Line Holth

Career patterns for IT engineering graduates

Women constitute a clear minority in the field of information and communications technology (ICT) in higher education as well as in the job market. At the same time, this field is expected to have a shortage of qualified people in the future. Do women and men engineering graduates have the same career opportunities? This article problematizes the relationship between higher education in engineering and opportunities on the job market. The results show that men reach higher positions to a greater extent than women, and that women remain in low-qualification jobs to a greater extent than men.

Passionate men and rational women: gender contradictions in engineering

The dualism of rational/irrational and its relationship with masculinity and femininity has for a long time functioned as a process of including men in and excluding women from the fields of technology and engineering. This article highlights individuals, life stories, and everyday practices that deviate from this stereotypical division in order to pave the way for more diversified perceptions of the gender practices performed in engineering, specifically in relation to the place that technology has when women and men choose a career in engineering. Contradictory examples may thus serve to undermine the processes and the generalization perpetuating the stereotypical and prevalent perceptions of women and men and serve to challenge essential assumptions of gender and technology. The findings show that there are significant differences between the gender stereotypes of the engineer and engineers in reality, and that the ideology of rational men and irrational women in engineering is mistaken. This underlines the fact that neither gender nor technology is a constant or a given, but that it should continuously be reinterpreted. The empirical data consists of the life stories of 46 computer and mechanical engineers, 26 of whom are women and 20 men.

Gender, availability and dual emancipation in the Swedish ICT sector

Set in the context of the Swedish state’s agenda of dual emancipation for women and men, the article shows how a global ICT consultancy company’s formal gender equality goal is undermined by competing demands. Employing the concept of availability, in preference to work–life balance, the research found women opted out of roles requiring high degrees of spatial and temporal availability for work, in favour of roles more easily combined with family responsibilities. Such choices led to poor career development, plus the loss of technological expertise and confidence. These outcomes were at odds with the company’s gender equality aims, as well as government objectives to make it easier for women and men to combine work and family, and increase the number of women within ICT.