Research paper of 10 pages "Benefits of Information Technology in the Global Economy"

Gendered Selves and Identities of Information Technology Professionals in Global Software Organizations in India

Marisa D’Mello Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture (TIK), University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1108, Blindern, N-0317 Oslo, Norway. E-mail: [email protected]

ABSTRACT

Global software organization (GSOs) are a recent form of work settings where Information Tech- nology (IT) professionals engage in information and communication technology (ICT) mediated software development work for businesses across the globe. Issues of self, identity, and gender are linked to particularities of GSOs as a work setting. Using an interpretative, ethnographic approach, empirical data from a case study in India was analyzed to understand how gender was expressed in GSOs and linked to the concepts of self and identity of IT workers. Data suggests that GSOs are a global work setting where local issues of gender reflect social arrangements in Indian society. These arrangements have implications for GSOs as a work setting, for software development work, as well as for the selves and identities of IT workers. C© 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Keywords: self; identity; gender relations; mobility; global software organizations

1. INTRODUCTION

The increased interconnection between globalizing influences and “personal dispositions” or identity-related aspects of individuals such as their beliefs, thoughts, and feelings is a distinctive feature of contemporary life (Castells, 1996; Giddens, 1991). In today’s society, globalized work contexts, such as global software organizations (GSOs) are on the rise (Sahay, Nicholson, & Krishna, 2003). Engaged in knowledge/intensive software devel- opment work across boundaries of time, space, and place, GSOs employ programmers, designers, analysts, and managers, who are also called IT (information technology) professionals/knowledge workers who design, develop, test, and implement software (Nicholson & Sahay, 2004). In this way, GSOs include local “actors” as well as global elements and exemplify the interconnection between selves and identities of IT work- ers within volatile, turbulent technological and business market contexts (D’Mello, 2005; Sahay et al., 2003). (The term local broadly refers to the immediate context of one’s so- ciocultural milieu within a particular geographical boundary. The term global refers to that which spans across diverse geographical boundaries as well as boundaries of time, space, and place. See D’Mello, 2005, for an elaboration of these concepts).

B.J. Reed was the accepting Associate Editor for this paper.

Information Technology for Development, Vol. 12 (2) 131–158 (2006) C© 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/itdj.20031

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Viewed as “both a model of and a model for globalization” (Sahay et al., 2003, p. 2), the ever-changing “corporate ecology” of such contexts challenges traditional and stable self and identity constructs as well as, sociocultural gendered norms and relations, influencing behavior of people in these settings. These aspects are important to analyze for several reasons.

First, while IT work is on the rise across the globe, there is an IT staff shortage, worldwide (Igbaria & Shayo, 2004). Global software organizations, for example, struggle daily with issues of attracting and retaining IT professionals. Second, women, in particular, while constituting 50% of the global population, constitute about 25% of the global IT workforce despite government- and industry-backed efforts to attract them into these fields (Klawe & Levenson, 1995; Panteli, Stack, & Ramsay, 1999; Trauth, Nielsen, & Von Hellens, 2003). These skewed percentages suggest that in terms of women’s participation, the IT workforce is missing a significant number of potentially valuable human resources for the information age. Third, “feminine” or “relational” strengths such as intuition, empathy, relationship building, and collaboration skills are now assets in instrumental, “masculine” organizational contexts such as IT companies, for gaining a competitive edge in the global economy (Fletcher, 1994; Fletcher, 1998; D’Mello, 2005; Olsson & Walker, 2004). Such skills are particularly valuable in ICT-mediated distributed work teams or virtual teams involving “boundaryless collaboration” where work is increasingly coordinated through trust-based relationships (Sahay et al., 2003).

Finally, GSOs, like other global organizations, are locally situated and are sites that are embedded in “. . . relational hierarchies of gender, class, caste and other critical fault lines, which define identities and distribute power both symbolically and materially” (Rao & Kellner, 2003, p. 143). Offshore software development work is highly interactive, situated within broader social and organizational processes that shape and are shaped by human action (Nicholson & Sahay, 2004; Waterson, Clegg, & Axtell, 1997). Studying these processes within GSOs enables us to understand how local characteristics of a specific social context (e.g., gender relations) intersect with global imperatives to influence work as well as employees’ sense of self and identity.

In the context of the IT industry in India, some studies (Arun & Arun, 2002; Kelkar, Shrestha, & Veena, 2002; Suriya, 2003) have investigated gender relations and the nature of women’s agency. While they raise relevant social and economic issues related to un- equal participation of women in this industry, they are limited and quite broad in scope, excluding their relationship to personal, existential level of employees. Global software organizations in India are situated within a global capitalist economy, representing new forms of work contexts, while simultaneously incorporating local social structures and meanings. A micro-level analysis of how individual workers make personal interpreta- tions in relation to social structures such as gender enables a deeper articulation of the global–local dialectic. There is a need for more micro-level analysis into local mean- ings and interpretations of larger social structures related to gender, and their interrelation with selves and identities of IT workers, within new and emerging work contexts like GSOs.

Using a “gender lens,” two questions in the context of GSOs are addressed in this article:

• How is gender expressed or played out in GSOs in India as a work setting? • How do these expressions relate to self and identity constructions of male and female

IT professionals employed in the GSO?

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In section 2 of this article, I will provide some theoretical notions of identity and gender, and their significance within GSOs. In section 3, the methodology is outlined. In section 4, the themes reflecting gendered differences among IT employees within GSO work setting are described. In section 5, the research questions are discussed and some theoretical and practical implications emerging from this study are outlined. Conclusions from this study are stated in section 6.

2. THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES: SELF, IDENTITY, AND GENDER IN THE CONTEXT OF GLOBAL SOFTWARE ORGANIZATIONS

The notion of gender is best understood within a network of concepts such as self and identity as well as our distinctive sociocultural contexts. These constructs frame the backdrop for choices we make in our daily lives, roles we adhere to, and our thoughts and feelings, which express our implicitly held gendered notions of our selves (Gladstone, 1998).

The following subsections are organized as follows: first, self, identity, and gender constructs are described; second, particularities of gender-related or gendering processes within the context of GSOs are delineated, and finally, the sociocultural context of IT professionals in the Indian context is elaborated.

2.1 Self, Identity, and Gender

Self and identity are the means by which we encounter and make sense of the world, both, outside of us (for e.g., other people, events) and inside of us (for e.g., our beliefs, thoughts, and feelings). The shifts we experience within us of sameness and distinctiveness gives us a sense of identity that defines who we are and are not for ourselves and others (Craib, 1998). Recent psychological and sociological literature reveals interesting conceptualizations of the different facets of self (e.g., Bruner, 1990; Gergen, 1991; Markus & Kitayama, 1991).

In research studies, the concept of gender has been used differently by different scholars. Gender here is taken as social differences between men and women, in the form of ascribed norms, roles, and expectations framing the backdrop for one‘s experiences as a man or woman (Fletcher & Ely, 2003). Organizing much of one’s beliefs, expectations, and socially prescribed scripts for relating, working, and living in the world, gender is linked to one’s self and identity and is implicated in the workplace (Evetts, 1996).

Gender is socially constructed through material practices and ideological processes (Gladstone, 1998). Material practices include gender-based division of labor, gender-based mobility, and gender-based access to resources that maintain and shape roles, responsi- bilities, qualities, and behavior patterns of men and women in society. At the ideological level, gender differences are internalized through social institutions such as the family, state, community, media, and market mechanisms that reflect, reinforce, shape, and create patriarchal ideological norms (Gladstone, 1998). Some of these institutions are seen to col- lude with each other to subordinate women (Arun, Arun, & Borooah, 2004). For example, motherhood acts as a labor market disadvantage as marriage and family are associated with interrupted careers for working women. Here, the structural arrangements of global market influences collude with patriarchal family structures and ideologies, keeping the traditional gender order in place.

Career and occupation is a vital aspect of self and work/occupation identity is considered a critical element in an individual’s feelings of self-worth and satisfaction (Evetts, 1996).

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Cultural ideologies behind dimensions of femininity and family, masculinity and career are said to control women’s and men’s working lives (Sharpe, 1976). For men, marriage and fatherhood typically do not contradict work and career expectations, while women often experience contradiction between these two realms. As girls grow up, it is assumed that motherhood will feature in their future and being a “good” mother is important for women’s sense of satisfaction and feeling of self-worth (Chodorow, 1974). While paid employment and professional membership offers women an opportunity to develop and retain a work identity that is separate from their home and family, their self and work identities can often be fraught with feelings of ambivalence (Evetts, 1996).

