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Assimilation, Accommodation and Activism: How Women in the IT Workplace Cope
Abstract
Women are under-represented in the information technology (IT) professions. A sufficient understanding of the underlying causes of gender underrepresentation in the IT profession is needed in order to develop effective educational policies and workplace human resource strategies to attract and retain more women. Unfortunately, few theories exist about how some women manage to survive and succeed in this male domain. One line of research critically analyzes marginalized groups coping and competing within the IT power structure. This paper continues in that tradition by developing a framework for the categorization of women’s coping responses to gender issues found in the IT workplace. The framework integrates the findings from key multidisciplinary literature examining a variety of coping theories. The framework is based on the three types of women found in Trauth et al. (2000): Assimilation, Accommodation, and Activism. This coping responses framework will contribute to the development of new theories about the IT gender imbalance and provide a basis for interventions to promote change.
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