Gender, Work and Organization.

Vol. 14 No. 4 July 2007

Does Gender Still Matter? A Study of the Views of Women in the ICT Industry in New Zealand
Barbara J. Crump*, Keri A. Logan and Andrea McIlroy
Using data from in-depth interviews with female information and communication technology (ICT) professionals from New Zealands four main cities, this article uses a social constructivist framework to investigate the womens perceptions of their ICT work place. The results show that there are regional differences in organization type, job category and salaries, as well as in the perceptions of the women towards their environment. Most women did not actively seek to be employed in ICT rather their entry was serendipitous. While they enjoyed working in the environment, there was an obvious gendering of the workforce with most technical positions being held by men and women working mainly in the softer side of ICT. The women perceived their gendered roles to be a highly important and an integral part of ICT and believed their salaries were equitable with their male colleagues. Having a greater understanding of how women view their ICT work place will contribute to attracting and retaining them in an industry where a shortage of skills is envisaged in the near future. Keywords: ICT, gender, information technology, regional differences, attitudes, culture, careers

Background
he under-representation of women in the information technology (IT) industry1 is now well documented. Of even more concern is the declining number of women entering computing and information technology courses at university and in particular, IT careers. This has been widely reported, for example in the USA (Ahuja, 2002; Trauth and Quesenberry, 2007), the UK (Nash, 2005; Panteli et al., 2001), Australia (Symonds, 2000) and New Zealand
Address for correspondence: *Barbara Crump, Senior Lecturer, Department of Information Systems, Massey University, Private Box 756, Wellington, New Zealand, e-mail: b.j.crump@massey.ac.nz
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(Logan and Crump, 2007). In New Zealand there has been little systematic capture of national data about women in the ICT workforce although the national census gures (Statistics New Zealand, 2001) still show a low participation rate of women in the industry, with a majority of these being in data entry positions. At the time of revising this article, the 2006 census occupation data had not been analysed by gender (Statistics New Zealand analyst, pers. comm.). There have been a number of smaller qualitative studies researching the experiences of the few women who are participating in the technology profession. They include a study of 31 women in Australia and New Zealand in 2000 that found evidence of a range of sociocultural inuences on the professional development and working lives of women IT professionals (Trauth, 2002). Trauth rejects the essentialist view of women and their relationship to IT and offers a theoretical perspective of individual differences to characterize the way individual women respond in a range of specic ways to the interplay between individual characteristics and environmental inuences. Another study conducted in the Wellington region by Crump and Logan (2000) examined the perceptions and experiences of women working in their respective ICT environments. The study conrmed the current low female representation, with many women commenting on attributes of the computing culture that included the competitive, high pressure, aggressive nature of the industry and the requirement for long hours. Most older women had not always been the minority gender working in computing. They had begun their IT careers on mainframes and noticed fewer women working in the industry once personal computers and local area networking became commonplace. There was a common view that returning to the industry after time out for children was very difcult and those who had managed to re-enter the workforce did so at a more junior level than when they left. This article builds on and extends Crump and Logans work. Over the last 30 years many reasons have been suggested for the lack of female participation in computing. These include sex role conditioning and stereotyping; the perception of computing as the domain of geeks and nerds; the lack of a critical mass of women in ICT and the rate of change in the industry, which makes it difcult for women to re-enter after a break for childbearing and rearing. Faulkner (2001) presents compelling evidence of the non-neutrality and durability of masculine images of technology, that obliges us to view gender as an integral part of the social shaping of technology (p. 90, italics in original) and believes an understanding of the gendered question in technology provides a sound basis for understanding the ambivalence about technology which many women experience. There is also a body of literature (for example, Panteli et al., 2001; Woodeld, 2002a) that argues that roles in the ICT industry, such as project and consulting work, which are human oriented and require the feminine attributes of good communication skills, exibility and a collaborative style, are seen as having lower status than
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the more technical roles that men typically hold. Panteli et al. (2001) agree that these softer (female) roles may be undervalued, compared with the more technical roles often lled by men and which give them access to knowledge and experience which will facilitate the path to senior positions. Such a perception can create gendered jobs within the ICT industry although this can be used to advantage when trying to encourage girls to see the possibilities of a career in ICT that would use these feminine skills (Von Hellens et al., 2000).

