Why is it so difficult to achieve gender balance in IT work?

New publication: 

Corneliussen, H. G., & Seddighi, G. (2020). Employers’ Mixed Signals to Women in IT: Uncovering how Gender Equality Ideals are Challenged by Organizational Context. In P. Kommers & G. C. Peng (Eds.), Proceedings for the International Conference ICT, Society, and Human Beings 2020 (41-48): ADIS Press.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Pexels.com

Why is it so difficult to achieve gender balance in IT work? Our study of attitudes towards women’s under-representation in IT and how IT employers and organizations deal with this imbalance, give some of the answers. These are some of the attitudes that work as barriers to recruit more women to IT work:

“You don’t see it before you believe it” – FixIT in collaboration with Nordwit

Last week we ended a project that has been working in close collaboration with Nordwit in Norway: FixIT – a project that has developed and organised activities to increase women’s participation in innovation projects. We developed a “gender balance competence package” for increasing awareness of and knowledge about gendered structures in research and innovation, with a brochure with guidance and tools for organizations to work towards gender balance. A balance competence course offered to innovation actors from private and public sector.

This of course, required knowledge, and this is what Nordwit provided: research-based knowledge about women’s experiences in the field of tech-driven R&I as well as organizations’ and employers’ attitudes and strategies for increasing women’s participation in this field.

“It is not a paradox that few girls choose ICT education”

From Nationen: https://www.nationen.no/motkultur/faglig-snakka/ikke-et-paradoks-at-fa-jenter-velger-ikt-utdanning/

That’s the title of a short popular science piece I have in Nationen today discussing the “Nordic Gender Equality Paradox”: this often recognized “absurd” mismatch between the high degree of gender equality in the Nordic countries combined with a high degree of horizontal gender segregation in education and working life.

 

The low proportion of girls choosing ICT is not really a paradox, I claim here, but a result of how “those who should have cheered the girls on to fun, exciting and good paying jobs in ICT, failed them”. For more than two decades I’ve interviewed and talked with not only girls and women in ICT, but also a large number of teachers, parents, ICT companies and others who should have been first in line to encourage girls to engage in ICT contexts and education. Among these groups we have found a widespread distrust in the possibility of making girls interested in ICT. How could we expect girls to choose a career path that our culture does not expect girls to be interested in? The paradox is thus not girls not choosing ICT education, but this distrust and the absence of supporters cheering them on!

That was the short version – read the full piece in Norwegian in Nationen  (or with google translate).

Read more (open access):

• Corneliussen, H. G., & Seddighi, G. (2019). “Må vi egentlig ha flere kvinner i IKT?” Diskursive forhandlinger om likestilling i IKT-arbeid. Tidsskrift for kjønnsforskning, 43(4), 273-287.
  http://kjonnsforskning.no/nb/ma-vi-egentlig-ha-flere-kvinner-i-ikt
• Corneliussen, H. G., Seddighi, G., & Dralega, C. A. (2019). Women’s Experience of Role Models in IT: Landmark women, substitutes, and supporters. In Ø. Helgesen, E. Nesset, G. Mustafa, P. Rice, & R. Glavee-Geo (Eds.), Modeller: Fjordantologien 2019: Universitetsforlaget.
  https://www.idunn.no/modeller/18_womens_experience_of_role_models_in_it_landmark_women
• Corneliussen, H. G., & Tveranger, F. (2018). Programming in Secondary Schools in Norway – a Wasted Opportunity for Inclusion Proceedings of Gender&IT’18, Heilbronn, Germany, May 2018 (Gender&IT’18) (172-182). New York, NY, USA: ACM.
  https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3196839.3196867

Identified knowledge gaps on women in ICT

Gender imbalance is a key issue in the ICT research of Western Norway Research Institute. In a recent report, two researchers gather all available statistics on the participation of women in the ICT sector, which is expected to see rapid expansion in coming years. – We aim to fill the identified knowledge gaps through qualitative research, says Hilde G. Corneliussen.

By Idun A. Husabø
Researcher and communication advisor at Western Norway Research Institute (Vestlandsforsking)

The statistical report on women in information and communication technology (ICT) in Norway is the result of fruitful, inter-disciplinary collaboration between ICT researcher and historian Hilde G. Corneliussen and Morten Simonsen, statistician at the same institute. The purpose of the research was to build a foundation for further research on the topic of the lasting and worrying gender imbalance in professions related to ICT.

– Western countries all share this gender imbalance in ICT. This also characterizes the Nordic countries, contrary to how they are usually associated with a high degree of gender equity. It is of great importance to establish the exact figures in order to gain closer insight into the issue, says Corneliussen, who has conducted considerable research in this area and is currently part of a Nordic Centre of Excellence on women in technology-driven professions, Nordwit.

A widening gap

Statistics tell a story of underrepresentation of women in ICT, both in Norway as well as in many other countries. Although the balance has been somewhat improved in later years, a satisfactory balance is far ahead, as the digitalization of society is only about to begin.

Soon, a large share of jobs will require formal competence within ICT. The current gender gap is therefore likely to widen, rather than the opposite, unless more women are recruited to ICT educations and careers.

