, so the interventions that target them must account for the within-gender variations in their members. Participants in interventions are also likely to have their own gender-related conscious and unconscious biases that affect their behaviour and decision-making. Therefore, future research must determine whether interventions can address such biases and, if so, how (e.g., Annabi & Pels, Citation2016; Serenko & Turel, Citation2016; Trauth et al., Citation2010).

Society overall is arguably the most promising target group for the interventions, although it is also the most difficult group to reach and influence. Numerous studies (e.g., Gürer & Camp, Citation2002; Ridley & Young, Citation2012; Trauth et al., Citation2016) call for interventions that can change IT’s public image, arguing that existing perceptions of IT being for men only still permeate society and affect all of its members and spheres, including schools, workplaces, governments, and mass media. The difficulty in reframing such gender stereotypes is that doing so requires a change in culture, which cannot be achieved in the short term. Still, societal interventions can counteract existing IT stereotypes by making positive female role models in IT more visible and raising the confidence of women that they can be successful in IT, as well as by communicating that IT is an interdisciplinary and diverse field where not only technical but also problem-solving, managerial, social, and other competences are required (e.g., Bandias & Warne, Citation2009; Robertson et al., Citation2001; Todd, McKeen, & Gallupe, Citation1995). The intervention language and communication channels must be chosen for their ability to reach a wide audience. Examples include the theory-informed play iDream (www.idreamtheplay.com), which addresses the barriers women in the STEM fields face, or book Tech Girls Are Superheroes (www.techgirlsaresuperheroes.org), which is aimed at raising girls’ interest in IT and challenging existing stereotypes. Both examples use novel communication channels and language that everyone can understand, but their long-term impact remains for future research to analyse.

Future research should also investigate how IT artefacts can be used to promote gender balance in the IT profession, as the “strategic challenge today is to ensure not only that both women and men benefit from the opportunities presented by new ITs, but also that new ITs are used to support greater socioeconomic, scientific and political equality” (UNESCO, Citation2007, p. 31). Such IT artefacts could include online mass media (Ridley & Young, Citation2012), social networks (Fischer, Citation2016), group support systems (Trauth & Jessup, Citation2000), crowdsourcing platforms (Gorbacheva & Barann, Citation2017), and intranets (Öner, Kaya, Surgevil, & Ozbilgin, Citation2012).

Women in IT at various stages of their careers include students in school whose career preferences are still unformed (career intentions), students who have selected an IT-related study programme (career choice), and IT professionals and academic staff members who are working in IT departments (career persistence and advancement). Gürer and Camp (Citation2002) show that many women believe that they cannot be good at IT, so they never consider, much less enter, the profession. This phenomenon must be addressed in all interventions targeted to women, whether these interventions are in the educational arena (dealing with the career-intentions and career-choice stages) or in the workplace (which deal with the career-persistence and career-advancement stages).

Interventions in the educational arena that target female students are of particular importance (Direction 2.2), as they can communicate comprehensive and correct information about what constitutes the modern IT profession, how it can help people and improve the world, what benefits it brings to those in the profession, what IT professionals do, what competences they need, and so on. Such interventions may include new or improved IT curricula, assurance of a positive and inclusive learning environment during IT classes, training of IT teachers, and guided parental involvement (e.g., Adya & Kaiser, Citation2005; Alvarado, Dodds, & Libeskind-Hadas, Citation2012; Fisher et al., Citation2015). Studies show that children begin to form their career aspirations and define gender stereotypes at a young age (e.g., Chambers, Kashefpakdel, & Rehill, Citation2018), so interventions that shape children’s – especially girls’ – early socialisation can be particularly effective. Furthermore, according to Craig (Citation2015), an educational arena that has even more potential than schools is young women’s and girls’ use of IT in leisure-time activities.

Workplace interventions are aimed at the career persistence and advancement of female IT professionals, but all IT employees, independent of gender, can benefit from many of them (Quesenberry & Trauth, Citation2012). Such interventions, many of which have been implemented in organisations in Western societies and discussed in gender and IT intervention research (e.g., Armstrong & Riemenschneider, Citation2014; Kirton & Robertson, Citation2018; Trauth et al., Citation2009), include ensuring equality at a basic level (e.g., equal pay for equal work, equal treatment, equality in organisational processes, and effective promotion procedures), promoting work-family balance (e.g., parental leave, child-care and elder-care services, flexible work schedules, and teleworking), promoting female IT professionals’ training and advancement (e.g., creation of networks, mentoring programmes, and career and professional development programmes), and creating positive environments and inclusive workplaces. Annabi and Pels (Citation2016, p. 8) provide a summary of recommendations for interventions that address the career persistence and advancement barriers women in IT face and suggest that future research investigate what barriers tend to persist in spite of the interventions and what interventions are most effective in mitigating or eliminating them. Annabi and Lebovitz (Citation2018, p. 17) in the follow-up study introduce “a theoretical framework that provides a holistic approach to assess the effectiveness of IT workplace interventions.” The authors call to test this framework in various contexts and suggest propositions for further investigation.

