Gender Disparity in Students’ Choices of Information Technology Majors

Zhang Yu (), Gros Tristen () and Mao En ()
Additional contact information
Zhang Yu: Mount St. Joseph University, Cincinnati, Ohio, United States
Gros Tristen: Nicholls State University, Thibodaux, Louisiana, United States
Mao En: Nicholls State University, Thibodaux, Louisiana, United States

Business Systems Research, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 80-95

Abstract: Background: The gender disparity in the Information Technology (IT) field has persisted over the years. In 2018, only 27.2% of IT workers were women. Once hired, women face more challenges, and they are leaving the field twice as fast as men are. The misconception that women are weak in tech is one of the root causes of gender disparity issues in IT. Objectives: We examine the gender disparity in students’ choices of IT majors, as well as the decision process of Computer Information Systems (CIS) graduates. Methods/Approach: We use the United States public universities’ student data from 2010 to 2018. Both the Pooled and the Satterthwaite t-test are used to investigate the gender disparity issue among the students. Results: Our results support our hypothesis that female students are statistically less likely to choose CIS than their male peers are. An additional analysis of students’ grades in CIS courses shows that female students perform equally well as male students do. We did not find any evidence that it takes longer for female students to get the CIS degree; however, female students did change their majors more often. Conclusions: Female students tend to avoid IT majors; they often think they may not do well in the courses; however, such an assumption is not true. Our findings provide strategies for university and high school administration to be more proactive in developing recruiting strategies to attract and retain female CIS students.

Keywords: information technology; computer information systems; gender disparity; information technology education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 I24 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2478/bsrj-2021-0006 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bit:bsrysr:v:12:y:2021:i:1:p:80-95:n:2

DOI: 10.2478/bsrj-2021-0006

Access Statistics for this article

Business Systems Research is currently edited by Mirjana Pejić Bach

More articles in Business Systems Research from Sciendo
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().