Nishtha Langer, professor of business analytics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has published a new study examining how gender affects the likelihood of promotions in the context of the IT industry. Her results were surprising: while women are heavily underrepresented in the IT workforce, they are also more likely to be promoted than their male counterparts.
Using a five-year dataset of the promotions, demographics, performance and training records of more than 7,000 employees at a leading IT services firm in India, Langer determined gender is a strong predictor of promotion. However, the story does not stop there, as the underlying reasons for this are still being examined. One reason could be that women are paid less, thus, they are a more cost-effective promotion. On the contrary, managers may find women more trustworthy than men.
Langer’s research is just the beginning, and while she stressed that much more research is necessary, she recently spoke to Laboratory Equipment about her paper published in Information Systems Research for this month’s “Women in Science.”
LE: As a general synopsis of your findings, what's the good news for women in the IT labor market?
Langer: There is hope for us. More and more organizations are looking to evaluate women the same as men. Despite the odds, high performance did not help women as much as men, but we found that training allowed women to say to employers, ‘We have the credentials. We can take on more responsibilities. You can trust us with this.’
LE: Conversely, what's the bad news?
Langer: In general, we found firms need to work on their evaluation system. One of the most interesting things we found was that women are more likely to be promoted compared with men, but in terms of their performance, they have to work harder. It’s possible firms are aware of the underrepresentation of women in IT so they are making sure their evaluations are fair. But, when they are performing as good as men, is it possible they are not being attributed as much credit as being responsible for their performance improvements?
It’s an age-old attribution problem? For instance, if men perform well, a manager might say, ‘it’s because he is capable and smart.” If a man does not perform well, a manager may say, ‘it’s out of his control, there were extenuating circumstances.’ For women, it’s sometimes the other way around. For women doing good programming and analysis, managers are saying, ‘maybe there are other factors helping her do well.’ If a woman is not performing well, a manager might say, ‘what can you expect? It’s a woman in IT. They aren’t expected to do well.’
LE: Was there anything in your findings that truly surprised you?
Langer: Initially, all the literature told us women are not more likely to be promoted than men, but we found the reverse. The margins are pretty small, but women are more likely. That was interesting and exciting. There are a number of factors that could be the reason for this, including that women have better management skills and these promotions are examining more of a managerial role than a technical or analytical role.
We know there is a difference in wages between women and men across the world. In the United States, it is 80 cents to the dollar. It is possible, organizations are looking to promote women because they are the more cost-effective article. We need more research as to the underlying reasons.
We also found that training is much more important for women and men, and that was very surprising. Women know they are competing in a man’s world so they may be putting more emphasis on training.
LE: That’s interesting. Could you expand on the finding that training is a more effective tool for women than for men when it comes to signaling their preparedness for promotion?
Langer: We didn’t find any significant differences in terms of men and women in their propensity to take the training, but at the same time women are more likely to be promoted than men who take the same training. Its possible women are using the training tools better, or that they are taking more/better courses to signal to managers that they are ready for a promotion. Managers may also finally be giving women more credit for taking the trainings. Each of these options may be fully valid. More research is needed. Our research is just the beginning into this foray.
LE: Based on your research, what are some recommendations for women who want to get ahead in IT?
Langer: They should definitely take courses that will help them get ahead. Looking at the IT market right now, more emphasis should be put on analytics and data science. For companies themselves, they should provide better mentors for women. Everyone needs mentorship. Men can sometimes get by with the old “water cooler” method of checking in with a manager every now and then, but women need to find better mentors. It would help if organizations had better mentoring structures in place.
LE: Your study focuses on the IT labor market, but can the findings be applied to women in STEM? And even women in non-STEM related fields that are traditionally male-dominated?
Langer: It can. The whole idea is the biases you find against women in IT are the same as women in other male-dominated areas. Women in STEM seem to have the same kind of struggles we seem for women in IT. In a lot of companies in male-dominated areas, women are not being evaluated fairly. Organizations need to make sure they have mechanisms in place to get rid of inherent biases managers may have and be able to evaluate people based on the work they have done.
The markets where the number of women compared to men is skewed are the ideal markets to start examining how women get ahead. In the U.S., the workforce is 56 percent male, 44 percent female. In the IT labor market, the workforce is only 22 percent female. That’s a bit of a concern, especially since the IT labor market used to be 50 to 60 percent female. NASA computer engineers were all women. Somehow that changed.
LE: What’s next for you and your research?
Langer: Currently, I am working on a paper about the digital economy. We don’t have the same organizational constraints in an online labor market. There, you submit a coding project and people all over the world bid on the project. We wondered if it is possible that women are actually swayed by the competition of an online labor market, as the literature would have us believe. What is the propensity of women to enter these online labor markets? We’ve discovered that women are actually more aggressive in these markets because they know they have to compete in a man’s world.