As for men in the IT workplace, it is more than difficult to empower women and girls fully unless men and boys are engaged (e.g., Craig, Citation2015; Kimmel, Citation2015; Trauth, Citation2012). DuBow and Ashcraft (Citation2016, p. 163) explore the factors that prevent men from becoming involved in diversity efforts and provide a set of recommendations for future interventions that seek to engage men, highlighting that little research investigates “the role of male allies in technology workplaces.”

IS scholars, too, could be more sensitised to gender imbalance in the IT workforce than they are (e.g., Adam et al., Citation2004; Ridley & Young, Citation2012; von Hellens et al., Citation2012). As indicated in Issue 1, the topic of gender imbalance in IT lacks visibility and awareness among those in the IS discipline, and high-quality research that reaches these professionals is needed (e.g., Trauth, Citation2017).

Finally, decision-makers, independent of gender, are a promising target group, as they include policy-makers who are responsible for the national, state, and organisational policies that promote gender equality and diversity. Recommendations for changes in existing policies to address gender imbalance in the IT profession include educational reform and adjustments in the recruitment and advancement practices in the IT industry (e.g., Craig, Citation2015; DuBow & Ashcraft, Citation2016; Quesenberry & Trauth, Citation2012). Future research should provide an overview of the recommendations that have been implemented in practice and evaluate their impact, focusing on gender policies in IT organisations. According to Callerstig (Citation2017), there is still little research, other than general discussions, on the impact of gender policies.

Discussion

Three overarching recommendations for advancing the quality of future research on gender imbalance in the IT profession are formulated from our analysis.

(1) Advance the theorisation

Multiple studies point out that research on gender imbalance in the IT profession lacks theorisation (e.g., Ridley & Young, Citation2012; Trauth, Citation2017), indicating that many authors have not used gender theories to guide their research’s design, the interpretation of their findings, or the development of resulting implications. Therefore, they lack significant contributions to the body of knowledge in this field. Certainly, theorisation is central to the maturation process of any field of research, so, as Trauth (Citation2013, p. 285) argues, the “paucity of cumulative theoretical knowledge about gender in the IS field” is a major obstacle to its maturity. Despite numerous studies on the value of gender diversity, we remain largely in the dark about why women are under-represented in IT and how to develop effective interventions to address this problem. Solid new theoretical foundations and approaches are required. As outlined in Issue 2, that new research often fails to consider the findings of earlier research contributes to the comparatively low levels of theorisation. The more scholars build on each other’s work over time, the more theoretical insights we can expect. This lack of cumulative tradition has been criticised in IS research in general, as many authors attempt to build new theories rather than testing or reworking more substantive existing theories (Benbasat & Zmud Citation1999). Another reason for the under-theorisation of the literature on this topic can be seen in the lack of visibility and awareness of this topic in the IS discipline (e.g., Adam et al., Citation2004; von Hellens et al., Citation2012). This research field must be legitimised through awareness so it can reach the high levels of theoretical development that would contribute to increasing its level of maturity.

The development of explanatory theories within existing approaches to gender and IS research (gender essentialism, the social construction of gender, and gender intersectionality) can make a valuable contribution to theorisation in the field, but whether these approaches are theoretically sufficient to investigating the under-representation of women in IT or they need to be revised and extended remains to be determined (Ridley & Young, Citation2012). Trauth (Citation2017) argues that both the exploration and application of existing theories and the development of alternative theories and frameworks can help to elucidate the phenomenon. Studies that follow methods that are sometimes considered marginal (e.g., grounded theory, action research, design science methods) may provide new insights into the experiences of women in the IT profession (Howcroft & Trauth, Citation2008; Reid et al., Citation2010). As Trauth (Citation2017, p. 15) says, “All methodologies and epistemologies have a place in social inclusion research.”

(2) Conduct comparative studies in a variety of contexts

One common limitation indicated in many studies on gender imbalance in the IT profession is that their findings may not be extensible to other cultural, national/regional, or professional contexts. Comparative statistics on gender distribution in the IT profession and career-success indicators of women and men who work in the IT industry should be collected (Issue 1). Moreover, several studies (e.g., Trauth, Citation2012; Trauth et al., Citation2016, Citation2009) call for examination in various contexts of the intersection of gender with other forms of diversity in IT teams. Future research should also seek to determine in various contexts which factors that influence women’s IT career decisions are most influential (Issue 2) (e.g., Armstrong et al., Citation2018). Consideration of context is necessary when constructing interventions and planning their evaluations because interventions that were successful in one setting might not be in another (Issue 3) (e.g., Quesenberry & Trauth, Citation2012; Ridley & Young, Citation2012). Therefore, investigation and comparative analysis of interventions’ success factors and evaluation strategies in various contexts are promising areas for future research. Any cross-cultural research requires consideration of several aspects, such as achieving cross-cultural equivalence, preventing biases, choosing an appropriate sample, and ensuring correct translation (Karahanna, Evaristo, & Srite, Citation2004).

