A multicultural analysis of factors influencing career choice for women in the information technology workforce

This article presents an analysis of cultural factors influencing the career choices of women in the IT workforce. We employ the individual differences theory of gender and IT as a theoretical lens to analyze a qualitative data set of interviews with 200 women in four different countries. The themes that emerged from this analysis speak to the influence of cultural attitudes about maternity, childcare, parental care and working outside the home on a woman's choice of an IT career. In addition, several additional socio-cultural factors served to add further variation to gendered cultural influences: gendered career norms, social class, economic opportunity, and gender stereotypes about aptitude. These results lend further empirical support to the emergent individual differences theory of gender and IT that endeavors to theorize within-gender variation with respect to issues related to gender and IT. They also point to areas where educational and workplace interventions can be enacted.