A theoretical framework
One of the important roles of published academic research is to inform policy and practice and to help to bring about change. Adam et al. (2004), in their review of the literature of research on gender and technology, note that the concept of gender in IS research largely lacks theorisation (p. 222) and point to the lack of published articles in highly ranked information systems (IS) journals. The researchers are critical of quantitative studies and the use of statistical approaches which view gender as a dichotomous variable and which tend to emphasize the differences between men and women. This leads to essentialism, the belief that there are essential, xed, and probably biological, male and female characteristics (p. 228). Furthermore, the quantitative studies do not access the literature on gender and technology and tend to take a deterministic view of technology. Thus, both gender and technology are viewed as givens, an approach which reinforces gender stereotypes. In contrast, while qualitative studies reviewed do not dichotomize gender, their primary focus is on the low numbers of women working in the ICT industry and their low status within it. Adam et al. (2004) conclude that, as there is very little qualitative research on gender and IS, this presents an opportunity for researchers. The same can be said for theoretical studies of gender and IS. Qualitative approaches allow researchers to explore the social, cultural and political nature of education, training and work in relation to IS and gender and move away from the male yardstick and essentialism. As Trauth (2002, p. 5) says, Statistics tell one story; [qualitative] research tells the story behind that story. Researchers who have adopted a social constructivist theoretical stance when examining gender and ICT include Panteli et al. (2001) and Scott-Dixon (2004). In their studies of women working in the ICT industry in the UK and Canada, respectively, they explore the relationship between the individual and the society in which women interact. The social constructivist mode of enquiry is based on a belief in a socially constructed world where the interactive and inseparable effects of society are inextricably tied up with the internal construction of self (Ernest, 1995). In other words, context inuences
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how we process and use information to form our understandings. This theory moves away from a determinist model and explores the notion that reality is socially constructed and that it cannot be changed by one single person but must evolve over time as the environment and attitudes of the society change. Inherent in social constructivism is the idea that in order to adapt to the environment there must be a feedback loop, or continual reection on the results of actions. Through this process of reection our behaviours change in order to conform to societal expectations (von Glasersfeld, 1990). Panteli et al.s (2001) evaluation of gender-based patterns of employment and work in computing in the UK treats gender as a social process that modies gender identity through ongoing social construction. They concluded from their study that gendered relations in computing work are constructed in both routine, day-to-day interactions and are also located within the larger social and organizational context which dene divisions of labour, power and culture (p. 15). Their ndings reinforced the strong masculine ideology in computing (p. 15) and provided partial support for views of differences in styles of working between men and women. A further dening element of social constructivism is language. It is increasingly recognized that much understanding and knowledge takes place through language, which is regarded by Ernest (1995, p. 480) as a shaper of, as well as the summative product of, individual minds. Through language we communicate and negotiate our meanings of the world in which we live. From a feminist viewpoint, language has dened the world in a masculine image and research in the 1970s and 1980s; for example, Bem and Bem (1973) and Hamilton (1988) explored the impact of masculine words, such as man, to describe both male and female. Spender (1982) considers language helps form the limits of our reality (p. 3). Thus, the language of computing, which is largely drawn from the male-dominated engineering and military milieu becomes a powerful cultural attribute, thereby shaping the image of computing. A criticism that Winner (1993) has of social constructivist theory is its lack of attention to the role played by politics in society. Berg and Lie (1995) agree that academic research ignores the role that politics and gender play in this theory. The accepted knowledge and beliefs of the community constitute a political endeavour based on what the dominant culture, or society, sees as having the greatest viability at the time (Tobin and Tippins, 1993). However, the question of who holds the power to decide what is viable becomes a political issue. It is difcult to separate social interaction, culture and politics because they are inextricably bound. The culture arises from the norms and standards accepted and reinforced in the wider society. The centre of power in the western ICT work environment is dominated by white European men (particularly at senior and corporate leadership levels), and historical practices, male ideas, beliefs and attitudes have prevailed and become the norm. In this environment, women are the minority gender, working in an
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organizational culture with work practices, employment policies and promotional opportunities that have a masculine social construction. Using a social constuctivist framework, this article reports the ndings of a study involving 70 women working in the ICT industry in New Zealands four main cities. The next section describes the study.