(3) Conduct longitudinal studies

Longitudinal studies could provide valuable contributions to research on gender imbalance in the IT profession, but since such studies are difficult to conduct, they rarely take place (e.g., Fisher et al., Citation2015). We suggest that future research addresses this gap for each of the identified issues in order to explore the value of gender diversity in IT and to track relevant statistics’ development over time (Issue 1). Longitudinal research is also required to identify and evaluate the influences and barriers women in IT face at the individual and societal levels (Issue 2). At the individual level, future research could track the experiences of women in IT throughout the stages of their careers (e.g., Ahuja, Citation2002), and at the societal level, track the development of the barriers to women in the IT profession in various countries (e.g., Armstrong & Riemenschneider, Citation2014). Longitudinal research could be valuable for researchers and practitioners in understanding the long-term impacts of their attempted interventions (Issue 3).

Conclusion and outlook

This “Issues and Opinion” article was motivated by the need to identify how IS research can contribute to addressing the challenge of gender imbalance in the IT profession. We ground our work on an iterative review of high-quality research on this issue, complemented by our own experience from large-scale research projects and interventions. Based on the results of our analysis, we (1) synthesise existing issues in research on gender imbalance in the IT profession, (2) propose directions for future research to address each of the identified issues, and (3) suggest actionable research questions for each of the proposed directions (). We also call on future research to advance theorisation based on the cumulative research efforts in the field and to conduct both comparative studies in various contexts and longitudinal studies. By presenting important avenues for future research, we hope to spur discussion among IS scholars and support fellow researchers’ efforts to advance this field and make important contributions to it. From an academic perspective, we also address the call for more conceptual studies in the gender and IS research field (Trauth, Citation2013, Citation2017; von Hellens et al., Citation2012). Furthermore, we propose theoretically grounded recommendations for interventions that practitioners can apply (Directions 3.1 and 3.2).

The directions and research questions we propose are not exhaustive, and although we searched for extant studies that address each of our suggested directions for future research, we cannot guarantee that the research we call for has not already been published somewhere outside the outlets we searched. Nevertheless, our study provides a strong base for future research on gender imbalance in the IT profession and might inspire collection and comparison of other relevant publications inside and outside the IS community.

Future work should examine within-gender differences, not only the differences between men and women, and consider the complex relationships among gender, organisations, and society. We do not encourage further essentialist research in the field. The variety of social and personality constructs are much more powerful predictors of human behaviour than biological sex is (Loiacono et al., Citation2016; Trauth, Citation2017; Trauth et al., Citation2016). Therefore, future IS research should distinguish between gender (social) and sex (biological) constructs and move away from drawing conclusions based on biological sex alone. This paper focuses on the challenge of gender diversity in the IT profession, but future research should investigate how to improve overall diversity in the field. According to von Hellens et al. (Citation2012, p. 345), lessons learned from the interventions that help to attract women to the IT workforce “may be transferable and applied [to other] specific social groups that are also under-represented in IT.” Also outside the scope of this study but important to future research is the persistent challenge in many non-Western societies of gender inequality in access to and use of IT, which is the result of women’s unfavourable employment, education, and income conditions (Hilbert, Citation2011). Given the omnipresent role of IT in all areas of modern society, people who lack access to technology or the skills to use it will become increasingly disadvantaged. The IS discipline has an opportunity to contribute to addressing the challenge of gender imbalance among both IT professionals and IT users.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Dr. Armin Stein for his continuous support in the development of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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Appendix A

Table A-1. Details of the Literature Review and Practical Experience that Informed the Identification of Issues and Directions for Future Research on Gender Imbalance in the IT Profession.

Table A-2. Details of Search and Selection of Papers on Gender Imbalance in the IT Profession Published in the Basket of Journals.

Table A-3. Studies on Gender Imbalance in the IT Profession Published in the Basket of Journals.

Table A-4. Further Studies Considering the Topic of Gender at the Core of Research and Published in the Basket of Journals.

Table A-5. Studies Considering the Topic of Gender as One of the Factors and Published in the Basket of Journals.

Appendix B

Table B-1. Studies Considering the Intersection of Gender with Other Items of the Individual Differences Theory of Gender and IT (IDT).

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