Collegiate Times

A team of three scholars at Virginia Tech has identified five factors that influence the choices of women who are interested in or are pursuing careers in information technology.

The research was conducted by Carol Burger, director of the Science and Gender Equity program; Peggy S. Meszaros, director of the Center for Information Technology Impacts on Children, Youth and Families; and Elizabeth Creamer, professor in the School of Education.

Meszaros said the team found that study participants had certain shared characteristics, including minority status and parents ? especially mothers ? who supported their career choices.

The study found that these women start using a computer at an early age for communication and information purposes, not usually for computer games like their male peers and they have a positive view of IT professionals and their careers. They do not think about it in terms of being a ?geek? or ?nerd,? Meszaros said.

 These women have not discussed career options with many others, Meszaros said. Those who seek more information tend to be less interested in pursing a career in IT.

?One of our most surprising findings was the failure to find a significant connection between career choice and information,? Creamer said. ?Our findings suggest that many students are relying on a small group of trusted others for career guidance and making career choices with little real information.?

The National Science Foundation funded the research project, Creamer said.

The team used a Path Analysis model, which involved conducting telephone interviews and surveys with 1,026 girls at high schools, universities and community colleges from all parts of Virginia, Meszaros said. The schools included Pulaski, Wytheville, Giles, Fairfax and Hampton high schools, and New River Valley Community College , George Mason University, Norfolk State, Old Dominion and Virginia Tech.

The research results are being presented in a 20-minute DVD called ?The Power of Partners.? The results were recently shared with an international group of researchers at a conference the team hosted in Oxford, England.
Meszaros said the DVD portrays the lives of girls and women and the support systems around them using the metaphor of a tandem bicycle.

?The metaphor is that the girl is always on the front of the tandem bicycle, providing the direction, but on the back is what we call a stoker ? the people who support the girl. The support around her helps propel her towards the IT career,? Meszaros said.

The target audience for the DVD, Meszaros said, includes parents, teachers, school counselors and college advisors.

?The interdisciplinary nature of our research team has meant not only the opportunity to reach diverse audiences with our research findings, but also that we have developed a model to explain interest and choice of an IT career that spans personal, family and environmental qualities,? Creamer said, ?We believe that we are the first to develop a DVD targeted to recruiting women to IT that is grounded in findings from a research project.?

Meszaros said she believes that the team?s results will be interesting to faculty who teach women in IT fields.
?What we know is that it is the support around women, whether it?s their family, their teachers, their school counselors, or their college advisors,? Meszaros said. ?That can make enormous difference in supporting these women to choose IT careers.?

?While math and science and the life sciences certainly have all had some end roads with females moving into those career paths, the IT career path, for whatever reason, seems to still present barriers. It is the one that is most resistant to females. We wanted to figure out why is that and how to get more women into that career path because it is expanding and it clearly is one that offers financial awards,? Meszaros said.

The team has spent four years researching the issue. In the future, the project will build on this project, but will extend it by looking at factors in the educational environment that influence undergraduate women?s persistence in engineering, Creamer said. The team will continue doing research on women for another three years, concentrating on engineering.