The study
The aim of the research was to increase our understanding of New Zealands computing workplace environment in which women are the minority gender. This is the rst part of a large national study of the ICT workforce. The research that this article reports investigated women-only views of their workplace environment and will be followed by a national online survey of both male and female ICT professionals. It was important to ensure regional representation in this rst study before designing the quantitative instrument because there are distinct economic and cultural regional differences in New Zealand. The research had the following objectives: to investigate the nature and extent of the masculine-gendered culture to identify regional differences to understand attitudinal differences between male and female ICT workers. These research objectives were enlightened by the use of several methods, thus allowing the intersection or convergence principle (Denzin, 1988), through triangulation, to be applied to our research. Some quantitative data were collected for statistical analysis but most of the data were gathered qualitatively using semi-structured interviews and some focus groups with a sample of women currently employed as ICT professionals. The two approaches have different, complementary strengths and in some areas overlap, enabling a study that is more comprehensive and overcoming some of the weaknesses, biases and limitations of a single approach (Mathison, 1988; Patton, 1990). Interview questions were developed from themes identied in the literature, researcher experience (based on the results from the ICT workplace study conducted by Crump and Logan in 2000), anecdotal evidence from informal discussions with many women working in the industry and two of the authors ICT teaching experience. Topics covered the characteristics of the work environment, employment practices for women and the culture of computing. Demographic data were also collected, as well as respondents importance ratings for a range of factors such as childcare, rms reputation and fringe benets (after Panteli et al., 2001). Although New Zealand is a small country with a population of just over 4 million, there are distinct regional and geographic differences in
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Table 1: Region community prole

New Zealands four main cities Prole Population (n) Post-school education (%) Business locations Median income ($) Unemployment rate (%) Average weekly rent for permanent private dwellings ($) Dunedin 114,342 34.7 7,494 14,500 8.6 157 Christchurch 316,224 32.8 25,122 17,600 6.8 164 Wellington 423,765 39 36,994 22,400 7.1 194 Auckland 1,158,891 34 108,789 21,100 7.8 223

Note: (Statistics New Zealand 2001 Census).

terms of climate, population, ethnic diversity, industry and commerce. Therefore it was decided to interview a sample of women ICT professionals in the four main centres. Known as the Edinburgh of the south, Dunedin is a small university city in the south of the South Island. The main commercial activity is focused around education and health and the university includes a medical school and many specialist health and research institutions. While most of the old manufacturing industries have moved away from this southern location, a Cadbury chocolate factory and a large, international printing business remain, along with small industries. Dunedin has a reputation for conservatism. A Dunedin City Councils (DCC) annual residents satisfaction and opinion survey (Dunedin City Council, 2000) reported one of the citys weaknesses identied by public, as Business closing down/relocating north/loss of big business. Weaknesses identied by DCC staff were Poor attitudes narrow minded, introverted, pessimistic, apathetic, defensive, conservative; poor job opportunities, unemployment. Regional prole statistics for the four main cities conrm some of the respondents opinions. Table 1 shows that Dunedin has the lowest number of business locations (geographic units) of all four cities, the lowest population, the lowest average weekly rent for permanent private dwellings and median income, and the highest unemployment rate (Statistics New Zealand, 2001). Christchurch, with a population of 316,224, is a larger city than Dunedin, also in the South Island. Table 1 shows that Christchurch has nearly four times as many businesses as Dunedin, and a higher median income and a lower unemployment rate than its southern neighbouring city. With a strong English heritage, Christchurch is known as the garden city and is the
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gateway for much of the South Islands thriving tourism industry. The southern-most city in the North Island is Wellington, the capital city, with a population of 423,765. It is the centre of government and has a large number of people employed in the public sector, which includes state-owned enterprises as well as government departments and ministries. It also has a successful lm industry supported by a growing ICT sector. Wellington is the city with the highest percentage of people with a post-school qualication and with the highest incomes (see Table 1). New Zealands largest and most cosmopolitan city is Auckland with a population of 1,158,891. This city has the most ethnically diverse population in New Zealand. Housing is the most expensive in New Zealand, with average weekly rents one and a half times more than Dunedins. Auckland has the highest percentage of commercial and industrial activity of any New Zealand city and a strong ICT sector. Thus it was theorized that talking with women from these four cities would provide a diverse range of opinions and work experience. Drawing the sample proved to be very interesting. It was decided to use a convenience method and ask women working in ICT in the four target cities if they were interested in participating in the study. In order to reach them, an invitation was posted on the NZ Computer Society and Women in Technology websites, giving the researchers contact details. While 10 individual interviews from each city were sought, many more women than expected responded, particularly from Auckland. Therefore it was decided that, in addition to the individual interviews, focus groups would also be conducted in order to talk with all the women wanting to take part. The subject obviously resonated with many women. Table 2 shows the number of women from each city who participated in individual and paired interviews and focus groups. The high response rate highlights a limitation of the research. It is possible that as these were willing volunteers, who were obviously well-motivated to take part in the study, this may have skewed the data. However, the

Table 2: Numbers participating in interviews and focus groups by location

Focus groups Individual Couple 3456interviews interviews person person person person Total 10 10 11 7 10 14 13 33

