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2005),"Early determinants of women in the IT workforce: a model of girls' career choices", Information Technology & People, Vol. 18 Iss 3 pp. 230-259 http:// dx.If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation.Abstract This paper develops a theoretical perspective on gender and information technology (IT) by examining socio-cultural influences on women who are members of the information technology profession in Australia and New Zealand. In-depth interviews with both practitioners and academics give evidence of a range of socio-cultural influences on the professional development and working lives of women IT professionals. The paper rejects the essentialist view of women and their relationship to IT that has been put forth in the information systems literature arguing, instead, the primacy of societal and structural influences. The particular contribution of this paper is a theoretical perspective of individual differences which is presented to characterize the way individual women respond in a range of specific ways to the interplay between individual characteristics and environmental influences. This perspective contributes to a better understanding of women's involvement in the IT sector and suggests areas for proactive policy response.The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at

Recent changes in information systems technologies, applications, and personnel require us to reconsider the skills for tomorrow's IS professionals. This study uses data from four groups-IS managers, end-user managers, IS consultants, and IS professors-to identify the key skills and knowledge that will be required of future IS professionals. These requirements were then compared with current IS academic programs. The results reveal that despite a shared vision of the future IS professional, there is an "expectation gap" between industry needs and academic preparation. Industry and universities must work together to close this gap. Universities need to place more emphasis on the integration of technologies, applications, data, and business functions and less on traditional and formal system development. Firms need to send consistent messages to universities about their expectations while recognizing that the mission of university business programs is career education, not job training.

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