| dc.description.abstract | The purpose of the study is to investigate the retention of academic women working in
technology companies. What makes women stay in organizations dominated by men, and what
role does experience and the conception of gender play in understanding female retention?
Prior research in this area has mainly been focused on the reasons why women are leaving
organizations dominated by men. Hence, there is scarce information about the causes that make
women stay in male dominated working environments. In order to succeed with retaining a
female workforce, the scant research on female retention factors highlights flexible working
conditions, work-life balance, the importance of an inclusive organizational culture and female
role models as facilitators. In our research, female workers and their experiences and
conceptions of gender and the tech industry will be analyzed in order to further investigate
female retention.
A qualitative method has been used to produce data for this study. Twelve semi structured
interviews with women working in seven different organizations have been conducted. These
women all worked in organizations dominated by men and all of them had an academic degree,
bachelor or a higher level of education.
The result showed that the most prominent factors impacting the women's will of retention
were; development opportunities, leadership quality, work-life balance and the organizational
culture. The interviewed women expressed having good experiences of working in male
dominated working environments. The majority of the respondents worked in gender balanced
teams, so even though the working environment consisted of more men, the closest co-workers
were both men and women. The interviewees described that it was important for the
organisation and management to be aware of women's situation as a minority. The result further
shows that the experiences of being a woman in an organization dominated by men, as well as
the interviewed women's conceptions on gender, did not affect their will of retention in a
negative way.
Practical implications from our research for organizations to focus on is working actively with
equal treatment of men and women at the workplace, since this is an important subject for
women. The management can also try to ensure that women are able to work together with
other women, or in gender balanced teams, since this is one aspect that can affect their patterns
of retention positively. | sv |
