The Gendered Professionalization Project among Project Managers
Women are under-represented among software developers, in spite of several political programs and initiatives promoting employment equity in these sectors, in North America and European Union as well. Young girls' educational choices can partly explain this absence, but just partly. These women are leaving their jobs in much larger proportions than their male counterparts, while in this sector we notice a labour shortage. Work and personal life balance contributes to understanding the situation. Project management produces exclusion effect on women that can be accounted for by a flexibility requirement, entailing unlimited, unplanned and unpaid overtime. In this article, we argue that the professionalization model followed by project managers induces a professional ethos that promotes complying with such requirements and de facto promotes the exclusion effect more than acting as a buffer against it.