What I'm Not Willing to Share: A Discussion of Turnover and Barriers to Promotion with Women IT Workers

In 2002, women comprised 46.6% of the overall U.S. workforce; however, the percentage of women in the Information Technology (IT) workforce in 2002 was only 34.9%. In 1996, the percentage of women in the IT workforce was 41%. To help explain the declining and overall disproportionate number of women in IT, we designed an in-depth study to analyze the individual cognitions of women working in IT to determine the causes of turnover intention as well as the perceived challenges women currently face. We employed a qualitative research design using a revealed causal mapping approach to identify key concepts surrounding the challenges women in IT face regarding promotion and turnover. In our analysis we identified implicit causal statements and created a cognitive map of the concepts and linkages between the concepts surrounding this issue. The concepts evoked are Barriers/Promotion, Challenges/Stress, Work Schedule Flexibility, Barriers/Age and Barriers/Problems with Respect.