In this article, self and identity is taken as constructed, influenced by sociocultural norms, power relations, and social institutions such as the family. These influences are inherently gendered; they intertwine, both explicitly and implicitly, with individual worker’s experiences and feeling of self-worth in organizations. They also relate to how organizations configure their structures, policies, and settings.

2.2 Particularities of Gender-Related Processes in the Context of Global Software Organizations

Examining gender-related identity constructions is relevant in the context of GSOs as work settings for several reasons. These are discussed below in terms of underrepresentation of women in the IT workforce, mobility restrictions for women IT professionals in GSOs, and gendering of GSO-related work.

2.2.1 Underrepresentation of women in the IT workforce. Women account for 25% of technology workers in the European workforce and about 20% in the U.S. tech- nology workforce—and these percentages are shrinking (Ahuja, 2002; Maitland, 2001; Nierderman & Mandviwalla, 2004). In India, within GSOs in the IT industry, women comprise 24% of the workforce (NASSCOM, 2005). Information technology professionals are typically drawn from engineering and computer science disciplines that are “mascu- line” or male-dominated (Von Hellens, Nielsen, & Trauth, 2001). In the US and UK, the proportion of women in university computer studies courses is declining and this pattern carries over into organizations recruiting staff from these institutions (Ahuja, 2002; Von Hellens, Nielsen, & Beekhuyzen, 2004). Educational and training institutions in these disciplines exert a strong influence on gender-related constructions by gender segrega- tion of courses, presence of role models or mentors for women, messages about IT as a “male domain” (DiDio, 1996; Trauth, 2002; Turkle, 1988). Even in Norway and Fin- land which are relatively egalitarian societies, there is a declining intake of young women into the field of Computer Science as girls rejects the “nerd” image of the computer hacker (Hapnes & Rasmussen, 1991; Turkle, 1984). These influences and images, along with family and cultural messages reinforce, support, or resist the choice of IT as a ca- reer choice for women. They affect feelings of inclusion and exclusion, self-confidence or alienation among women as IT professionals, shaping their identities and impact- ing their participation in the industry (Ahuja, 2002; Trauth, 2002; Von Hellens et al., 2004).

2.2.2 Mobility of GSO work and mobility restrictions on women. A critical feature of GSOs as a work setting is its mobility. Individuals, teams, organizations, and

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nations with diverse social and cultural backgrounds and idiosyncratic styles of work, interact in a global setting across temporal and spatial boundaries (Sahay et al., 2003). Information technology employees are required to consistently work late hours because of diverse time zones, tight project schedules often in a crisis mode, rapidly switching between projects, technologies, and countries. Promotional and growth paths require experience in customer facing roles, relating to working and living overseas. Reflecting the volatile changes in technologies and platforms in the global marketplace, this work demands, on a constant basis, continuous updating of knowledge and skills, besides a formal education in engineering or IT fields. This puts pressure on IT workers to be in a continuous learning mode all the time to be “marketable,” both within and outside the organization. These features are enormously stressful for all employees, often resulting in burnout and feelings of insecurity and anxiety (Igbaria & Shayo, 2004; Moore, 2000), impacting IT professionals at deep, existential levels (D’Mello, 2005).

The mobile nature of GSO work influences the participation of men and women differ- ently (Kelkar et al., 2002; Suriya, 2003). Mobility restrictions for women are expressed in their inability to continuously work long hours, travel overseas on assignments, participate in informal networks that are important in career advancement or have a sustained ca- reer trajectory (Ahuja, 2002; Ragins & Cotton, 1991). In this profession, shifting between companies especially at lower levels is a means to progress ones’ career but women tend to stay longer in each job compared to men because of domestic responsibilities (Kelkar et al., 2002). While this is an advantage for them at the time of recruitment, it delays their promotion and their capacity to negotiate for a higher salary or benefits and stock options. The dominant model of career growth require linearity and continuity in work (Papanek, 1973) and career interruptions because of childcare commitments are found to disadvan- tage women (Sirianni & Negrey, 2000). Not surprisingly, internationally, the majority of women are employed in routine and specialist work while men are engaged in analytical and managerial activities (Ahuja, 2002).

Mobility in sociological inquiry is viewed as a measure of gender relations. Feminist anthropologists highlighting the association of space with gender, state that women who cross spatial boundaries face problems. For example, Moore (1988) states, “Rapid social change apparently raises fears about controlling women, fears which are often expressed through a concern with controlling women’s morality and sexual behavior. Women, who are, or seek to be, economically independent run the risk of being characterized as sexually or morally loose” (p. 95). Anthropological studies demonstrate that women’s mobility is restricted because of the patriarchal order, where women’s bodies and their sexuality are given meaning within the cultural ideologies of purity, pollution, shame, and honor (Chakravarthy, 1998; Mandelbaum, 1988; Sonpar & Kapur, 2001). Restrictions on women’s mobility serve familial and social ends, reinforce notions of good women as being mothers and wives, acting as powerful organizers of behavior (Guzder & Krishna, 1991).

In this way, socially prescribed and deeply internalized “ideologies” of gender relations characterizing a culture, influence behavior and regulate self-worth of both men and women. Gender relations are intricately woven in a web of hierarchical positions and prescribed codes of conduct. Conformity provides a sense of security, power, and belonging to the individual while a failure to conform to them results in social disapproval and perhaps feelings of guilt, shame, and self-doubt (Sonpar & Kapur, 2001). In global work settings such as GSOs, educated, women workers have to find means to continuously negotiate such spaces in ways that balance their professional roles as well as social relations.

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2.2.3 Gendering of GSO-related work. Business organizations, which historically, have been male-dominated, perpetuate the work–family divide in many ways where men hold the “public” role and women hold the “private” role (Harding, 1986; Massey & Jess, 1995; Rao & Kellner, 2003). In this scenario, the public, masculine role is associated with competition while the private, domestic, feminine sphere is primarily responsible for relationship maintenance (Jacques, 1996). In debates on work–family divide, the family has been seen as a competitor with the organization for the time and attention of the employee, rather than a supplier of the worker’s physical and mental well-being and his or her interactional and relational skills (Jacques, 1996). Discourses about human relations, organization theories, and scientific management have assumed the notion of a “universal worker” and managerial function in the public sphere as gender-free (Rees & Garnsey, 2003). However, we know for sure, that gender is constitutive in the logic, symbols, signs, and structures and daily practices of contemporary work organizations (Acker, 1990; Fletcher & Ely, 2003; Kanter, 1977).

Software development lies within a project-based competitive environment which is said to breed and reproduce a “masculine culture” (Knights & Murray, 1994). Similarly, citing evidence, Panteli et al. (1999) propose that the IT industry is not neutral and does little to promote or retain its female workforce. They highlight the following issues in IT companies: While women were underrepresented at managerial and technical levels, they predominated in support function roles; women were often assigned routine and monotonous tasks while their male colleagues engaged in more abstract and challenging computing work; women’s earnings differential in relation to men increased with age; companies treated IT staff as homogenous with similar needs and career aspirations; gender stereotypes about men’s and women’s qualities persisted and home working and flexi-time arrangements for women were talked about but not implemented. They stated that women who may dislike masculine, "lad" or computing, "engineering" type of cultures, may decide to leave a company or exclude themselves from a technical field. Given this, fears about “ghettoization” of women in this industry have been expressed (Arun & Arun, 2001; Panteli et al., 1999).

Such experiences and barriers generate feelings relating directly to self-confidence, occu- pational worth, and self-esteem (Evetts, 1996). They marginalize not only women, but also reinforce entrenched gendered stereotypes about masculinity and femininity, even going against business interests. More and more, theories of organizational learning and manage- ment stress the value of affective and relational capacities such as empathy, sensitivity to emotional contexts, collaboration, also called “soft skills” to organizational productivity and efficiency (Gilleard & Gilleard, 2002; Senge, 1990). Research in intercultural adjust- ment and cross-cultural effectiveness (Kealey, 1990; Mendenhall & Oddou, 1985; Parker & McEvoy, 1993) support the view that empathy, relational and communication skills, as- sociated with women and enacted in the private, home sphere, facilitate adjustment and interaction with host country nationals, the global actors in GSOs. Such skills are also in- creasingly critical in distributed software development work where knowledge demands are quite distinctive and embedded in social structures and relations (Kealey, 1990; Nicholson & Sahay, 2004; Sahay et al., 2003). In this way, the inclusion of women and the creation of gender-sensitive workspaces not only impact individual workers but also add value to the effectiveness of “faceless” teams.

