Meaningfulness as a Driving Force for Women in ICT - What Motivates Women in Software Industry?

The gender bias in the ICT industry has been a widely discussed topic for decades. Yet, there has not been great success in fixing the gender balance of IT professionals, especially in the technical fields. The ICT industry is suffering from expert shortage and there is need for a more diverse competence. This could be the moment for women to step out and enter to the industry. We cannot only wait for our education systems to deliver enough diversity for the labour market. In order to motivate more women to change their career to the ICT industry, we have to understand the professional motivation of women in the ICT industry. In this paper we use the stories of 23 women who are working in the ICT industry to learn more about the motivation, challenges and best practices for different career paths into the ICT industry. The results show that women in ICT value the creativity and diverse possibilities of the work in the industry and they see that industry could benefit from more diverse employees.