Location Dunedin Christchurch Wellington Auckland

4 2 2 3 15 6

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opportunity was also available for disaffected women and to those with complaints and it was expected that some of these women would come forward, especially given the perceived nature of the ICT culture. As it transpired, the majority of participants were positive about, and happy in, their work. However, while the data cannot be claimed to be representative of women in the ICT sector, they nevertheless have value and shed light on a number of interesting and important issues. At least two interviewers were present at all the interviews and focus groups to ensure that there were checks and balances in place to try and maintain uniformity and reduce researcher bias. A social constructivist approach was taken to analysing the data, using Pattons (1990) suggestions for content analysis of qualitative data. The software program QSR N6 (Qualitative Solutions and Research, 2002) was used to code the data and draw out themes and strands. The ndings from the research around the themes of entry to the ICT workforce, salaries and other conditions of employment, and aspects of the culture of computing are reported in this article. Regional differences are also identied.

Demographics
There were 70 women in the sample. However, not all the data were complete. This was because of the nature of focus groups the free-ranging discussions sometimes meant that not all participants said, for example, how they entered the ICT eld or the size of rm in which they were employed. In addition, some participants did not complete the demographic information sheet. In terms of regional differences, there was a very high level of job stability in Dunedin, where there were perceived to be few alternative ICT options locally. This is reected in Table 3, where the average age band is the highest of any of the regions and the average salary is the lowest. In contrast, the Wellington and Auckland women moved jobs frequently and had a broader range of work and organizational experiences than their southern counterparts.

Table 3: Number of respondents, salaries and age

Location Dunedin Christchurch Wellington Auckland No of respondents 9 14 11 33 Av. salary (NZ $) 56,667 63,846 83,182 74,609 Av. age band 4044 3539 3539 3539

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The women from Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland were most commonly in the 3539 age band, highlighting the common perception that ICT is a young persons game. However, this may be a manifestation of a higher level of motivation on the part of younger women to take part in the research. Of all these cities, Wellington had the most women earning $100,000+ with seven of the 11 respondents in this category. This is considered a high salary in New Zealand, where the average full-time annual earnings are $40,924. In addition, only 12 per cent of women workers in New Zealand earn more than $100,000 (New Zealand Immigration Service, 2003). The Wellington gure reects the high number of respondents working in the public sector, where salaries are often better than in the private sector. Only six Auckland respondents were in the $100,000+ salary category and there were none in either Christchurch or Dunedin. Another marked difference in the four locations was in the size of the rms that employed the women (see Table 4). Most respondents in micro and small organizations were running their own business. The womens jobs were also categorized according to Statistics New Zealands classication of highly skilled, managerial or skilled. Highly skilled includes, for example the system analyst, senior software engineer and business analyst. Managerial includes the ICT manager, account manager, business development manager; and skilled includes the software developer, engineer, help desk co-ordinator. Table 5 shows the distribution by location of women in each of these categories. In summary, the Dunedin women were all employed in large organizations and the majority of them were in managerial or skilled jobs. This city had the lowest proportion of women in highly skilled positions, possibly

Table 4: Number of respondents by organization size

Size of organization* Micro: < 5 employees Small: 649 employees Medium: 5099 employees Large: > 100 employees

Dunedin 9

Christchurch 6 2 1 5

Wellington 1 10

Auckland 2 4 4 8

Total 8 7 5 32

* This is the categorization of organization size used most commonly in New Zealand.

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Table 5: Number of respondents in each location by job category

Dunedin Highly skilled Managerial Skilled 3 2 4 Christchurch 5 5 2 Wellington 8 2 1 Auckland 17 11 4 Total 33 20 11

reecting the conservatism identied in the city councils report. The Christchurch group could be said to be the most entrepreneurial: most of them worked in micro or small organizations and of these, many were running their own businesses. Although self-employment meant hard work, these women found it liberating and empowering as they had control over their own environment and dened the culture of their organization, which gave them the exibility to balance all aspects of their lives. All but two of the respondents were in highly skilled or managerial jobs. In Wellington, 10 of the 11 respondents were in highly skilled or managerial jobs and all but one was in a large organization, an indication of the large government sector and the fact that it is the main centre for national head ofces. Auckland had a good spread of women by both organizational size and work classication, thus reecting the size and diversity of the city.

