Retention av kvinnor i teknikbranschen

Sammanfattning: 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.