 Masculinity
and It: Computing gender
in the It industrySue Lewis How much do you know about IT education and employment in Australia?
The higher education data In 1991, the percentage of women compared with men studying all IT subjects in Australian universities was 29%. By 1998, this figure had dropped to 25%; in 1999 it had risen to 26%. The DETYA figures tell the story of a fairly steady decline – that is, until that sudden increase of 1% in 1999! Importantly, prior to 1990 women were moving towards parity in the IT industry. (NB These data aggregate all students studying IT subjects at all Australian universities. This means local trends are not reflected, and readers should note that some universities have been successful in arresting this decline.) Two issues stand out here:
But what might the recent 1% increase in higher education data suggest? Is it cause for hope? We may be about to experience a resurgence in the participation of women in IT university education. If so, this is more likely to be due to the very public discussion of the national and international IT skills shortage rather than any industry or education response to the data. Australian universities, for example, have responded to the projected national shortage by offering more places in the IT field: 44,668 students studied IT in 1999 compared to 28,114 in 1995. This increase also reflects the marketing of IT courses to full fee paying students – both international and local. But even taking these facts into
account, the truth is we don’t know why there has been a recent upturn
in the data on women’s involvement in higher education IT. Nor do we
know if this increase can be sustained. We should note, too, that the
course areas that are leading the upsurge in attracting women fall under
the broad categories of computer science and ‘other’ – a category that
covers areas such as multimedia. The VET data The Vocational Education and
Training (VET) sector shows a different history with the number of women
undertaking IT training increasing in both numerical and percentage
terms during the 1990s. However, this recent increase has more to do
with a relatively low base level at the beginning of the 1990s (less
than 10%). Despite increases in female participation in VET IT training,
only 17% of total student enrolments in all IT subjects were women in
1999.
The employment data Not surprisingly, the
educational imbalance in IT training is translating into parallel
employment trends. The employment data shows the same pattern as the
education data with women declining in percentage terms in their
participation in the IT industry from nearly 22% in 1996 to 20% in 1999
(ABS data).
On an anecdotal level, staff at the National Centre for Gender and Cultural Diversity have also heard stories from managers in the IT industry that suggest large IT companies are having difficulty attracting enough women to fill their 20-25% graduate recruitment targets. Both the education and employment data should add up to a system level concern and response. We have, however, seen little response in terms of action or reflection from IT schools and government agencies.
Why so few women? Why don’t women choose information technology courses in the same numbers as men? What factors influence women and men differently at the crucial educational crossroads? After two decades of feminising through women’s growing participation, why is the IT field (both in education and employment) re-masculinising? What has changed over the past ten years to decrease the percentage of women?
The most frequently cited reasons for women choosing not to enter computer education in the same numbers as men are:
Other theories to explain the post-secondary fall off in women’s interest in IT are perhaps more intriguing. Some writers note the increased number of students taking IT-related subjects in secondary school and the increasing prevalence of home computers. While both trends can be viewed positively – demystifying computers through greater access at an early age – the effects of this exposure, it is argued, might not be conducive to women going on to study IT. In fact, the data shows that more students studying IT at secondary school level has correlated with fewer women choosing to study IT in post secondary education! There has also been much discussion about the incorporation of IT into the engineering, mathematics and physics fields through higher education course development. These links are known to discourage women’s participation. These important issues were identified and documented during the1980s and 1990s. In themselves, however, they do not fully explain the range of factors operating to re-masculinise the IT field during the 1990s. Others have investigated the
issue through the lens of occupational culture and contemporary theories
of masculinity. It is these recent theoretical approaches, I want to
suggest, that we need to consider and translate into effective
recruitment and retention approaches for the 21st century if
we are to see significant numbers of women entering IT. Gender and occupational culture Occupational cultures can be said to consist of both ideologies and cultural forms (Trice 1993). Ideologies tell members of a profession the taken for granted beliefs about what they ought to do and how they should behave in order to be included in a given group. Cultural forms are mechanisms for expressing and affirming these beliefs. They are not fixed but emerge over time, are constantly reconstructed and open to disruption (for example, through media campaigns and intervention strategies). Cultural forms include occupation-based stories, myths, ceremony, symbols, legends, rituals, languages, gestures, physical artefacts, taboos and rites. We can all probably insert a few rituals and jargon expressions from the IT industry! Trice argues that a distinct
