The research problem is that despite the benefit of gender equality to propel commercial growth, women in Indonesian digital technology sector are disproportionately outnumbered. The purpose of this quantitative study is to examine the factors that influence female undergraduate business students at seven private universities in the Greater Jakarta region to work in digital companies in Indonesia. The research could shed light on the relationship between personal attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control towards the intention of female undergraduate business students to work in digital companies with employer branding as the moderating variable. This study contributed to the worldwide phenomena by examining the characteristics that influence female undergraduate business students' intentions to work in digital firms at seven private institutions in the Greater Jakarta region.
TopBackground Of Study
The technology roles in many industries including technology industries are male dominated, while women continue to take minor roles. The gender role has posed a particular challenge to the women who attempt to break the barriers in culturally masculine industries (Harquail, 2008). The numerical minority status of women in historically male-dominated environments, such as technology role has become a cultural obstacle that triggers gender norms and poses a challenge to women’s social identity (Richman, van Dellen, & Wood, 2011). Women tend to resolve the issues by accepting that they do not have skill in the science and technology area, and this led to a shortage of women workforce in technology industry. A report from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in October 2020 pointed out that Indonesia has the lowest percentage of women workforce in Technology industry (22%), in line with the lowest percentage of women in the overall workforce (32%) (Rastogi, Meyer, Tan, & Tasiaux, 2020).
Figure 1. ASEAN Women in Technology in 2017.
Despite the Indonesian economy increased at a 5.3 percent annual rate, which is predicted to continue through 2023 (Hisham, Ham, & Chanreaksmeidara, 2019), and digital economy is one essential area that Indonesian government’ focus to become the world's fifth largest economy by 2030 (Hisham et al. 2019), the country still has the lowest percentage of women working in digital technology. According to (Burke, 1993), the presence of women in an organization brings benefits for the organization, however, women make up only 5% of Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) in Fortune 100 IT organizations (Klawe, Whitney, & Simard, 2009). Women often leave their job at key junctures of the career ladder in all Southeast Asian markets. Consider that across all industries, women make up more than 50% of university graduates but fewer than 15% of CEO and board-level positions in Southeast Asia. This is a problem worldwide, and in all industries, due to an array of deep-rooted issues. Previous research reported that in Indonesia peer influence plays a disproportionate role in the choice of education, while company reputation plays a much more important role in the choice of first job and long-term career than it does in other markets. (Rastogi, Meyer, Tan, and Tasiaux, 2020). According to the theory of planned behavior (TPB) by Ajzen 1981, peer and family norm together with personal attitude and perceived behavioral control influence the intention towards behavior. It is empirically proven by many scholars; however, little has been known that company reputation has an influence as a moderating role in the relationship between the subjective norms (SN), personal attitude (PA) and perceived behavioral control (PBC) and intention towards behavior. The purpose of this quantitative study is to examine the factors that influence female undergraduate students in business program to work in digital companies in Indonesia using theory of planned behavior (TPB) framework, by measuring the effects of personal attitude (PA), subjective norms (SN), perceived behavioral control (PBC), toward the intention (I) of the female undergraduate students in business program. Furthermore, this research will also assess the effect of employer branding (EB) as the moderator.
Theoretically, the research could shed light on the relationship between personal attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control towards the intention of female undergraduate business students to work in digital companies with employer branding as the moderating variable. The research is also significant because its findings could offer insights about the impact of employer branding on the relationships between personal attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control towards the intention of female undergraduate business students to work in digital companies. The finding could inform digital companies on how to effectively attract female talents.