Starting the Conversation:
The First Eight Months of Interviews
Throughout the fall and winter, we've been speaking to women
like you who work in the IT field. As we've gone along, we've
noticed several similarities across the interviews. Sometimes,
your input has helped us revise our interview questions so
that we include the issues that seem to be the most salient
and important. We've also been compiling an annotated bibliography
to help frame our analysis of the interviews.
One of the most striking observations that we've made is
that the field of IT work is so diverse. We've talked to project
managers, network administrators, web developers, managers
of client relations and operations, instructors, technical
writers, and business analysts. The literature often discusses
the work of programming, so our study offers an important
addition to the research into women and IT learning and work.
(We'd still like to talk to software programmers and engineers
– if you know of someone who might be interested in participating
in the study, please share our contact information with her!)
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Emerging Themes
Even with this difference in research focus, we've found
that the participants in our study reiterate some of the main
findings of other research.
Education:
Some of you have an educational background in computer science,
but most of you don't. Research acknowledges that there are
many learning pathways into the IT field, and we plan to use
this study as a way to outline what those might look like.
Experiential learning:
Despite your diverse educational backgrounds and jobs, you
all described the important of on-the-job learning to your
success at work. IT is a fast-moving field, and it is impossible
to rely on academic preparation to supply all of the knowledge
and skills that anyone working in the IT field will need.
Working with others:
When we discuss the things that you like most  about
your IT work, we often hear an emphasis on working collaboratively
with other people. Words like “bridging”, “communicating”
and “soft skills” are often used to describe what you see
as the key parts of your work. This is consistent with literature
on women’s learning and work styles, even if it doesn’t correspond
to the image that many people have of IT as a “geeky”, solitary
field.
Interests:
Some of you talk about being drawn to the IT field and your
work because it allows you to realize other interests. Sometimes,
these are things that you feel quite passionately about –
social activism, the success of a business dream, contributing
to an organization or cause that is important – but not computers
themselves. Findings of published literature suggest that
women tend to be interested in computers as one of several
interests, and are most likely to use them as a way to connect
interests and communicate with one another. Men, on the other
hand, seem more likely to relate to computers as objects to
be tinkered and played with, taken apart and put back together.
Intuition:
Intuition was surfacing as a topic in our early interviews,
so we added a question about it. Some of the ways in which
participants have talked about intuition are as a “gut feeling”,
or being able to use past experience to guide learning in
new situations, or as a “pre-verbal instinct”. Another word
related to intuition that we’ve used in some of our interviews
is “bricolage”. This comes out of the literature, and refers
to the ability to piece together knowledge from our experiences
as a strategy for learning new skills and solving new problems.
Although the IT field is often seen as one guided by conceptual,
rather than concrete, approaches and knowledge, some key researchers
have found that it describes one way of knowing and learning
in IT work, particularly for women.
Newcomers to Canada:
For those in our study who are in IT training programs, many
of you are recent immigrants to Canada who come with ltos
ofknowledge, skills and experience but face barriers to having
your skills recognized by Canadian employers. Some even found
it difficult to gain entry to some of the IT women's organizations.
You've spoken about how good the training has been and how
important it is for the programs to be connected to eomplyers
in the IT industry. Many, even withthe training, are finding
it hard to find work as it's a very competitive time.
Mentoring and networking:
Mentors have been mentioned in many interviews as important
teachers and supports. On the other hand, comments have often
been made about the difficulty finding a mentor or supportive
network.
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Next steps…
Some of you have had your transcripts returned to you for
review and comment. This is the last step before we get underway
with our analysis. Interviews will continue for the next few
months, as we begin the analysis. (Again, if you know other
women who might be interested in participating in the study,
please feel free to share our contact information.) We’ll
be presenting a preliminary analysis in June at a meeting
of teams working on a collaborative study of lifelong learning,
including our team. We’ll also be working on a website for
our case study, and will be developing an online survey to
complement the interviews that we’ve been conducting. We’d
like to keep in touch with participants through a series of
updates like this one and more formal information sheets outlining
interesting parts of our analysis. Please remember that if
you have any questions or comments about this study, you can
always contact us.
Thank you for your contribution!
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