The barriers facing women in the information technology profession: an exploratory investigation of ahuja's model

In 2002, Ahuja conducted an extensive literature review and proposed a model of the challenges and barriers facing women in the information technology (IT) profession [3]. Her goal was to develop a model that might be used to stop the exodus of women from IT. While Ahuja's model has been consistently cited in the IT workforce literature (citation count as of 1/30/2014 ~ 65 utilizing ISI Web of Science and ~ 230 utilizing Google Scholar), women are still leaving the IT profession at an alarming rate. Using Ahuja's model as the impetus, the current investigation asked women working in the IT department at a Fortune 500 company what unique workplace challenges and barriers they faced that had influenced their voluntary turnover decisions at two time periods. The insights from this exploratory study are applied to Ahuja's model to propose an updated model that may be used to further explore the challenges and barriers facing women, and ultimately perhaps increase the retention of women in the IT field. The proposed model may be used to re-energize the dialogue regarding creating a more diversified IT work environment.