Abstract
Despite broadly increasing rates in Female Labour Force Participation (FLFP) prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, women remained underrepresented within Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) sector work in South Africa. The low procurement and poor retention of women in this male-dominated sector have been the subject of academic inquiry. As a result, the “leaky pipeline” metaphor emerged as a dominant way of understanding the poor retention of women in STEM work. This study argues that the leaky pipeline metaphor is insufficient in understanding the gender role socialisation that underpins contributors to leaks and needs to be expanded to include earlier stages and the action of norms. A focus on norms is warranted, specifically exploring their relationship with STEM-focused resources in shaping women’s access to STEM-related education and employment. This study aims to understand women’s life journeys to and within the technology-based sector within South Africa in terms of normative influences over women’s lifetimes. This study employed the life history approach to investigate norms. The research site was a multinational manufacturing conglomerate and self-proclaimed leader in the Information Technology (IT) realm, with sophisticated gender advancement policies in the technology industry of South Africa. Six women participated in this research and can be dubbed “the women who made it” in the STEM world of work. The findings indicate that heteronorms are at work in every phase of women’s lives (family, education and work), influencing their access to resources and opportunities, albeit to varying degrees. Norms have the capacity to be powerful, but they do not instantaneously equate to resources. Rather, they are mediated by the agency of the women and the actions of socialisation agents. In this study, men emerged as the main gatekeepers to resources, not because of an absence of influential women but because they are the dominant group in this masculine space. For example, brothers governed their sisters’ access to resources, which affected their STEM education and work, while male teachers played a similar role outside the home. Men also determined the cultural environment in workplaces for the women in this study. Therefore, the policy recommendation is to develop normatively sensitive mechanisms that may dismantle the potential gender normative biases of men in each life stage.
M.A. (Industrial Sociology)