In summary, GSOs, as ICT-mediated global work settings, embedded in local contexts, are not gender-neutral entities but actively reproduce sociocultural complexities of these contexts through their material practices and ideological constructions. These relate directly to individual workers feelings of self-worth and esteem, their conceptions of masculine and

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feminine and their participation in the workforce. Women’s underrepresentation and relative immobility as compared to male IT workers, point to masculinity and patriarchal norms underlying these settings. The increasing stress on relational capacities required for business success implies that GSOs need to tilt the gendered norms towards feminine and relational skills in addition to their focus on technical skills, to be competitive and productive in a global marketplace.

2.3 Sociocultural Context of Information Technology Professionals in India

India presents a valuable case of an economically developing country in the midst of global- ization processes such as liberal economic reforms and changes in the mass media, among other dynamics, which has affected primarily the middle class (Singh, 2000). Globally con- sidered a force to reckon with in the field of IT, this sector is the fastest growing industry within the country. The industry’s contribution to India’s gross domestic product (GDP) has nearly tripled, from 1.2% in 1998 to 3.5% in 2004 (NASSCOM, 2005). While there are over 1 million workers in the IT and IT-enabled services (ITES) industry today,1 345,000 IT professionals are employed in the software export sector (NASSCOM, 2005), which constitutes the work context for GSOs.

As in other countries, women are underrepresented in the IT industry in India (24% are women). Furthermore, most women in the Indian IT workforce are reported to be less than 30 years of age, overrepresented in lower-level jobs like programming and underrepresented in higher-level jobs like consulting and project management (Kelkar et al., 2002; Suriya, 2003). Reinforcing this pattern, the ratio of men to women dramatically shifts to 31:69 in the ITES, considered more “low-end” work in terms of skills and competence (NASSCOM, 2005).

Physical and career-related mobility restrictions exist for educated, women workers typically hailing from middle class families in India. Historically, education in India for girls was viewed as a potential liability in the marriage market as an agent that could “spoil a girl’s character” (Chanana, 1994). While there are shifts, fears persist particularly in the field of science and engineering. For women particularly, marriage potential and social risks form key elements in family decisions about education as parents focus primarily on getting their daughters well-settled in a good marriage alliance (Mukhopadhyay, 1994). Social risks include traveling or living alone in hostels in urban areas and exposure to predominantly male peers where a girl’s chastity may be jeopardized. Education, particularly in science and engineering, associated with critical and independent thinking and willingness to abandon outmoded traditions are the antithesis of the preferred stereotype of a “home-loving” patriarchal ideology for women (Mukhopadhyay, 1994). Family resources are invested more in the son’s education as they are considered structurally and economically more central to the well-being of the family than daughters, who leave their natal family after marriage. Given these fears, bright and scientifically inclined daughters are encouraged to pursue medicine and pure sciences rather than engineering, reinforcing male dominance in these areas. In urban work settings, while desk jobs are considered more reputable for women, their physical and social mobility is restricted (Arun & Arun, 2001). For example, in Mumbai city, a major base for software outsourcing, several IT companies are located

1With the recent burgeoning of the ITES industry which includes business process outsourcing and the call center industry NASSCOM, the apex body as well as the Chamber of Commerce for the IT industry in India, has combined the figures for software service and ITES, even though they are different businesses.

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at Santacruz Electronics Exports Processing Zone (SEEPZ2), in the north of the city. Here, transport connections are infrequent after office hours and the surrounding industrial area is considered unsafe for women after dark. The location of the office and commute time is a high priority for women in selecting a job who have domestic responsibilities; hence, the location restricts their options, unlike men. Finding it hard to juggle a myriad of job expectations and familial commitments, women often quit working, as part-time employment or telecommuting facilities in this industry are rare in Mumbai.

Typically, for Indian women, marriage and motherhood is most often assumed to have direct implications for their jobs and career (Aziz, 2004). A strong belief in India is that marriage and family forms the second stage of human existence in society, grihasthashram3

(Chakraborty, 2000). Marriage rites symbolize the union of man and woman, two bodies in one soul, as opposed to the idea of a civil contract (Cormack, 1974). A married woman is expected to deeply identify with her husband and family. In Indian thought, wifehood and motherhood are seen as inseparable, sacred, and conferring social status and psychological security to women (Coomaraswamy, 1924). Some traditional terms for women such as grihalaskhmi,4 dharmapatni5 are directly connected to the stage of grihasthashram. In the process of growth and development, the quality and meaning of relationships becomes a dominant anchor of the life-role of Indian women particularly when they take on prescriptive roles of daughter, wife, daughter-in-law, and mother (Parikh & Garg, 1989). For males, on the other hand, while marriage is important in grihasthashram, it is an event that typically does not effect a major shift in their domestic responsibilities, change of residence or location or job.

Indian feminists and scholars show how cultural and social values emphasizing female submissiveness and role-specific identities keep contemporary middle class, urban India families anchored in traditional patriarchal structures (Bagchi, 1995; Dube, 1988; Kakar, 1988). Studies also indicate that women experience the achievements of others such as their husband’s good job or children’s school success as their own (Kapadia, 1999), high- lighting that for Indian women, the family and relationships with significant others are a critical source of self-worth and identity. The strong influence of family identity, where the “breadwinner” position of the man predominates and commands respect, makes it difficult for women to formulate a clear notion of her individual position or welfare (Sen, 1990, 2000).

Software development has been reported to offer a more relaxed and less discriminatory environment as compared to several other employment options in India (Heeks, 1998). Other jobs, such as mechanical or civil engineering involve outdoor, physical labor or commutes to relatively uninhabited localities are viewed as relatively unsuitable and unsafe for women, both physically and socially. Currently, working in the IT industry in India presents a possibility that lies at the intersection of the masculinized discipline of engineering and the “high-flying” world of global, international assignments similar, in some instances to knowledge-based work of the consulting service industry. Some structural changes are

2This is a special area in Mumbai set up by the government, offering a well-developed infrastructure, fiscal incentives, and quick approvals and clearances to firms developing and exporting IT-related products and services.

3In Indian/Hindu thought, it is proposed that there are four stages of life. Grihasthashram is the second stage, that of a householder.

4In Hindu thought, Lakshmi is the goddess of happiness and prosperity. The wife is the Lakshmi of the griha, i.e., the household.

5This is similar to the above meaning. Dharma is duty and patni is wife.

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evident. Women’s enrollment in undergraduate courses in engineering and technology has increased from 0.09% in 1971 to 10% in 1991 (Chanana, 2000). Unlike the figures in developed countries, the percentage of women’s enrollment in science subjects in colleges and universities in India has increased from about 7% in 1950–1951 to about 34% in 1996–1997, and subsequently to 39.4% in 2001 (Chanana, 2000; Indian National Science Academy, 2004). This increase has been attributed to the prestige of science and engineering degrees and jobs in the country. The image of an IT person in India is very different from the “nerdy” image or fears of “gender inauthenticity” as mentioned in the literature. The risks of higher education are balanced by the social status associated with this profession. In social gatherings and family groups, IT people are often labeled as “smart,” the “cream of society,” “moneyed,” and “well traveled.” Also, spurred by rising housing costs in urban areas and middle class aspirations for an upward mobile lifestyle, there is an increased interest in having an earning–working woman as a wife. For urban middle class families in particular having an earning daughter or daughter-in-law doing a respectable job are seen as a positive asset. These shifts coexist with traditional norms such as fears about women’s safety and sexuality, which are reportedly common in patriarchal societies like India (Sonpar & Kapur, 2001). Rather than a complete break with traditional restrictions on women’s mobility, these changes can be seen as a midpoint on a continuum ranging from extreme tradition to modern, Westernized notions of equality.

To summarize, gender relations are framed within distinctive sociocultural contexts, constituting integral elements of individuals’ selves and identities. These relations and ideologies directly influence the participation of men and women IT professionals within work contexts of GSOs. Global software organization work is mobile and fluid, yet women experience many restrictions on their mobility in this workspace. While software work in the IT industry reflects a masculine culture, increasingly, the skills emphasized for business success in such global contexts, are feminine. In the Indian context, while traditional gendered norms still hold sway among the middle classes, globalization influences have triggered shifts not only in lifestyles but also challenged these norms and structures. Given the peculiar nature of social relations in the Indian context, we adopt the conceptualization of the “autonomous-relational” self (Kagitcibasi, 1996) as an analytic tool, to deepen our understanding of the relationship between gender and the self.