Preparing the ground for comparison

Gaining an overview of the Norwegian statistics and deeper insight into the figures, has been a prerequisite for later comparisons with statistics from other countries.

As an example, the report shows that female employees constitute approximately 20 percent, i.e. one fifth, of the total number of ICT professionals.

– The exact share at which one arrives in each country, is highly dependent on the chosen approach to counting and coding employees. Therefore, it is necessary to study the underlying premises. Having completed this process, we are now ready to start comparing the situation in different countries, says Corneliussen.

Decisions and power

Digitalization is expected to spread across professions previously not considered ‘technical’, including, for example, nursing, which is already facing increasing use of digital technologies in health care services. Thus, soon, people without an ICT background will be required to take important decisions regarding the use of ICT.

ICT experts will also be given many important tasks on the basis of their technical competence.

– Unavoidably, a group of professionals who develop solutions and services for all of society, will hold a certain power. This is why gender balance in ICT is of such great importance, says Corneliussen.

Shedding light on a variety of stories

One might say that the main purpose of the report compiled by Simonsen and Corneliussen is to identify the missing pieces in the larger picture.

As an example, a small group of female employees has caught the attention of the researchers: those who are employed in the ICT sector, but do not receive a salary – in other words, women who are self-employed and freelance workers.

– One of the issues we will be looking more closely at, is what motivated these women to be self-employed, and whether their decisions were related to factors such as working conditions in ICT enterprises, Corneliussen says.

– Figures are important, but we will not find all the answers by looking solely at the statistics. Qualitative research is needed in order to shed light on a variety of stories from women in ICT work. Hopefully, a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods will eventually provide us with a deeper understanding of women’s participation in the ICT sector, says Morten Simonsen.

Read the full report here: https://www.vestforsk.no/en/publication/can-statistics-tell-stories-about-women-ict

(Produced for Vestforsk.no by Idun A. Husabø)

Technologies are Us: Feminist Perspectives on Posthuman Futures

All interested PhD candidates are welcome to apply for the three days intensive PhD course on feminist thinking about technological development

• Place: University of Bergen
• Course dates: September 23-25 2020
• Registration deadline: 28.02.2020 – 14.00

Read more about the course here: PhD Course information

Photo: Colorbox/Nina B. Dahl

 

The PhD course invites to feminist thinking about technological development

What are the consequences of current technological development for feminist thinking about equality, freedom and change? Are algorithms gendered, and does it matter? What does sex and subjectivity mean in the age of neuro-technologies and AI? Are we at all still “human”? Is there a specific ethics of the posthuman?

These are some of the questions that will be scrutinized during the three-days course in September 2020. The themes of the course are divided into the following topics:

• The Biased Face of Technology
• Ethics and the Posthuman
• Bodies and Brains

If you are working with these or related questions, or are simply interested to learn more, join us for a PhD course in Bergen.

The course is arranged by Nordic Centre of Excellence on Women in Technology Driven Careers (NORDWIT) and Centre for Women’s and Gender Research at University of Bergen.

Contact organizers:

• Kari Jegerstedt at Kari.Jegerstedt@uib.no
• Hilde G. Corneliussen: hgc@vestforsk.no
• Gabriele Griffin: gabriele.griffin@gender.uu.se

“Do we really need more women in ICT?”

Photo by bruce mars on Pexels.com

This question – “Do we really need more women in ICT?” – appears in a recent article by Gilda Seddighi and myself. In this article we analyze how the ICT industry and ICT workplaces in Norway deal with challenges of recruiting women to ICT work. The question is not ours, but from one of the ICT experts that we interviewed for this case study, and it appeared in a discussion about whether women were really interested in ICT. This discussion and the quote illustrate how gendered stereotypes suggesting that men are more interested in ICT are still active in shaping attitudes towards and engagement in activities to recruit women. Only about one in four working as ICT experts in Norway are women, and this feeds the discourse of ICT as a male field. Reflecting this, the ICT workplaces we talked with produced a series of alternative ways of seeing the need to recruit women, all of which contributed to reducing the importance of active recruitment initiatives.

You can read the article for free (in Norwegian) here: https://www.idunn.no/tfk/2019/04/maa_vi_egentlig_ha_flere_kvinner_i_ikt

Title: “Do we really need more women in ICT?” Discursive negotiations about gender equality in ICT

Abstract

ICT is one of the most gender-divided fields in Norway and illustrates the “Nordic Gender Paradox”, referring to a mismatch between a high level of participation by women in working life in parallel with a strong gendering of disciplines and professions. A higher proportion of women in ICT professions is a goal that is particularly relevant due to increasing digitalization. This article builds on qualitative empirical material and analyzes meetings with 12 organizations that were invited to discuss gender equality in ICT work. The analysis explores how the discourse of gender equality in ICT is perceived in the organizations and how this affects attitudes to practical gender equality work. Ten alternative approaches to gender equality in ICT are identified. These can be analyzed as discursive practices that articulate “resistance” as alternative meanings that challenge the discourse of gender equality in ICT, as they renegotiate, redefine and, in some cases, reject the discourse. Recruitment of women to ICT work is a task left to the individual organizations. The authors claim that there are still gendered perceptions of who is appropriate for ICT work, and these perceptions do not motivate the organizations to engage in gender equality work.

