Race and the IT Workforce

Abstract

As the existence of the present volume attests, gender is crucial in understanding the IT workforce. To stop there, however, would be to miss many other aspects of identity that influence issues of satisfaction, recruitment, retention and attrition in IT organizations.1 In this article, I will focus on race2—one of the most salient identity characteristics for today’s workforce. The goal is to summarize some of the research approaches from sociology, psychology, and management that have furthered our understanding of race. These perspectives are presented as possibilities for extending the repertoire of strategies for enriching our research on IT women, especially women of color.