Kagitcibasi (1996) proposed that each individual has a relational (interdependent) as well as autonomous (independent) self in a “dialectic mutuality” or coexistence of opposites. These “selves” are embedded within gender role definitions internalized during socializa- tion practices from childhood, impacting lifelong construction and enactment of women’s and men’s identities and organizing behavior and affecting self-esteem (Kapadia, 1999; Sonpar & Kapur, 2001). In most societies, women learn to define themselves in relation to and connection with others, in specific contexts, whereas men, socialized towards sepa- ration and individuation are encouraged to be rational, strong, and self-reliant (Chodorow, 1978; Gilligan, 1982; Miller, 1986). An emphasis on the role of mothering for women, places an “ethics of care” and nurturance deep in their “relational self” serving familial as well as social ends (Chodorow, 1978; Gilligan, 1982; Guzder & Krishna, 1991). For men, an emphasis on the provider role embeds an instrumental orientation and the “ethics of justice” in their “autonomous self.” The coexistence of these selves within individuals implies that individuals can demonstrate both agency and relatedness (Kagitcibasi, 1996). In this article, I use the relational-autonomous self concept within the context of GSOs as a structuring device (Walsham, 2001) to provide a richer understanding of the linkages between gender norms and selves and identities of Indian IT professionals in GSOs.

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3. METHODOLOGY

In this section, the method employed for the empirical research is described. The case, InSync Ltd.6 is a medium-sized GSO, headquartered in Mumbai, India, with

offices in six different countries across the globe. InSync offers offshore software application outsourcing solutions and services to overseas clients. It has been accredited internationally at Level 5 for software processes as per the Capability Maturity Model (CMM). It employs around 2500 IT professionals. The men to women ratio among software staff is 82:18. Support functions, except for human relations (HR) and public relations (PR) are primarily staffed by male employees. The secretarial staff is 100% female.

The empirical material in this article is drawn from a larger research project on under- standing identity-related processes of IT professionals employed in GSOs in India. A case study method, based on an interpretative, ethnographic approach to information science (IS) research is used (Walsham, 1993). In stark contrast to positivist methods that look for regularities and causal relationships (Burrell & Morgan, 1979) the interpretive paradigm assumes that the social world is constructed and relativistic, understood as a subjective experience of those who are involved in its activities. An ethnographic approach seems appropriate to the study of identity processes because it remains close to ways people experience and make sense of themselves and others (Van Maanen, 1979). My fieldwork has meant a shift from a previous “insider” HR employee role in various IT companies to that of an “outsider” researcher role, trying to see people, situations, and events with a fresh approach. Balancing an ex-insider–employee and an outsider–researcher identity has also been reported in anthropological field work in institutional contexts of this nature (e.g., Garsten, 1994; Moore, 1986) and was found to be a challenging experience.

In-depth and semistructured interviews of 50 employees, between December 2002 and July 2004 were conducted. The respondents included 16 female and 34 males across the developer, module leader, project leader, project manager, and unit/function head job levels. Each interview typically lasted around 60–80 minutes. The interviews usually began with a sharing of the aim of the research project, a promise of anonymity, and a request for the interview to be tape-recorded. Respondents most often said they were happy to contribute to research on their professional group. Rather than a set interview protocol, a set of broad, open-ended questions relating to their career trajectory and their personal experiences at work and outside the work setting was used. Besides interview data, field notes, and observations from “hanging around” workstations, the cafeteria, commuting in the company bus to the office and back home, attending team and company gatherings, I reviewed some of the company’s promotional material, Web site, intranet, in-house publication magazine, and annual reports. I also drew extensively on my experience in the various GSOs during my career as an HR professional for several years.

Respondents generally spoke openly and willingly about their personal lives, work, and challenges they currently faced. During some conversations, I was very aware of moments of heightened sensitivity to responses on areas related to gender inequality, especially when some of their statements resonated with my own personal experiences as a woman in my social system. Often, women respondents would begin or end their response by saying, “You know how things are for women in Indian society. . .” and leave a lot unsaid! These were delicate moments where they were asked to be more explicit about these implicit, supposedly shared assumptions. Concerning the issue of subjectivity and objectivity, it was

6The name of the company as well as respondents is kept confidential.

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sometimes a struggle to find a balance between the expression of my personal views and keeping silent. Similar struggles while doing ethnography have been described by Sarikakis (2003), Schultze (2000), and Van Maanen (1979).

Tape-recorded interviews were all transcribed verbatim. The empirical material, along with other data was read, reread, and analyzed for themes, subthemes, and patterns. Rather than some preconceived categorization, themes that emerged from the material were identi- fied and data was manually sorted under these. Multiple perspectives from advisors, faculty, and interactions with others engaged in gender research, were solicited. Some of the inter- pretations were also informally discussed with select respondents. Relevant literature was also examined. Feedback obtained in these processes was used to clarify interpretations of the data and refine the categories. In this way, the analysis was an iterative process. The major themes were selected and are reported in the following section.

4. EMPIRICAL DATA AND ANALYSIS

In this section, the four themes that emerged from the empirical material are presented. Table 1 presents an overview of these themes.

TABLE 1. Summary of Gender-Related Themes, Their Key Characteristics, and Links to Self and Identity

Gender-related theme Characteristics Links to self & identity

5.1 Roles & Responsibilities: The marriage mandate

Breadwinner ideology predominates for men, familial care predominates for women; husband’s support essential for women’s’ career success; equality at work but not at home; different interpretations of kinship support by men and women; GSOs reflect this division in HR policies.

Gendered norms of roles are internalized by both men and women. Relational self is an integral part of gender identity for women. Work is central to male identity.

5.2 Gender & Mobility: A woman’s Place

Mobility restrictions related to late-night local travel, onsite working, office socializing, prevail for women but not men. Safety and sexual protection of women is a concern.

Norms of purity and sexuality are deep rooted, impacting gendered self constructions and expressions. Single women seek valid excuse of family to legitimate personal needs.

5.3 GSOs as Gendered Work Settings: The ‘female touch’

GSOs reproduce gendered norms in their limited “family-friendly” policies, interpersonal relations and social practices at work implicate men and women differently, gendered stereotypical roles and attributes are prevalent.

Women feel burdened and excluded. They constantly negotiate bounded male–female selves.

5.4 Gender & Time: Overtime

Career breaks related to family reasons predominate for women. Family talk enters workplace conversations differently for men and women. Women take on less-demanding roles as family demands increase; no such shift for men. Women find ways to cope.

Acceptance of prescribed, gendered norms is widespread. Modernity shifts gendered identity constructions.

Note. GSO = global software organization; HR = human resources.

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4.1 The Marriage Mandate

The first theme relates to internalized norms and views on roles and responsibilities, particularly for married employees. Marriage is a critical event; it is a turning point in the lives of both Indian men and women but their salience differs. Echoing this, Soumya, a 26-year-old software developer, who quit InSync to join her husband who has a prestigious IT job in Europe, said in an e-mail interview:

I was a girl from a moderately modern family. I never asked the question “Will I get married?” I realize that this point was certain. I WAS GOING TO GET MARRIED. I never saw anybody in my family/friend circle NOT MARRY except perhaps due to financial difficulty. As I grew up, I saw around me how important a man was, in order to live peacefully, to have certain “respectability” and social “acceptability” unlike a single woman. A single woman simply did not have enough means /outlets to go out and enjoy. So I got married. Similarly, I know I will have children some day.

Having been married for a year, and living in Europe, Soumya said,

Initially, we were both very confident of me finding a job here. But jobs for foreigners are limited and I had to resign myself to be unemployed. Of course, it hurts . . . to have worked so hard at education, reading, practicing, and updating knowledge all for cooking and cleaning? I now have to reconcile myself that I will never have the highflying career I dreamed of . . . . Whatever I do will be a supplement to my daily house keeping and the demands of my husband’s job. Right now, I have not totally reconciled myself to this idea. But as things stand that is the only possibility.

Soumya’s response suggests that marriage was experienced as culturally mandated. While it gave her social respectability and acceptability, the shifts it entailed generated strong emotions and a reconstruction of her professional identity to fit this relational choice.