occupational culture emerged in the IT industry during the 1980s and
1990s, underpinned by the fact that electrical engineers built and
maintained the first computers. The first computers, she argues, came to
embody engineering values and norms. In particular, electrical
engineering has dominated and controlled the work content of computer
work (Hughes 1987). As a result, the computer industry took on the
occupational culture of electrical engineering and that culture persists
today (Trice and Beyer 1993). It is common, in fact, for writers on the
organisational cultures of IT to link the occupational
cultures of computer professionals and engineers (McIlwee and Robinson
1995; Hacker 1990; Cockburn 1994, 1997). Engineering and IT culture For example, McIlwee and Robinson found that there were two major components of engineering culture – ideology and interactional style. Ideology emphasises three things: the dominance of technology over people, engineers as producers of the technology and organisational power as the basis of engineering success. Interactional style requires looking, talking and acting in particular and masculine ways:
Wright (1995) argues that in the 1990s many computer workers still have this engineering-derived occupational culture. She argues that it is evident in the common practice of calling programmers software engineers, and in the curricula of academic departments of computer science which retain a strong engineering content and approach. Men design video games, write
the software, sell the machines and teach the courses. It’s not
surprising, then, that computer work has been socially constructed as a
male domain, shaped through the shared values, norms and practices of
its (largely male) practitioners. A distinct vocabulary and humour, ways
of according status and prestige, strategies for ordering and
differentiating members from non-members – these all contribute to a
distinctly masculine culture. Gendered users Turkle (1995) also highlights a distinction between computer users and computer professionals and argues that since the mid-1980s there have been two computer cultures, one of calculation and one of simulation. These cultures are symbolised by the MS-DOS and Macintosh operating systems respectively. Like MS-DOS commands, the culture of calculation is engineering-oriented in approach. Programming must be done in a mathematical and structured manner following rules and top-down procedures. Turkle found that more men than women are comfortable with this style. By contrast, the culture of simulation contained in the Macintosh icon manipulation supports a soft programming style in which programming can be done flexibly and non-hierarchically by trial and error – jumping between small and large approaches to the problem at hand. More women than men are comfortable with this style. Which culture is dominant today?
Both have strong adherents among users and professionals and while the
culture of simulation is more predominant among users it is fighting a
losing battle among professionals (Turkle 1995). The culture of
calculation is the dominant professional culture and Turkle argues that
it is currently ‘the’ occupational culture of computing. Moreover, she
argues, it is this very culture that is antithetical to many women and
has turned some away from computing. Where to from here? The authors I have drawn on here liken IT to other male-dominated and technology-related work and study places. They draw attention to how distinct occupational cultures arise that are often normalised and therefore not obvious to insiders. The ideas these writers present create an opportunity for educational institutions and the IT industry to reflect on complex cultural factors and how they impact on the workplace. They suggest new strategies to consciously disrupt dominant assumptions, ideologies and practices in order to adopt more diversity-related practices. The good news, then, is that
there is still a very real opportunity for educational institutions and
IT industry specialists to market themselves as gender sensitive and
take action with targeted and thoughtful recruitment and retention
strategies. Dr Sue Lewis is Director of the National Centre for Gender and Cultural Diversity at Swinburne University of Technology. The Centre has 11 staff specialising in research, consultancy and training in a range of diversity related work and study issues. Sue has held a long-term passion for gender and science, engineering and information technology issues from classrooms to boardrooms. Sue was prompted by the global and local IT skills shortage to take another look at the gendered participation in IT at the tertiary level and these data will not surprise WISENET readers. Things are not ‘all fixed up’ as the popular mythology would have us believe. Sue is a member of the WISENET Link Team and represented us on the organising committee of the WIAS conference. This article first appeared in the Quarterly Newsletter of the National Centre for Gender and Cultural Diversity, Volume 1: Issue 4 (2000). Readers interested in a three-part feature on masculinity and engineering published in earlier issues of can contact the Centre for back copies: (03) 9214 8633.
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