Women's Interest in Information Technology

Gender Stereotypes and Attitudes Towards Information and Communication Technology Professionals in a Sample of Spanish Secondary Students

“…On the other hand, the findings regarding the prevalence of masculine references about role models working in the ICT field and professionals that design and develop ICT seem to support the masculine portrayal of ICT observed in US research (Bair and Marcus 2007;Goode et al 2006;Margolis and Fisher 2002). It also reinforces the social distribution of gender roles in ICT, as research conducted in the US (Cejka and Eagly 1999;Eagly et al 2000) and Germany (Hellinger and Bußmann 2003) shows.…”

“…However, research in the US has consistently highlighted that ICT is frequently viewed by secondary and college students in the US as solitary, unappealing, and full of geeky and nerdy men (Goode et al 2006;Margolis and Fisher 2002). Furthermore, most popular US media channels seem to transmit and reinforce this unappealing stereotype of people who work with computers (Bair and Marcus 2007;Barker and Aspray 2006;Cheryan et al 2013). But how do Spanish boys and girls express their attitudes towards the portrayal of ICT professionals?…”

“…Given US (Eccles 2007) and Spanish (Sáinz 2007) young females' interest in people-oriented occupations (congruent with feminine roles), it is therefore probable that these girls believe that these workers work in interaction with other people and are not as antisocial and weird as people think. In reality, professional practice in the US requires computer analysts to have excellent communication skills, playing an intermediary role between end users and stakeholders (Bair and Marcus 2007). Curiously, and despite showing more positive attitudes towards these workers' social skills, these Spanish (Sáinz and López-Sáez 2010) young females develop less interest than young males in pursuing computer-related studies.…”

“…Similarly, 'informáticos' (computer scientists) and 'gente normal que trabaja con ordenadores' (ordinary people who work with computers) were respectively coded under the categories 'professions oriented to the design and development of ICT services' and 'professions using ICT as a tool' (Castaño 2011;Zarrett and Malanchuk 2005). For the students' attitudes towards ICT professionals, and in line with the literature review (Bair and Marcus 2007;Greenwald and Banaji 1995;Goode et al 2006;Margolis and Fisher 2002;Meszaros et al 2007;Sáinz and López-Sáez 2010;Zarrett and Malanchuk 2005), responses were coded as 'positive,' 'negative', or 'neutral'. Examples of students' attitudes towards someone working in ICT were: 'personas inteligentes, con buen futuro laboral y salario' (intelligent people with good job prospects and income) (positive, represented 31 %: 216 out of 696), 'personas que se pasan todo el día en frente de la pantalla del ordenador y no son muy sociables' (people who spend their day in front of a computer screen and are not very sociable) (negative, represented 6.9 %: 48 out of 696), and 'profesores' (teachers) (neutral, represented 62.1 %: 432 out of 696).…”

“…Both North American (Bair and Marcus 2007;Barker and Aspray 2006;Goode et al 2006) and Spanish (Castaño 2011;Sáinz and López-Sáez 2010) research illustrates that ICT education and labor market are particularly male-dominated and very much gender-typed. In Spain, the rate of female university enrollments in computing is decreasing (around 17 %), in contrast to the moderate participation of women in telecommunications engineering (26 %) (Instituto de la Mujer [Women's Institute] 2012).…”