Like Soumya there are other women in GSOs, often in their late 20s, from typically middle class backgrounds with computer science or engineering degrees or diplomas who marry and stop working partially or completely. During this time, they are fully immersed in household and family-related activities. When couples marry within the same company, the wife usually quits her job to join her husband at his location or shoulder family and childcare responsibilities, rather than the reverse. Their responses reflected ambivalence in these decisions, reflecting their dilemmas about domestic “bliss” that they aspired to as well as their compromise in relation to their professional achieve- ment. Affirming this, Disha, one of the few senior women project managers in InSync said,

I have seen many young girls give up their career for marriage and babies. It is tough for women to manage both in this industry. One has to sacrifice a lot. I used to hold my baby in my hand and cry, thinking, how I will leave this baby and go to work after only 3 months maternity leave. It is a big challenge to manage because work pressures are tremendous. That is why many women fall back at senior levels. You can’t be worrying about your babies when the customer is waiting at the other end for the system to be running.

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While sharing about her responsibilities in her family comprising a husband in a senior job and young child, Leena, an assistant manager in the quality department said,

That is life—work and family. There are certain things that just don’t bend. As an Indian, whoever’s wife you are, whether it be the President’s wife or peon’s wife, there are certain activities you do like cooking food for the family. You cannot put your feet up or buy food off the rack like the freedom that you have in Western countries. . . .

Organizing meals occupied a large share of domestic responsibilities of women respon- dents. Even though labor-saving devices and paid domestic help was available, it was still a time-consuming task. Several lunch table conversations with women employees often centered on issues of food preparation in the family. If men were present, they were silent on these matters as they said their wife or mother typically prepared their meals. Some women spoke about the help they received from their in-laws at home which enabled them to also have a career while married. Others spoke about the added responsibilities they had because they lived with their in-laws.

Having a spouse in the same company is common in GSOs. Maya, a project leader married to another project leader, Ramesh, in InSync, has two children. Living with his parents and unmarried brother, they were considering buying their own house. Responding to a question on managing household responsibility, Maya said,

We have the same educational qualifications and now are both project leaders. At one time, my salary was more than his. However, this does not change things at home, where I am responsible. Equality is somewhere in the air. I told my in-laws, that you have not trained your son to take up responsibility at home. It is the man’s ego . . . if I expect him to serve food, for example, he will not do it everyday. Only when I say I am very much tired. They have grown up to think it is the woman. So even in the night he used to not get up to change the nappies of our son even though we both had similar work pressures. I used to feel bad and frustrated. I am now reconciled to dropping my expectations.

When responding to the same question, her husband, Ramesh said, “Yes, the mother surely has to take more responsibilities. I don’t experience any conflict as the support of my parents and brother is always there.” Several other respondents talked about their parents, unmarried siblings or in-laws as being available or willing to care for their children suggesting that while kinship support for family care is present, the primary responsibility is still with the wife.

From male respondents, and from conversations with IT employees, it appeared that men and women perceive work, marriage, and domestic responsibility differently. For many male respondents, the “breadwinner ideology” seemed to predominate, associated with a sense of certainty as reflected in the response of a project manager, Rakesh:

As an Indian male I am supposed to be the one earning the bread and butter. If I have to work for 12 hours a day I have to work, to earn the roti,7 I have to work. If I am not able to come for your alana falana8 stuff, I will not be apologetic about it or go back to my family and say, I am sorry I was not there, I was working.

7Hindi word for bread. 8He is referring to social functions, mainly in the family circle.

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The response of Isha, an unmarried woman in her late 20s and a module leader suggests that this provider role was seen as exclusive to males. Isha said,

In the UK, when I wanted to go bowling or play badminton which meant some expenditure, my male team members would say, “It is okay for you, you are a girl. You can spend money. You don’t have to save for a family.” This was upsetting. How do they know the real financial condition of my house? Luckily my dad is still working but I could well be the sole earning member.

When deeply internalized, the provider role can also be a source of stress among men. During the post September 11th period, when many lost their jobs in the US and returned back to India, feelings of low confidence and decreased self-worth were often clearly visible in the body language and limited salary negotiation of male candidates who interviewed with InSync suggesting the salience of work in the identity construction of males.

Field interviews, interviews of candidates, and informal conversations also revealed that while most men talked at length about their job responsibilities and their career aspirations, they were relatively silent on the organization of their domestic lives or duties. They would refer to “wanting to spend time playing with children or taking the family members out.” Most women, on the other hand, spoke explicitly and at length about their husbands, children, and family responsibilities. The men’s omission was not an effort to conceal their family life; it appears to reflect some taken-for-granted assumptions about domestic arrangements. The workspace also appeared to be a space for expressing their masculinity. For example, Roshni, a software developer said,

In my project the initial period was very stressful. During this period, three teammates became fathers. On the face of it, they always complained about not being there for their wives. But I think, secretly they were very proud of the hard work they were doing. They wanted the fact recognized that they had put the project first, and were committed to on-time delivery of the project and were sitting night outs when their heavily pregnant wives waited at home. The team often boasted that we had tremendous difficulties during the delivery, and how the teammates put work first, etc. As a woman, I was often very troubled by this display because sometime in the vague future it could happen to me, i.e., my husband not being there for me.

Finally, presence of a supporting spouse is reported crucial for success and moving up the career ladder. Mohini, a senior project manager said, “Of course, the husband has to be supportive for women to succeed in this field. If both are running in different directions for their work, who is going to look after the family? One person’s career would need to have more importance than the other.”

4.2 A Woman’s Place

This theme considers the relationship of gender with issues related to diverse mobilities and immobilities. One of the concerns of middle class parents was about job prospects for educated and particularly marriageable daughters. Soumya, a software developer stated, “I was allowed to study as much as I wanted but when it came to working . . . I would have to select something that my parents were reasonably comfortable with. It sounded safe and respectable to sit at the computer in an office.” The concern with physical and social safety

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has been repeatedly mentioned by several respondents as why global, IT companies are preferred as work settings for women. When I mentioned to respondents that I was also interested in men’s and women’s experiences, most female respondents would immediately say that “sexual harassment” and “sexual discrimination” were “absent” in the workplace because GSOs are inhabited by an “educated and professional” workforce. Male respon- dents would shrug their shoulders and wait for the next question. The women’s responses suggest a strict categorization in their mind of any male–female issue as either “discrim- ination” or normality, a mythical idea of professional or educated workforces as gender neutral, denying the possibility that they themselves might be co-opted, albeit insidiously, into a system that oppresses them. In the rare instances of subtle sexual transgression that I have been exposed to as a HR manager, it was the educated women, who found it very hard to believe that what they experienced was a form of harassment. Their fear of what others in the company would think about them (rather than the male culprit) if the incident was publicized in any way, was a cause of much anxiety and guilt and feelings of low self- worth. These feelings reflect how deeply sociocultural norms around purity and sexuality are internally ingrained, impacting one’s self-construction in a very profound manner.

Working late hours, often until midnight, as well as working on weekends, inevitable in this industry, emerged as very stressful for employees, especially given long commutes, humid weather, high pollution, bad roads, frequent traffic jams, and crowded public transport in Mumbai city. Commenting on this, Vanessa, a HR manager, said,

With women, the issue is magnified because of security and managing the home. Seniors, like project managers are generally protective and do not want women to sit late. In the project, the guys ensure the girls who are sitting late reach home safely. Some girls don’t mind traveling alone. Facilities for transport for women working late, is pathetic. Only a few big companies provide it.

Sociocultural barriers to overseas travel are normal and, in the case of Zeenat, who is a Muslim, recently married, 26-year-old software developer, religious beliefs enter parental mandates. She said,

Nowadays many Muslim girls do go to colleges and schools so my parents were not too bothered about my late hours. But they raised a concern about me going onsite before marriage. It was not a personal concern. They were more concerned about what society would say. That if someone came with a proposal and came to know that I was onsite alone, they might object and that might be a problem to get married . . . My in-laws only concern is that I should not stay there alone if I am going long term. If I go, I must go with my husband. I don’t want that he leaves a job for my sake and then he cannot find a job.

Zeenat expressed satisfaction with her current situation and said that she would tackle the issue about onsite postings when it came up.

In another instance, a male supervisor’s personal beliefs about a single woman’s place and safety entered a work conversation as in the case of Usha, an unmarried module leader, the only woman employee in a team of 30 males at a UK customer site. She wanted to return home earlier from her assignment, as her house was burgled and the residential locality was rather unsafe. In a meeting with her manager, she asked him what he would have done if his daughter were in her situation. Her manager responded by saying that he would have got his daughter married before sending her alone onsite. Usha was extremely angry and

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upset and felt that not only her but also her father was insulted in that comment. She said she has now learned to confront such situations though such comments were still hurtful.

