ICT Definition Implication on ICT Career Choice and Exclusion among Women

Abstract

ICT is driving all areas of the economy and is likely to dictate the future for all genders. The narrow definition of ICT has greatly impacted on the female gender choosing ICT as a career of choice. There are few women in the ICT careers. The study sought to determine the nature of ICT career gender exclusion, status and trend of ICT job opportunities, source of ICT gender career exclusion and the contribution of the narrow definition to the exclusion. A mixed method of survey and desktop method was employed in this study. A structured questionnaire was used in this study in order to identify the factors that influence ICT career choice amongst Kenyan lady students. A purposive sample of Information Technology and Computer Science undergraduate university students (77 females, 56 males; age range 17 to 35 years) and 10 postgraduate students in Information Technology from two public universities participated in the study. The paper discusses the emerging unfilled ICT jobs. The study established that the narrow definition negatively influences ICT as a career of Choice among girls. Broadening ICT definition to include ICT related careers that have more social rather than technical aspect accordingly is likely to influence more women to join the field.

The Influence of Culture on Women’s IT Career Choices

“…Career choices are made by young people during their early secondary school career [27]. This is a similar assertion made by Armstrong and Riemenschneider [4] who examined an earlier model by scholar Ahuja [2], which noted that the choice of a career in IT is made years before the individual starts working.…”

Career choice for ICT among Liberian students: A multi-criteria decision-making study using analytical hierarchy process

“…Current estimates show that most ICT workers have either earned their degrees from a university or vocational education and training institutions in Africa. Many important factors fuel the growth and supply of skilled ICT employees on the continent, including graduate-level job prospects, a well-defined career roadmap to guide career aspirations, and an employer-friendly environment that promotes employability [ [2] , [3] , [4] ].…”

dearth of feminist empirical research on women’s active participation in the ICT sector

“…• male dominated (Allen et al, 2007;Haraway, 1997;Kutanis & Bayraaktaroglu, 2003;Wajcman, 2010), as revealed in the masculine terms (Wajcman, 2004) used to describe this field, such as, "boys club" or "man's world" (Sekeleni, 2014) • marked by gender differences in occupations (Dlamini, 2012;Sekeleni, 2014;Women in IT Scorecard, 2015), as evidenced by women's declining representation (Kvochko, 2016;Lewis et al, 2007;Webb & Young, 2005), especially in key ICT decision-making environments (Mamabolo, 2016), where women find it difficult to break the "glass ceiling" (Cape Times, 2015) • characterised by a conspicuous widening of the digital divide in ICT skills and usage between males and females (Douglas, 2016;World Economic Forum, 2013), which can be attributed to historic structural inequalities in the education system (across all levels), where girls or women, from both developed (Interface 3, 2015) and developing nations (Njoki et al, 2016;OFSTED, 2009;Whyte, 2010) still have limited access to ICT education • notable for the marked differences in the "horizontal" and "vertical" employment of males and females (Bettio & Verashchagina, 2009;Ghoshal & Passerini, 2006;Al Sebaie, 2015), which is ascribed to the glaring gaps in the ICT skills of males and females (MICT SETA, 2014) as reported in a recent ICT skills survey (Schofield, 2016); • characterised by patriarchal (Haraway, 1997;Paasonen 2005) and cultural (Teoh & Chong, 2014;Sekeleni, 2014) predispositions that encourage women's subordination within the sector in terms of their role and contribution (McQuillan, 2009;Minniti, 2010), which is often regarded as being of less significance (Ahl, 2006) compared to that of their male counterparts -a supposition rooted in a c...…”