ICT as a career
All the women were asked how they came to be working in ICT. The responses fell into three categories: 1 Career choice: where the woman had made a clear decision to enter the ICT workforce: there was never any doubt that I was going to be an ICT person ... at the age of eight [I did] my rst computer programming. It was just part of me. 2 Natural progression: for example, where a woman had been a secretary then moved to the help desk and then moved on to a business analysis or project management position. 3 Serendipity: I did an HR degree then worked for a corporate who did not let graduates work in their discipline for the rst two years and they put me in ICT ... and I looked around the room and I thought were not going to last long these people and I ... they had good programmers but [they were] not necessarily programming what the business wanted, so I became ICT project manager. Twenty-nine had chosen ICT as a career; eight had progressed naturally into ICT and it was serendipity for the remaining women. However, many
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Table 6: Participants highest qualications, by location

Post- ICT No/incomplete Certicate Diploma Degree grad industry qualications 2 2 2 6 4 2 3 3 4 6 9 4 2 10 1 2 1 1 3

Location Dunedin Christchurch Wellington Auckland

Note: Missing data for three interviewees.

women had considered more stereotypical female career paths such as teaching or nursing, but had an experience, such as a vacation job, which introduced them to an ICT career. Six women had undertaken an aptitude test which showed that they were strong in logic and well suited to a career in ICT, while others had been encouraged by a signicant person, such as a parent, brother or boyfriend, to try ICT. There is an increasing trend in New Zealand, as in other countries (ScottDixon, 2004), for IT employers to require degree qualications in their staff. These do not need to be in IT or computing. Those women who did not have degrees were very aware of this and how it might impact negatively on their future progress. Table 6 shows that nearly half of the women had completed a university degree and only three reported no qualications. A handful of them had a bachelor of arts or a bachelor of education degree, but most had a science or commerce degree or a specialist degree in information technology. One woman had a Ph.D. in English literature, but was attracted to an ICT career because she was a Net freak right from when the Internet was rst available. A further 10 women had a university or polytechnic diploma and a few others had industry qualications. Overall, the sample was a welleducated and qualied group of women.

Attitudes to the job

In their study of gendered patterns in computing work in the late 1990s (referred to earlier in this article) Panteli et al. (2001) looked at both male and female attitudes to computing work on 12 factors. They found the scores of their women respondents, relative to the men in their sample, were particularly high on the three factors of responsibility, job interest and job challenge. They also reported that men rated salary importance signicantly higher than women.
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Table 7: Factor importance rating for women in their jobs

Factor Job interest Job challenge Responsibility Salary Employer reputation Career prospects Flexi-time Location Job security Training Job status Industry sector Fringe benets Childcare N 67 67 67 67 66 67 67 67 67 67 67 66 67 66 Mean 4.66 4.43 4.00 3.97 3.88 3.84 3.73 3.67 3.60 3.55 3.49 3.18 3.07 2.14 Rank 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