Single women, who typically live with their parents, also report having domestic respon- sibilities, though they may not shoulder responsibilities of spouse and children. This can sometimes be experienced as a dilemma. For example, Deepali, an unmarried project man- ager in her mid-30s reported that she was seen by others as “footloose and fancy free” and available for work-related travels, as she was single. Although she had domestic responsi- bilities, it was hard to refuse onsite assignments that she did not want, as she did not have a valid excuse such as a spouse or children or in-law responsibilities, which many women her age have. Experiencing some feelings of guilt her responses suggest how strongly marriage and family is legitimized at the workplace.

Changes were also noted by respondents. Anita, a human resource manager at InSync said,

Earlier, women could not travel abroad because of their parents’, husband’s, or in-laws’ disapproval. Now, I see women wanting to go abroad, to make money, to be on par. This is more so in the younger generation and more so in single women. Those in their early 20s are now more go-getters, more trendy and westernized in their dress and behavior. And the money, opportunities, and success in this industry gives them a certain confidence.

4.3 The “Female Touch” at Work

This dimension relates to GSOs as a work setting, both socially and in terms of its family- related policies. Global software organizations reflect the gendered division of labor in some of their HR policies and practices. For example, maternity leave in GSOs in India is usually given only for 3 months as per statutory requirements. Human resource profes- sionals report that GSOs with policies where such leave is officially longer are rare. In informal conversations, women stated that 3 months is too short and they usually seek an extension. The granting of such requests is handled on a case-to-case basis, depending upon the manager’s discretion and the human resources department. This can be quite anxiety provoking for the woman employee who is then in a dilemma over losing her job versus not being available for her baby. Global software organizations typically do not have any official policy on paternity leave. Human resource personnel often receive appeals from new fathers to mandate paternity leave of some sort. They wanted to spend more time at home with their newborn but were unable to do so because of project pressures. One of the employees was upset because he was unable to witness the birth of his first child since he had been working in the office for a project “delivery.” Policies like these (or lack of them) and such responses reinforce differential valuing by organizations of emotional and childcare labor and male instrumental labor. When there is less flexibility in policy imple- mentation, the women employees are the most affected. Human resource functionalists, on the other hand, say that such policies are a luxury in GSOs as skill shortage of people and tight deadlines on projects make it difficult to sanction such time off.

Similarly, child-care facilities on or near office premises are most often absent, resulting in women quitting their jobs or take extended leave or depending on family support to tend to their children. Lata, a HR head in another GSO said, “We don’t have a ‘critical mass’ for things like day care, crèches, etc. It is a good idea to have one in an IT park where the companies get together and pool in. But IT companies hardly collaborate on sharing

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resources why will they collaborate for this one?” Some married women employees said that taking care of their children is their individual responsibility and they did not expect the company to provide these facilities or make exceptions, especially in a city like Mumbai where real estate prices are sky high. Such responses make it hard to enable any sort of positive shift both at the individual level as well at the company level.

Gender differences are also related to socialization and networking practices at InSync. In conversations with married women employees, they reported that while networking and socialization outside and within the office enhanced their career, they rarely did so as there was never enough time. Maya, a project leader said, “I don’t network. I don’t have time. My husband does it. I don’t have a friends’ group of my own. Sometimes, I don’t call my mummy too. I get so focused on my work at home.” Even while on the job, “there are some things that I just cannot do with my male colleagues,” said Chitra, a project manager.

For example, after some disagreement, one guy will come up to the next and slap him on the shoulder and say, ‘let us go for a smoke.’ Jaise kandhe peh haath daal kar jaa sekte ho.9 It is amazing how many work-related matters are sorted out in chats in the ‘smoking zone’ and male banter. I can’t do that and feel excluded as I don’t smoke nor drink and I don’t have that many female colleagues.

Affirming this another developer, Naina, who quit InSync and is now working in an IT company in Australia, said, “There is a disadvantage in terms of personal bonding with others since most of the men go out for Friday evening drinks here too, whereas women typically don’t.”

Managers, both male and female, said that overall, women software professionals are more committed, loyal, and sincere in their work. Women, they said, viewed things holis- tically “from all the stakeholders’ perspectives.” Furthermore, they made excellent project managers, even if their technical knowledge were lagging, as their interpersonal and team management skills were commendable. Because family was their major priority, they were not keen on job hopping or asking for onsite assignments. Also, they said that women employees added a “female touch” to the work environment, as women were more personal in their dealings as compared to men, who were seen as more professional. Another female manager while sharing her experience of this female touch working with an all-male team said, “While many interactions are easy, as a female boss I have to be careful about touch. With women, it is fine. With my male reportees, I feel awkward and hesitant and am very cautious not to give the wrong signal . . . like just wanting to put my hand on the arm of a team member who is feeling very low.” Women have to negotiate these boundaries all the time. For example, jokes and humor is another arena where sexuality and masculinity can be expressed. Indu, a project leader said, “In teams ‘non-veg’ jokes [‘dirty’ jokes, derogatory to women] do get cracked but people see to it that you are not around especially if you are the boss. I get some of these jokes which are forwarded but just delete them. It is easier to tell your junior about not talking about these jokes.”

Making an observation about the different qualities women brought to her team, Sunaina, a developer said: “Women tend to behave a little gentler and often relax an atmosphere of stress. . . . Generally, during the end of a serious discussion, women often are instrumental in easing the tension a bit by cracking jokes or maybe just lightening up the mood. Men generally prefer discussing upcoming events with them. Team leaders generally allocate

9This Hindi sentence means “to walk with another with your arm around that person’s shoulder.”

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jobs like arranging for a birthday celebration, arranging a baby gift, chart-making for company competitions, articles for company magazine. . . . In all these women are actively encouraged.” Her observation points to how the femininity of women is expressed and also reinforced by both men and women in work teams within the GSO.

At InSync, it was noted that male managers who were understanding and demonstrated good relational or “soft” skills were upheld as role models. Female managers, on the other hand, were expected to be automatically adept at this, suggesting that gender was produced by viewing these behaviors as intrinsic to female personhood. However, when these skills were not seen as embedded and appeared in a structured, quantifiable “hard” format within a competency framework for all employees, they were legitimized as neutral and made uniformly applicable, similar to technical skills. Similarly, in my former role as an HR manager, I was reminded by line managers to link the values of the company in customer presentations to tangible, demonstrable business results so that they were seen to “add value” to the company’s bottom line. The aim was to align “soft” HR interventions with “hard” business data to secure credibility and legitimacy of the company’s image and identity in the mind of the customer.

Finally, another example where the female touch was obviously missing was a book en- titled Good Business Communicates Across Cultures (publication details are confidential). Targeted for InSync’s overseas customers, it described the Indian IT worker within the sociocultural context of India but paradoxically included images of only (White) men in suits holding briefcases walking across global highways. Gendered and racist images like these are rather common in the Web sites of Indian GSOs, suggesting a preference for a masculinized way to represent the company to global customers under the semblance of professionalism.

4.4 Overtime

This dimension related to how gender-related concerns shifted over the lifecycle of the individual worker. Emphasizing the different changes that marriage brings to male and female IT workers, Indu, a manager says,

In IT, women concentrate on their work well especially in the first few years, in the 22 to 25 age range. After around 25, they get married. Then, the men start getting serious about work and women start getting serious about their household responsibilities and this can cause some unrest for women. Women are not free birds like men. As you grow in your career there are fewer options available for women because of the time constraints put on them.

The difference in perception of marriage and family, and their respective salience in social identity were reflected in how women and men talk in informal conversations at the workplace. For example, Rani, a 33-year-old unmarried project manager says, “Typically 90% of women at my level are married and their topics are around children, school, and studies. With males, these topics are rare. They speak of sports, politics, and what is happening in IT. I am more comfortable with these topics. On a one to one individual level, one male member might tell me “I applied for my daughter’s passport today, let me see,” etc. As a group, men discuss things differently.”

In selection interviews, primarily women candidates were noted as specifically stat- ing marriage, child-rearing and husband’s job mobility as a cause of their career breaks.

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Interviewers in GSOs considered it normal to ask women candidates’ direct questions about their family responsibilities, rather than male candidates. In a conversation with Kalpana, a HR manager, she said, “In interviews we assume a guy will be available 100% for work unlike a woman.” Human resource managers were told to “keep their antennae up” if a female candidate was newly married and to check if she would follow her husband on his job posting. Interview notes were made of candidates’ responses to such questions. These constitute some material practices by which gender issues are produced or expressed.

