Changing Attitudes Toward Women IT Managers

Essentialism and social constructionism theories have long explained the difficulties women experience as they aspire to higher managerial positions or enter science and technology fields. In the 1970s, the Women as Managers Scale WAMS sought to determine the extent to which males perceived females as being different from their social group. Given efforts to encourage women to consider IT careers and changes in public law and education that have occurred since the early 1970s, this study revisited the WAMS to compare current attitudes of young people toward women as managers. The results suggest that through the intangible individual differences of women, perspective, overtime, via training, by awareness, and with their greater participation in the workplace, there has been gradual improvement in the perception of women as managers by men in the science and technology fields.

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