Fundamentalists, Integrationists, & Transformationists: An Empirical Theory of Men Software Engineers’ Orientations in Gender Inequalities

Professional software development is an occupation dominated by men software engineers. Recently, researchers have been investigating gender inequality in the software development profession from multiple perspectives. While most of the extant literature on gender inequality in software development takes the perspective of female developers, the vast majority of the software development workforce–men software engineers–receives much less attention. In this article, we reported on a quantitative interview study aiming at developing empirical understandings of men software engineers’ orientations in gender inequalities. Through analyzing interview narratives from 21 professional men software engineers, plenty of findings emerged, enabling us to build a theoretical framework characterizing three different types of orientations in gender inequalities. In our theory, men software engineers’ orientation in gender issues could be conceptualized as fundamentalists, integrationists, and transformationists. We introduced each type’s characteristics from three aspects of individuals’ social cognition, which are belief, attitude, and action. We further discussed the implications and the limitations of the study.