Gender and visible minority status: Career advancement in the Canadian information and communications technology sector

In spite of the economic downturn, demographic factors are expected to continue to produce a labour shortage particularly in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector. In Canada, the sector has signaled that critical skills shortages exist in certain areas although the extent of these shortages is the subject of much debate. While economists have suggested that by the year 2011, all labor force growth in Canada will come from immigration, research has shown that immigrants often face barriers to full employment. Similarly, women are under-represented in ICT and face a range of barriers to employment and advancement. Increasingly, both government and industry have asserted that more effective “management of diversity” could help alleviate the skills shortage. To date, research has focused on barriers to entering the workplace but less has focused career satisfaction even though there is evidence to suggest that these may have significant impact on employee retention and productivity. The role of demographic factors is complex. For example, in Canada, while all immigrants are not visible minorities and all visible minorities are not immigrants; recent immigrants are more likely to be visible minorities. In addition, the intersection of variables, such as gender and visible minority status, complicates the analysis. Our study examines demographic factors affecting career satisfaction among 7110 managers with a minimum of 10 years experience in nine large Canadian companies in the Information Communications and Technology Sector. We found that the gap between visible minorities and white/Caucasian respondents in perceptions of career satisfaction and factors affecting it, to be larger than the gap in perceptions of male and female respondents. More work is needed to address these issues if the ICT Sector is to effectively deal with the skills shortage.