We examine the formation of women’s professional identity in a particular type of male-dominated domain, the free and open source software development communities, and more broadly in information technology. Through an ethnographic analysis of interviews and online forums discussions, we find that women experience two types of discrepancies or gaps that constitute obstacles in the process of identity formation: an image gap and an identity gap. We show the strategies employed by women as they attempt to bridge these gaps; we also find that some of these strategies, while tackling one gap, may also deepen the other.
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Paper provided by ESSEC Research Center, ESSEC Business School in its series ESSEC Working Papers with number
DR 08009.
Find related papers by JEL classification: Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Social Norms and Social Capital; Social Networks Economic Anthropology
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