It was decided to use some of their variables but for this women-only study, the additional factors of childcare and exi-time were included. The women were asked to rate the importance to them of all factors using a ve-point scale. They were also asked to estimate the importance rating of the same factors to their organization as it was hypothesized that this would serve as an indicator of organizational t and as a proxy for job satisfaction. In the event, organizational rating proved to be problematic for many of the women and there were too many missing data to enable any reliable comparisons to be made, or tests of signicant difference to be conducted. In addition, differences among the four cities in the study could not be reliably calculated, because of the small size of the Dunedin, Christchurch and Wellington groups. Therefore, Table 7 reports the means on each factor for the total sample and provides a rank for each factor from 1 to 14. These results show that the most important factors to the women in the survey were responsibility, job interest and job challenge, with job interest being rated at the very high end of the scale. This is particularly interesting, as it matches Panteli et al.s (2001) results. A survey looking at retention was recently undertaken by a US consultancy, Net Future Institute Research, (Martin, 2006). They found the prime factor in retention was a cultural match between the organization and ICT person and two other major factors in retaining the ICT professional were exibility and autonomy/challenge. The women in the New Zealand study rated salary fourth, towards the high end of the scale. In the interviews, salary certainly came through as an important consideration for women, particularly the younger and more assertive group in Auckland, a number of whom said that they had left an
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employer because of a low salary or threatened to go to another position unless they were given a pay increase. The ICT industry is characterized by high churn or turnover rate (Sumner and Niederman, 20032004) and particularly in Wellington the women indicated that it was standard practice to gain promotion by changing jobs. There was a general belief that men were better at negotiating both higher starting salaries and increases to their salary. The women suggested that men understood how to negotiate; they were more aggressive and brought greater condence in their abilities to the negotiating table. Many of the women believed this was the male way, thus indicating an essentialist attitude in recognizing gender differences in negotiation behaviour. Such behaviour is reinforced by the socially constructed reality of society where men know through their social experience that they are expected to be more aggressive and where many women have learned that aggression, loudness and overcondence are not what society expects from women. This is consistent with Ernests (1995) hypothesis that social and cultural interactions contribute to the internal construction of self and ones beliefs and attitudes. Employer reputation and career prospects, at fth and sixth rankings respectively, suggest that the women in the survey had quite a strong career orientation. The data from the ratings were also tested to see if there were differences between respondents on lower salaries, dened as less than $70,000 and those on higher salaries, dened as those on $70,000+. Some interesting and signicant differences were found (see Table 8). Table 8 shows that for those women on lower salaries, fringe benets, job security and childcare were more important than for those on higher salaries. The difference on fringe benets is highly signicant at the <0.01 level. It stands to reason that for women on lower salaries, these factors will be more important, especially childcare, which can be very expensive, particularly in the large cities. However, this factor did not have a high importance rating overall with a mean of just 2.14 and while it is more important to those on lower salaries, it is not considered a highly important factor even to these women. The sample included a number of women with children (see Table 9) but, given the average age band for most respondents of 3539 and the fact that the Dunedin group was older, it is a reasonable assumption that most of the children of these women would be of school age and therefore exi-time could be of more importance to working mothers. Flexi-time was rated seventh in importance while childcare had the lowest rating at 14th. Table 9 shows that most of the women had no children (45 compared with 19) and there was little difference in these numbers between the lower and higher salary bands (24 women earning $25,001$70,000 and 21 earning $70,001 and above). No data are available relating to the number of children. The majority of the women earning within the higher salary bands of $50,001$100,000 did not have children (30 compared with 11) but of the 13 who reported their salaries in the top band of $100,000 or more, seven were
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Table 8: Differences on factor ratings between women on high and low salaries
Factor Job status Salary N 34 31 33 31 34 31 34 31 34 31 34 31 34 31 34 30 34 31 34 31 34 31 34 31 34 30 34 31 Means Signicance 3.41 3.58 3.33 3.00 3.35 2.77 3.85 3.26 3.94 4.00 3.68 3.42 3.62 3.65 3.68 4.07 3.65 4.35 4.59 4.71 4.24 4.61 3.79 3.84 2.50 1.67 3.79 3.58 0.428 0.178 0.005* 0.033** 0.748 0.272 0.901 0.061 0.000* 0.372 0.047** 0.841 0.020** 0.434

low high Industry sector low high Fringe benets low high Job security low high Salary low high Training low high Location low high Employer reputation low high Responsibility low high Job interest low high Job challenge low high Career prospects low high Childcare low high Flexi-time low high * p = 0.01; ** p = 0.05.

without, and six did have children. Most of the women in the lower salary bands of $30,001$50,000 and (excluding the part-time worker in the lowest band) did not have children (seven, compared with two who did). Many of these women were in the younger age group and possibly reect the trend in New Zealand for women to delay the birth of their rst child until their midto late thirties (Statistics New Zealand, 2004a). During the interviews several women who were nearing their 40s discussed the problem of whether to have a child. They were concerned how (and if) they could balance work and motherhood, recognizing the limitations of New Zealands social security system. Although public policy relating to families compare favourably with other OECD countries (Adema, 2006)
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Table 9: Women with and without children by income and region

Dunedin Income (000 $) 2530 3040 4050 5070 70100 >100 Total Yes No * 2 2 2 3 2 7 2 1 3 Christchurch Yes No * 2 * 5 3 10 Wellington Yes No * 1 * 1 * 4 6 Auckland Yes 1** 3 3 3 10 1 1 8 8 3 21 No Total Yes 0 0 2 7 4 6 19 No 1 6 1 16 14 7 45

2 3 5

* missing or incomplete data; ** Part-time worker.

intensity of care and education support for families varies with the age of children. There are entitlements such as day care assistance subsidies and paid parental leave that equate to the mothers normal pay if an employee, and an average wage if self employed. Payments are made for a maximum of 14 weeks and can be transferred to a spouse or partner. Most New Zealand children participate in early childhood services at the age of three and four but the type of service provided does not necessarily help parents to hold down a full-time job. The importance of childcare, as rated by the women on lower salaries, reects the gendered socially constructed assumption that women (despite working similar hours to their partners and spouses) should, and do, assume the major responsibilities for caring for children. While it is generally accepted in the western world that women have careers, the assumptions that maintain the gender-specic division of labour around family and home responsibilities remain largely unchallenged. The accepted knowledge and beliefs of a society reinforces the greatest viability (Tobin and Tippins, 1993) whereby the dominance of men in senior, higher-salaried occupations renders it more viable for women to continue assuming these parental and familial responsibilities. The second set of signicant differences relate to those women on the higher salaries. For this group, responsibility and job challenge were rated as more important than they were by the lower salary group and these differences were statistically signicant. Responsibility had the most signicant difference of all the factors where there is a marked difference between the two groups of women. What is also of interest is that employer reputation had a signicance level of 0.06, which is extremely close to being statistically
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signicant, suggesting that it is the higher salary group who are driving this factor in terms of importance. This further suggests that a cluster of factors becomes more important as a woman advances in her career. These are responsibility, job challenge and employer reputation. Thus the data appear to indicate that for those on higher salaries, intrinsic factors such as job challenge and responsibility are more important than extrinsic factors and will act as the motivators and drivers of job satisfaction. However, for those on lower salaries, extrinsic factors (fringe benets and job security) are more important than intrinsic factors.

