FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Working women already struggle to balance professional and family responsibilities, but the unique demands of information technology jobs are intense and may be the reason women are leaving jobs in that field.

In 1996, 41 percent of all IT workers were women. Six years later, women occupied only 35 percent of information systems positions. To understand why women are leaving these jobs, researchers at the University of Arkansas interviewed 39 professional women working in the field of information technology at a Fortune 500 company and discovered that workplace stress contributes significantly to high turnover and creates a barrier to upward mobility. The stress is caused by factors uniquely related to IT jobs -- extremely high work volume with little or no downtime between projects and the expectation that workers must learn and apply new knowledge with each project.  

“These issues are unique to the IT field,” said Cynthia Riemenschneider, associate professor in the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas. “There’s always a project. As soon as one ends, another one is waiting. Think about CPAs. They have deadlines, whether it’s April 15 or quarterly deadlines, but those end generally, and there’s some downtime. There is no down time for IT workers.”

Riemenschneider and UA colleagues Myria Allen, Deborah Armstrong and Margaret Reid included their findings in Making Sense of the Barriers Women Face in the IT Work Force: Standpoint Theory, Self-Disclosure, and Cognitive Maps, one of many contributions to the working paper series from the Walton College’s Information Technology Research Institute.

The researchers emphasized that women have demonstrated that they are as capable and competent at performing IT jobs as men, and have dedicated long hours to professional projects. But the female workers said family responsibilities, such as transporting children to and from school or caring for elderly parents, compromise their ability to devote many quality hours to demanding projects in which they are expected to learn new products and processes. Likewise, job stress compromises their ability to manage family responsibilities. This dynamic is further complicated by spouses who may not contribute to family responsibilities.

The responses to researchers’ questions revealed a sort of cruel irony: Features that initially attracted the women to challenging IT jobs are the same issues that are forcing them to quit their jobs or work part time. In other words, the source of stress -- the intensive work schedule and process of continuously learning new products and practices -- is also the part of their job that they find most exciting and fulfilling.

“What’s interesting is the challenge of the job is the thing that attracts people to the field,” Riemenschneider said. “So, they like the challenge. They like doing new things.”

“But the very aspects they like are the aspects that cause them a lot of stress,” Armstrong said. “They’re facing a vicious cycle.”

Studies indicate that IT workers have a higher need for challenging work, lower need for social interaction, and are more ambitious than the average population. They constantly are challenged by rapid technological change and the speed with which technical skills become obsolete. However, most workers require some time to perform routine tasks, Riemenschneider said, if for no reason other than to rest or give them time to absorb new knowledge. IT workers do not often get this opportunity, which adds to the stress.

The volume and nature of the work, rather than work schedule, created stress. Riemenschneider and Armstrong said some women had flexible work schedules, which allowed them to pick up children at school, but the women still needed to complete projects on time, which required many hours. This meant women worked from home late at night.

The researchers said the women did not say much about sexual discrimination and did not feel there were any internal barriers to promotion. In other words, they felt upward mobility was possible.

The female workers explicitly mentioned all of these issues in their responses to researchers’ questions. However, the researchers also identified two issues the women communicated implicitly.

The statements of older and younger women implied that there were barriers because of age or coworkers made certain assumptions based on age. In each case, advanced age and youth were considered negative characteristics. For example, one woman stated that during work-related discussions, coworkers made patronizing or condescending remarks that conveyed the assumption that youth was equivalent to inexperience or incompetence.

Implicit statements also indicated that some women felt that male coworkers did not respect them. These feelings surfaced during descriptions of scenes and contexts in which men would direct their questions toward male subordinates rather than female supervisors or managers who had just given a presentation.