Law Publications
Title
Situating Gender: Students' Perceptions of Information Work
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2004
Volume
17
Issue
1
Journal
Information Technology and People
First Page
71
Last Page
86
Abstract
Young people entering their first year of university studies were asked to give their impressions of 12 high knowledge and information sector occupations. Their perceptions yield a complex set of expectations that are consistent, in large measure, with experts’ predictions of the information sector's occupational winners and losers. The majority of students aspire to be self-employed or to work in the private, rather than the public sector. Of the occupations included in the study, the students perceived the occupation “librarian” most negatively in terms of skill, status, compensation and future opportunity, unlike, for example, the similar occupation, “Internet researcher”. The results are discussed in term of the complex interactions of gender, computing, and skill on the attractiveness of difference types of work.
