Resumen
It is commonly understood that the IT work force lacks gender diversity. In 1983 women made up approximately 43% of the IT work force according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Population Survey. By 2008, while the total IT work force had more than doubled, the female percentage had dropped to 26%. Encouraging more women and minorities to choose IT careers would help raise the numbers in the field. Beyond this, however, increasing the diversity of IT will produce additional benefits by ensuring that IT professionals have a broad range of experience and interests. To shed light on how men and women make career choices the author conducted four in-depth focus groups with IT professionals in the greater Kansas City area, and then collected detailed information from a sample of over 500 IT and non-IT professionals. Participants in the survey were solicited from employees at several large organizations with offices in the central US and from business school and computer science alumni of a large Midwestern university.