In selection interviews with male candidates, references to family were made in passing. If a male candidate made a city location shift, it was mostly because of his own planned career move or, in some instances, to responsibilities associated with his aging parents (who often relocated to where the son lived rather than vice versa). Caring for in-laws was stated as the prime responsibility of the wife. Women reported that this often took the form of medical support, ensuring that dietary regulations were maintained, observing duties related to religious rituals and festivals in the home. In salary discussions and promotion decisions women typically negotiated or bargained less than men and when asked, said they preferred to compromise on these aspects and negotiate on issues such as time off or long leave from the company, for domestic responsibilities. These responses and observations reinforce the differential salience of marriage and family responsibilities for men and women in the Indian context and these gendered notions are reproduced in the organization in the form of availability for work.

Anticipating the future changes that her marital status would entail, and also preparing for them in advance, Meena, a 23-year-old trainee, fresh from the IIT (Indian Institute of Technology, the most prestigious engineering college in India) said,

I want to learn more and more since this is my first year. Maybe after 3 to 4 years when I am married I will look for stability. When you are getting married, you see, for a girl, it depends on your husband so one may relocate cities. . . . Before marriage is the main time to learn.

Women found different ways to find a balance and cope with the workload. For example, Tara, a module leader who was passionate about doing technical coding had this to say when asked how she kept up with these demands:

I don’t go out of my way to make friends at work. I do my work. Even while on maternity leave I bought books, I made sure I would spend 2 hours reading when my daughter was sleeping. It is lot of effort. Mornings, I packing tiffins [lunch packs], get my daughter ready for school. At night I just sit for my work.

When women found it hard to manage sustained work pressures, especially when their children were in school, they balanced both worlds by opting for less-demanding roles such as in quality control or training functions. At InSync for example, 82% of employees in software development were males and 18% females. In the quality control department, the ratios were slightly different with 60% men and 40%, women. While speaking with women in the quality control function at InSync, they acknowledged that this role enabled them to combine their work aspirations with family demands better than in a project role though it did not have the same “market currency” as working on “live” projects.

Employing cheap, paid domestic help or enrolling family members like in-laws or parents in child-care responsibilities were seen to be common strategies employed by women to manage the home front. One of the female managers at InSync reported that she had

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employed three maids to complete the household chores and this arrangement worked very well with her husband’s erratic travel schedule and her long working hours. However, the responsibility for the supervision of the maids and the care of the household remained with her. So while she maintained equilibrium and avoided conflict, her response maintains the traditional gender order as the work just shifts to paid labor.

Recently, there have been some changes. Mohini said,

Today in IT, the balance is tilting. Women in the age group 26 to 27 are prepared to leave everything at home to come to work. I find that men who are newly married or have small kids say, ‘Oh my wife is saying this I need to go home, or I can’t travel onsite my wife is alone, she has to look after the kids and my parents.’ These were women’s worries earlier, and now are men’s worries.

One can attribute these changes in India as related to globalization, a decline in the availability of reliable domestic help in India particularly in Mumbai city, a shift towards couples preferring to live independently, and an exposure to mass media and overseas travel that promotes a shift towards “modern ideologies” of living and relating. Affirming this, Amrita says, “Women today are taking a lot of challenges. They forego marriages; they delay families. Especially in IT they rise faster, the money is good, they see the world much earlier in life and their expectations rise. Money gives women a lot of independence and is too good to be put aside. Part-time work is also coming to India which will benefit women.”

To summarize, four themes emerged from the empirical data. They point to a preponder- ance of gendered beliefs, norms, and ideologies held by both individuals and GSOs. These are enacted or expressed in the material practices within GSOs as well as in the ideological constructions of GSO management and IT professionals. Issues related to these categories are directly linked to individuals’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, implicating, in this way, their self and identity constructions.

5. DISCUSSION

In this section, the two research questions posed in the Introduction are addressed.

5.1 Gender and Global Software Organizations

Like other organizations, GSOs are sites where gender divisions of labor prevail in the boundaries between public and private, production and reproduction, family and work. Both socially and structurally, GSOs are not a “level playing field” for men and women IT workers but rather a site where traditional and stereotypical gendered norms and stereotypes are represented, explicitly and implicitly. However, unlike other organizations, they present a dialectic of the local and the global, not only geographically in terms of markets or in terms of locations but also socially and culturally. Global software organizations are a unique global work context, with immense possibilities to weaken or strengthen the division of labor and hegemonic status of local gendered ideological constructs. For example, the shifting market requirements of technical knowledge and skills, project-based work, diverse domain knowledge requirements and geographical customer locations, typical in GSO work make it a more flexible work setting, both structurally and socially than others like manufacturing or even global consulting firms. This quality of flexibility has the potential to weaken or

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eliminate mobility related restrictions and barriers for women. It also challenges the (male) dominant, linear trajectory of career growth by creating new and varied work possibilities for both men and women. GSOs provide an opportunity for skills to flow between the public and the private, giving them a competitive edge in global software work that is increasingly trust- and knowledge-based in the “Information Age” (Nicholson & Sahay, 2001; Sahay et al., 2003).

The issue of relational skills directly relates to GSO work. While software development is defined as knowledge work, it exists in a web of highly interactive relationships (Waterson et al., 1997). Furthermore, offshore software development, the focus of GSOs, differs from colocated development in three ways: the nature of work, the diversity of cultures and organizations in the development process, and the processual nature of the offshore relationship (Nicholson & Sahay, 2004). In such contexts, embeddedness of knowledge has been discussed at cognitive, organizational, and societal levels and their interconnections and “nestedness” in each other have been analyzed (Dacin, Mark, Ventresca, & Beal, 1999; Lam, 2000; Nicholson & Sahay, 2004). While such research has included symbolic representations, specialized relationships and broader social institutions and structures such as education and labor markets as sources of embeddedness of knowledge, they exclude local gender norms and relations, which, this empirical material indicates also exists at these levels in GSOs. For example, the marriage mandate where women quit their jobs and engage in domestic and child care responsibilities deprives GSOs of not only potential, skilled employees but also the female advantage in terms of relational or soft skills such as intuitiveness, interpersonal sensitivity, and empathy. These are often tacit, resulting from years of socialization practices, primarily embedded in women’s attributes and their “being,” and exhibited in interactions with others. Unlike hard technical skills or knowledge, they call for self-reflection, and training involving demonstration and repetition; these soft skills are very difficult to disembed from the local context and rearticulate in global contexts across time and space (D’Mello, 2005). While it is true that GSOs often operate with a placeless logic, individual employees remain “historically and biographically place-dependent” (Sahay et al., p. 39) suggesting that such qualities are context-dependent or “spatially sticky” (Gertler, 2001).

Going beyond cognitive reasoning, relational skills constitute elements of “emotional intelligence” (Dulewicz & Higgs, 2004; Goleman, 1996) with particular relevance for the unique context of offshore software development. Mobility restrictions for women, nested within gendered societal norms, limit not only their physical participation in GSOs but also the effectiveness and productivity of GSOs. For example, social networking practices, critical in interaction-based work, limit women’s influence in decision making because formal and informal information flows in GSOs often bypass or exclude them because of their mobility restrictions. Given the longevity of women employees in the company, and the flexible and mobile nature of its work, GSOs are in a unique position to harvest these qualities to enhance their competitive edge.

5.2 Gender, Self, and Identity

The data suggests beliefs in the sociocultural dimensions of femininity and family, mas- culinity, and career are powerful controlling forces in the working lives of both men and women in GSOs. These ideologies affect how they enter the IT profession, balance their paid and unpaid work roles, and their sense of satisfaction or ambivalence with themselves

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as professionals, parents, or single individuals. Resonating with the work of Gilligan (1982) women’s voices spoke of an “ethics of care” that emerged from their social experience while men spoke of an “ethics of justice” in talking about their priorities and relationships. These different voices clearly demonstrate different gendered styles and different positioning of work in identity constructions of men and women. They also suggest how individuals are placed and place themselves in the Indian social system.

