A structured review of IS research on gender and IT

Abstract

Despite many contributions to research on gender and IT ? both empirical and conceptual ? the IS field lacks an overall review of this stream of research. We provide such a review of IS research on gender and IT spanning 20 years, following the guidelines for conducting a ?descriptive review? (King and He 2006). Focusing on IS journals and conferences, we identify over 190 papers in which the authors specifically mentioned one or more of a set of terms in their title, appendix or keywords (e.g., gender, sex, men, women, etc.). We identify the recurring authors in this research stream and we classify these authors? research methods, types of respondents studied, authors? epistemological stance and their gender theory-in-use. We identify four topic areas and, for each, we provide descriptive summaries of corresponding papers: IT ethics; IT careers and education; IT adoption and use; attitudes to telework. Many papers we located neglect to specify a clear theory-in-use regarding gender (i.e., whether the authors believe that observed differences between men and women are socially constructed, due to biological factors, or the result of other influences). We found few studies that regard men, who account for a majority of IT employees, as gendered or consider gender a relevant issue when studying male employees, teleworkers, or computer users. Authors of most papers seem to assume that the presence of women is necessary to trigger gender as an issue.