How to quote: Corneliussen, H. G., & Seddighi, G. (2019). “Må vi egentlig ha flere kvinner i IKT?” Diskursive forhandlinger om likestilling i IKT-arbeid. Tidsskrift for kjønnsforskning, 43(4), 273-287.

When will we reach gender balance in ICT?

Involving more women in ICT is important for many reasons, and one of them is the growing importance of ICT competence across sectors and industries. ICT specialists are on top of the EU’s skills-shortage list, and the low proportion of women choosing ICT education and work has been identified as one of the reasons for a growing gap between demand and supply of ICT specialists (EIGE). This is the case also for Norway, where women make up less than 25% of ICT specialists.

Sognefjorden, Norway. Photo by Hilde G. Corneliussen

We wanted to know more about how companies and employers for ICT specialists in Norway work with gender equality and improving the gender balance in ICT. We invited 12 organizations from different sectors and industries that had in common that they were all involved in ICT research, development and innovation, to meetings for discussing gender equality in ICT work. None of the organizations had many female ICT specialists (some had none), and they all recognized the need to recruit women to ICT. But we also observed many alternative ways of seeing the situation. We experienced some of these alternative ways of understanding the situation (few women in ICT), the goal (more women in ICT) and the explanations that followed, as a form of “resistance”.

With gender balance as a goal for innovation environments

During some busy weeks this autumn we are inviting research and innovation environments, including research projects, higher education, R&I funders, private and public IT sector, schools and science museums and more, across the western part of Norway to dialogue meetings about competence and recruitment.

Recruiting the “right” competence to technology driven research and innovation can be challenging, in particular in the rural region. Simultaneously we see that very few women apply for IT education in this region – this year only 3% against the national average of 26% women. Our research also indicates that there are few women working in the private IT sector in this region. An important question for the IT sector in general, and in this region in particular, is therefore: how can we recruit the best from all, not only half the population?

Based on our Nordwit research and in collaboration with FixIT, we have developed recommendations to the research and innovation environments for how they can build a strategy for better gender balance, how to remove discrimination and secure diversity in recruitment processes, and to identify how the organization can develop internal routines to secure an inclusive environment.

Interested in hearing more?
The next dialogue meeting about competence and recruitment is October 2^nd 2019 in Bergen: https://www.facebook.com/events/644936879363987/
You can also contact us if you want to book a meeting with us.

Contact person
Hilde G. Corneliussen: https://www.vestforsk.no/nn/person/hilde-g-corneliussen

Read more
FixIT: https://www.vestforsk.no/en/project/fixit-activities-increase-proportion-women-forregionss-innovation-projects

Few women find role models in IT

Our article on “Women’s Experience of Role Models in IT” is now published.

Relevant role models are individuals that we can identify with. Our study among women in IT in Norway shows that:

Most women identify relevant role models among other women, rather than among men.

Few women identify role models in in fields of information technology.

Many women missed having female role models in IT.

And many found “substitute” role models from other fields, national politics or among networks of female friends.

Female role models are, as one of the women we interviewed said,

“important as a door opener. […] I think that makes things easier. It is not necessary, but it makes things easier.”

You can read the full paper (open access) here, where we present a model of responses reflecting a lack of female role models in IT:  https://www.idunn.no/modeller/18_womens_experience_of_role_models_in_it_landmark_women

Corneliussen, H. G., Seddighi, G., & Dralega, C. A. (2019). Women’s Experience of Role Models in IT: Landmark women, substitutes, and supporters. In Ø. Helgesen, E. Nesset, G. Mustafa, P. Rice, & R. Glavee-Geo (Eds.), Modeller: Universitetsforlaget. DOI: 10.18261/9788215034393-2019-18.

First and second education – routes to IT competence for women

Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

In our study of women working in technology-driven careers, primarily with IT and digitalization, we have interviewed almost 40 women in Norway. One of our findings show that many women come to work with IT and digitalization via a detour: many of them started with a “gender traditional” education, in humanities, social sciences or healthcare, but then at a later stage changed to IT, or added IT courses to their education. Our findings suggest that this “detour” is related to how girls’ choices and the advices that the young women get from parents, teachers etc., are still to a certain degree guided by gendered stereotypes and seeing IT as a male dominated field. However, when women at a later stage have to relate to IT in working life, also in traditional female dominated fields like health care, they change their view upon IT and what IT represent.

To draw some conclusions from this, first, it is important that girls are introduced early to the wide and varied meanings of IT and digitalization in current working life. Perhaps more girls will choose IT education and find IT related work attractive when it appears in pair with other fields, like ehealth, like we see among the women we have interviewed.

Our study also suggests that continuing education can be an important contribution in providing women with a competence that they to a lesser degree than men acquire through their first educational choices, as women are still a minority among IT students in Norway.