The empirical data suggests that the autonomous-relational self (Kagitcibasi, 1996) is operationalized among IT workers, in ways that are more dichotomous than dialectically mutual. The breadwinner ideology predominated as a central aspect of masculine identity constructs, while the relational self occupied center stage in feminine identity constructs. Individual responses as well as the coping means used by women, reinforces the view that the relational self was the predominant pathway of self-development (Kapadia, 1999), tied to the woman’s sense of self. Such a self, legitimizing care giving by women and care receiving by men, binds women to this order even at the cost of their well-being (Kapadia, 1999; Sen, 2000). Negotiating for power and equality in the family system is a challenging task, threatening disintegration of family relationships impacting one’s self-esteem, and many women in this study, found in-between solutions or compromised their own career aspirations.

The recent changes among younger women reflect new reality-defining social structures effected by flows of globalization and modernity in India. In addition to macro changes, these women also appear to assume a critical perspective on the present social relations, seeking self-fulfillment and success, and in this way, bringing in new elements into old contexts. At a self level, this implies a conscious kindling of their autonomous self to be- come successful, confident actors in a global work context where the nature of work offers abundant opportunities for personal and social accomplishment. Particularly, transnational opportunities for travel and living in such global work provides an opportunity for IT pro- fessionals to review traditional entrenched gender discourses and ideologies and be exposed to diverse possibilities of relating and being. The changes in the younger generation of IT professionals suggest a positive shift where both men and women seek to accommodate the influences of modernity in their gender-related identity constructions without threaten- ing gender inauthenticity or increasing ghettoization for women, as earlier feared (Arun & Arun, 2001; Panteli et al., 1999). It appears that slowly but surely, there is a greater convergence of the relational and autonomous aspects of selves among IT professionals rather than a reinforcement of the existing dichotomy. Factors unique to the IT profession in GSOs such as high social status, high incomes, quick possibilities for success, and fre- quent overseas travel opportunities intersect with boundaries of gender and class to create possibilities for varied identity constructions and arenas where individuals can demonstrate increased agency as well as relatedness.

5.3 Theoretical and Practical Implications

Insights from such studies have implications for both researchers studying gender relations in global work contexts, as well as HR practitioners in Indian GSOs.

Theoretically, while macro-level concepts of globalization, modernity, gender, and iden- tity provide us with relevant conceptual frameworks to understand people and processes, they often fail to explain how these dynamics are actually lived in the day-to-day life and experiences of people. It is only through micro-ethnographic studies like these that we can

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identify the push–pull aspects of sociocultural traditions that are enacted in the context of global workspaces and their source in local anchors. In IS, while the domain of offshore software development in increasingly important in this community, to date there has been limited, intensive empirical analysis of the organizational context of such work. The is- sue of gender relations has been largely ignored in the few studies on offshore software development (e.g., Nicholson & Sahay, 2004; Sahay et al., 2003). This work contributes to IS research by illustrating the local, micro-level social dynamics and moorings of a social and cultural place as related to gender, within a complex and global organizational context. It also highlights the necessity of questioning notions of the homogenizing effects of globalization forces in transnational workplaces.

There are several practical implications. Women workers themselves can play a key role in bringing about changes in their workplace environments. They can pressure their organizations to establish day care centers near the organization or lobby for part-time work possibilities or working-from-home options. These options will provide them flexibility and enable a more sustained career trajectory even when their household responsibilities increase, preventing their disappearance or dropping out of the workforce. Given their relatively privileged social position in India, and as members of a limited pool of knowledge workers so critical for such work that is high on the national agenda, they can use this bargaining power to create such enabling possibilities for themselves.

Besides workers, GSOs would greatly benefit by the continued participation of women in the internal labor market pool and their work contributions with the added dimension of their female touch. Even though the gender ratios in GSOs are skewed, and women workers experience all kinds of mobility-related restrictions, their contributions have been noted as significant to organizational performance in this knowledge-work industry. Wider debates on female and male styles of relating or the feminine advantage (e.g., Fletcher, 1998; Kealey, 1990) have particular relevance for GSOs. This feature warrants serious consideration by GSOs to attend to gender issues that hinder their business which itself, as stated earlier, is so deeply embedded in a web of highly interactive relationships. Management of GSOs may consider reviewing their policies and HR systems and processes in terms of gender, to relax the work–family boundary, and challenge organizational gendered assumptions about the public–private/hard–soft, or masculine/feminine dichotomy. Creating processes for enhancing networking and socialization options for women employees can enhance their visibility and continued presence in both the internal as well as external labor markets (Evetts, 1996).

Going beyond the “add women and stir” remedy, HR staff could attend to how gender subtly enters and shapes structures, processes, and ways of relating in GSOs. Treating individual IT employees as resources or referring to them as manpower, commonly used parlance by HR professionals, neutralize critical identity elements such as gender that organize behaviors and impact the organization. Business pressures in a volatile marketplace are now the driver for these changes. In the context of gender relations, it calls for a reconfiguring of the GSO workplace into one that is perhaps more androgynous, overall. Such a reconfiguration is expected to contribute towards a more effective holistic balance, making the workplace a social milieu that accommodates such transformations.

This work also has implications for the IT export business in India, given its scorching growth rate. At one level, creating enabling opportunities for inclusion of more women into the IT workforce would contribute to increasing the overall labor pool of professionals in the country, where competent workers are always in short supply. These opportunities will also reduce attrition rates, so endemic to this volatile industry and so detrimental to the

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GSO (D’Mello, 2005). By participating in the IT sector, women can also actively contribute to technological development of the country. To this end, equal opportunity’ task forces and their recommendations typically focus on increasing the number count of women in this industry (Suriya, 2003). However, structural transformations are certainly necessary but not sufficient to foster true empowerment and engagement of this group of knowledge workers. What is needed is a greater acceptance of the complicities between social norms and organizational practices that primarily constrain women’s mobility and any attempts towards changing these mobility constraints . Recently, NASSCOM, the prestigious, apex body of the IT industry in India, claiming to be the “authentic voice” of this industry and “the single point reference for all information on the IT industry in India” (p. 2), has, in its 2005 Annual Report, dedicated for the first time, a full chapter to the socio-economic impact of the growth of IT in India. Referring to the United Nation’s Millennium Declaration, the section on gender equality focuses on the role of ICTs for underprivileged women. While this may not be directly relevant to GSOs in particular, it is a positive first step at an industry level, in acknowledging the gender divide in India in the context of ICTs. NASSCOM can leverage this national report to disseminate findings from studies on gender disparities to create awareness and an impetus for change, on gender-related issues specifically within GSOs.

The notions of empowerment of both women and men or development as empowerment are also practically relevant (Sen, 2000). For women, where the relational self predominates, empowerment would mean kindling their autonomous self to enable them to question the patriarchal order and create a space for themselves. For men, empowerment would imply enabling them to develop and to express comfortably more relational qualities of nurturance, empathy, and care. For GSOs, it implies celebrating rather than stereotyping differences and finding holistic and creative settings for its employees to contribute and add value not only in terms of technical knowledge but also through a range of personal attributes.

Finally, other Asian countries where global outsourcing work is increasing and which share similar sociocultural contexts with India, could benefit from learnings or prac- tices from this context in their design and implementation of gender-sensitive policies and processes. Understanding the nature of social structures and consciously commit- ting to positively influencing them are critical at the national, political, industry-wide, and organizational levels; it directly relates to issues of participation of women in the IT workforce as well as the effectiveness of the industry and the particular GSO itself.

6. CONCLUSION

Gender is implicated in the daily working lives of IT professionals in GSOs in India. Contrary to beliefs about neutrality and professionalism, GSOs like other organizations, constitute a local as well as a global site where gender is enacted in its material practices and ideological constructions. Gender-related norms and beliefs frame selves and identities of IT workers, influencing their self-esteem and participation in the workforce. They also regulate behaviors of employees through their formal and informal processes. Particularities of GSO work make it a potential site for educated women in India to increase their agency and participation in the public sphere and disrupt traditional, mobility-related, and other restrictions. The persistence of the gender divide in GSOs has ramifications for not only the selves and identities of individual workers but also for the country’s growth and development, given that IT is seen as a pivotal engine for national growth.

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7. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank Professors Sundeep Sahay and Christina Mörtberg, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo (UIO), Turid Markussen, Centre for Women’s Studies and Gender Research, UIO, and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and feedback on earlier versions of this paper.

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Marisa D’Mello is a doctoral student at the Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture (TIK) at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Oslo (UiO), Norway. She is from Mumbai, India; her postgraduate degrees are in psychology from India and the USA. Ms. D’Mello was a lecturer in psychology for several years in Mumbai before working in the IT industry in India in 1993. She is interested in the new forms of work, workers and organizational cultures in global work contexts, particularly gender and work relations in ICT mediated contexts.

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