The culture of ICT

Many gender and ICT researchers assert that the computing environment has a unique culture which is unattractive to women (Margolis et al., 19992000; Turkle, 1988; Woodeld, 2002b). Historically there has been a perception of the long-haired, bearded, bespectacled, smelly, male programmer locked in his room, working day and night doing mysterious things on the computer. These geeks have poor communication and social skills and can only talk to fellow geeks about computing in a language not understood by the general population. Because of this they have an aura of secrecy and intelligence and they use this to exercise power by excluding those who do not understand their language. Such an image has made a powerful contribution to the perception of the computing work environment as masculine. The participants of this study all cited examples of this stereotypical image, although there were regional differences in how they were perceived. In Auckland, the general consensus was that the geek was still around but was becoming a dying breed. One senior manager referred to them as nutters and emphasized that she met them all the time. She believed that they tended to be in the older age group. Another manager said she had to enforce a rule that if anybody became stuck on a problem after two or three hours they had to ask somebody for help because you leave a computer geek to it, they will sit on the problem for two or three days quite happily trying to sort it out themselves. One interviewee referred to their lack of involvement with the human race. Several managers stated that their biggest problem was trying to get ICT staff to communicate with and support each other. They commented that there remained a culture of individuality, whereby even when they were working on group projects, they tended to work as a group of individuals just getting the job done. In Wellington and Christchurch the perception was that there were, and would continue to be, technical specialists, mainly male, who preferred to work on their own, usually in programming, networking and hardware. The women often referred to them as brilliant, intelligent and brainy and saw them as an important part of the ICT business. According to the Dunedin
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participants, none of the organizations represented in this study employed this type of person. While the average weekly hours worked in all jobs in New Zealand for 2004 are reported as 39.57 for men and 29.41 for women (Statistics New Zealand, 2004b) there continues to be an unwritten expectation, accepted by many of the women, that long hours are the norm if you work in ICT. This is due to the nature of the work itself: projects must be completed on time; systems must be kept running 24 7. This, of course, places pressure on those women with families who juggle the workhome nexus. The female ICT managers were very aware of the difculties involved in this balancing act and put in place a variety of helpful strategies. These managers believed that their male peers did not have the same empathy to the gendered reality of the dichotomous imperatives of family and work. Questions relating to the culture of computing; for example, How would you describe the culture of your IT workplace? and, Before joining the IT workforce, what sort of image did you have of people who worked in computing? resulted in the interviewees discussing differences in communication styles between male and female workers. There was agreement that the technical people (mostly male) used tech speak which inhibited and at times intimidated client communication. One woman explained that the language is different and they are always talking buzz words. This excludes other people because they start using words nobody understands. Many of the positions held by the women involved interpreting and translating between the ICT developers and the client. The women tended to deal with ICT business issues while the technical aspects (programming, networking and hardware installations) were almost exclusively handled by men. The use of communication as an agent of control and power was identied by some women. One interviewee, responding to the question on culture, said: women are intuitively better at communicating. They like to share information around. Men do not like to relinquish their power that is why they dont share information. The different male and female patterns of communication include women using communication for interaction and adopting a more collaborative approach to work than many of their male colleagues (Brush et al., 2004); necessary attributes in an industry that increasingly emphasizes teamwork. Panteli et al. (2001) concluded from their study that gendered relations in computing work are constructed in routine day-to-day interactions such as language and communication. The collaborative communication style identied by the women dilutes and diffuses power and control in the workplace but, while the industry remains male dominated, masculine values and norms will continue to accord them legitimacy and power. Analysis of the data about culture found that ICT jobs are becoming gendered in different ways; that is, women are mainly in the areas requiring effective communication and management skills and the technical people continue to be men. Unlike Panteli et al.s (2001) ndings from their UK study
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that such roles were seen as lower status and had less value, the New Zealand participants believed that they played an increasingly important role and that they received equivalent remuneration to their male colleagues working in the technical areas. There was also an essentialist belief, strongly held by the majority of the women interviewed, that men and women have quite clearly delineated and inherently different skills and abilities. These views reect the subtle and covert inuence of decades of gendered socialization and the resulting male and female stereotyping.

Conclusion
This article has presented some of the ndings from a national study of women in the ICT industry in New Zealand. Analysing the data through a social constructivist lens has allowed us to explore the relationship between the individual and the subculture of the four different regions. A comparison of data from the four cities in the study found some interesting differences, particularly in relation to the kinds of jobs that respondents were in, the size of the rm in which they worked, their salaries and their perception of technical personnel. The culture and size of each city, together with its geographic position, contribute to these differences. Women from the most southern (and most conservative) city, Dunedin, had fewer employment opportunities because many industries had moved to northern cities; unemployment was higher; their average salary was lower and their organizations did not employ the male geek. Overall, Christchurch women were more likely to be self-employed or working in small organizations. They perceived the male, technical people as important to the industry as did the women in Wellington. Salaries for the women in Wellington and Auckland were higher than in the South Island. Wellington women were more likely to be working in large organizations and promotion was commonly gained by movement within the industry. In Auckland the sample was younger and more assertive than those in the other cities. They perceived the geek to be a dying breed, demanded promotion and salary increases and were prepared to change jobs if they were not satised. The regional differences show how the socially constructed world inuenced the womens expectations of their workplace and their gendered spheres. The majority of the women did not have children, perhaps a reection of the national trend for women to delay the birth of their rst child until their 30s, combined with the long hours culture and the lack of exibility due to the nature of the industry. Particularly in Auckland, the younger women of childbearing age expressed concern about how they would cope with the responsibilities of their jobs plus managing a family. This also reects the gendered socially constructed assumption of New Zealand society that domestic responsibilities remain the domain of women.
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The results of the study revealed a gendered division of labour in the ICT work place. The women adopted an essentialist stance when referring to their inherent feminine attributes, specically the differences in communication style and patterns and consequently their suitability for particular IT roles. The essentialist view supports and perpetuates the stereotypes of the hegemonic masculine computing culture, identied as a factor contributing to the low representation of women in the ICT workforce. It was surprising that this group of well-educated and sometimes highly qualied women did not question the gendered division of labour, rather attributing it to male and female essentialist traits. Many of the women held higher degrees, and were in well-paid, responsible jobs, they were mostly assertive and ambitious and they lived in a high equity country listed by the World Economic Forum as sixth behind Scandinavian countries (ahead of Canada, the UK, Germany and Australia) (McGregor, 2005). We had expected that they would be attuned to the implications and consequences of a maledominated culture organized around gender through denitions of jobs as womens or mens work (Newman, 1995). Such denitions perpetuate stereotypes, an attribute of the computing culture. By failing to challenge these stereotypes through continuing adherence to an essentialist stance, the gendered non-neutrality of the computing culture will continue to be sustained. However, the essentialist stance did not extend to the womens views on salaries, opportunities for promotion and training and willingness to leave for a better-paid job, thereby providing the prospect of further changes to the culture as the environment and attitudes of society evolve over time. The womens assertive attitudes and actions demonstrate their unquestioning belief that they should have equality in these areas, thus contributing to a gradual reshaping of gender relations and practices within the IT industry and capturing the sense that technology and society are mutually constituting hence, the coproduction of gender and technology (Faulkner, 2001, p. 90). We acknowledge that the process will be slow, if not glacial, but are hopeful that what has been socially shaped can be reshaped (Faulkner, 2001), thereby further changing the computing culture. Based on both qualitative and quantitative data the ndings of this preliminary study contribute to a greater understanding and theorization of gender and IS. We have shown that context and place affect the gendered realities of women in the ICT industry. The research is now being extended by a national study of both male and female ICT professionals, thus providing a broader view of work life and human resource issues. The results will enable a comparison to be made between male and female perceptions and thus shed further light on some of the issues that have been discussed in this article. They will also contribute to informing workplace practice and policy and may serve to attract more women to an industry where a skills shortage is likely in the future.
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Note
1. The terms, information and communications technology (ITC), information technology (IT), and information systems (IS) are used interchangeably in this article.

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Winner, L. (1993) Social constructivism: opening the black box and nding it empty. Science as Culture, 3,16, 42752. Woodeld, R. (2002a) Woman and information systems development: not just a pretty (inter)face? Information Technology and People, 15,2, 11937. Woodeld, R. (2002b) Women, Work and Computing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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