What Happens to Female Employees in Skewed IT Project Teams in Sri Lanka? Revisiting Kanter

Proving Themselves

Almost all the female respondents of the study candidly indicated that they have to work harder to prove themselves in their male-dominant work teams. They were of the view that they had to exert an extra effort compared to males in their teams in order to establish their capabilities and performance and thus be accepted and survive in the team. This appears to put pressure on them which makes their work more challenging and demanding when compared with that of men employed in a similar capacity. For example, one female engineer reported that

There exists a kind of negative situation for us [women]. We have to work a little harder than our male counterparts to prove ourselves in the team. Since I’m the only female in my team, my performance is always noticed by others including the management…Though we all get equal duties and responsibilities, some male members have a mindset that girls are incapable of performing assigned duties. I have also got those kinds of comments. Sometimes I have heard them saying “how would girls know these things”. Therefore we have to put in more effort than males to show that we are working and performing well in the team. (Kokila is a 34-year-old married woman, working as a senior engineer and possesses seven years work experience in the IT industry).

Another woman software developer provided similar comments:

…with the changes in the work environment, no woman can avoid challenges in the workplace. They have to move (behave) according to work demands. They can’t behave like traditional females. Especially in our field (IT), performance is expected similarly from both genders. Yet, we as females do have to face lots of issues due to mismatch of our gender with industry expectations. To survive in the field, we have to put in much more effort than males. (Vijini, 29-year-old unmarried female with three years of working experience in the IT industry as a software developer)

Women face this challenge in proving themselves especially during the initial stages in team formation:

…when you are assigned to a team where you don’t know others, then you have to work a little bit harder than guys do, because at first glance males might not respect you much as a member. You have to be pretty confident in what you are doing. If you ask questions at the beginning, they quickly think, ok this is because it’s a “SHE”.…With time, once we show our talents, we also can survive. (Geethika is a 35-year-old female, unmarried and who has moved into her tenth year in the IT industry and who has been employed in three IT companies in Sri Lanka.)

Geethika reveals how women struggle from the outset to establish their technical capabilities, which she believe is clearly not a condition that men generally face when they join an IT project team.

This issue of proving themselves is directly linked to “Attention to a Token’s Discrepant Characteristics” discussed by Kanter (1977) under performance pressure. According to Kanter, while women as tokens attract attention, their technical capabilities always go unnoticed by the men in the group, making women work harder to prove their capabilities. Statements by Vijini and Geethika highlight this situation.

It is a widely prevailing gender stereotypical belief in Sri Lankan society, as in many South Asian countries, that women are less technically capable than men (Abhayadeva, 2007; Jayaweera et al., 2006). However, all team members would have undergone the same recruitment and selection process to these IT companies and IT project teams, and possess the same educational, technical and other competencies. Hence, questions arise as to whether women really are less capable than men, or are they just made to feel that they are less capable by men? Or due to the gender specific norms and beliefs in society, do women feel inferior about their capability, even though in reality such perceptions and treatment of women do not exist? These social perception are reflected within the IT project teams, where the male respondents explicitly acknowledged the existence of these beliefs:

It depends strongly on the people who are there in the team. But most of the time guys are very capable when providing technical solutions and analytical skills. (Samitha, a 43-year-old married male who is a senior engineer with more than 15 years working experience in the IT industry)

Most of the time, IT jobs need technical soundness. Males show more passion towards technical stuff. This field is evolving very fast. Males by nature have the thirst to seek new knowledge, have the technical curiosity, and technical interest. (Nuwan, 32, unmarried male team member with seven years working experience as a software engineer)

These statements unmistakably indicate the presumption men hold, where they believe that women lack technical and task oriented work skills and that males are more technically competent and are properly updated.

Whether Samitha’s belief is based on prior experience or just speculation is not known; however Nuwan went on to say that he has had negative experiences with female team members in the past, where the whole team has suffered due to the “feminine qualities” of the female team member. The “feminine qualities” Nuwan refers to is the inability to remain at work late to meet deadlines of the project. Nuwan extends this experience to provide a general opinion about all women with whom he works: “we [male leaders] are a bit reluctant to get female team members after that incident”. This application of one experience to the whole group of tokens can be related to Kanter’s “extension of consequences” under the broader category of “performance pressure”, where it is stated that the “females were visible as category members, and as such their acts tended to have added symbolic consequences” (Kanter, 1977, p. 973). Here too, women are visible as tokens, and their behaviour and performance thus tend to have added symbolic consequences where experiences garnered with them will be extended to other tokens. This can also be a very valid reason for women to put extra effort into their work to prove their capability as they know that the perceptions the team members form about them will affect how these team members look at other women in IT. As such, “They were thus not acting for themselves alone but carrying the burden of representing their category” (Kanter, 1977, p. 973). Overall, it is clear that the male respondents and their male team members assume women to be less capable technically, and therefore it is not surprising that women feel the need to prove their capabilities to these males.

It was not only female team members’ technical capabilities that males in these IT teams looked down upon. Female participants also drew attention to how their leadership capabilities and skills are overlooked and marginalized by the men in these teams. Geethika, for example, shared an experience of a colleague of hers, who became a leader of a male-dominated IT project team. Though this particular woman leader was capable as far as her work was concerned, she could not continue in the position due to the pressure she was put under by her male counterparts:

She was very capable and was a high performer. The management was happy about her, and they promoted her as our team leader. I was really happy and I felt more comfortable than earlier. But the other team members didn’t recognize her as their leader. They refused to work according to her decisions and ultimately the management took back her powers and gave the authority to the former leader (a man) who is currently working as the manager of our team. She became very unpopular, and most of the team members didn’t accept her leadership.

Chekani’s (29-year-old female team member, unmarried and possessing three years of working experience in the IT sector) recollections also support the assertion that males in these IT teams are reluctant to accept the leadership capabilities of women, thus creating a challenging situation for women:

This happened in my previous company. There were two girls who were promoted as team leaders in two different teams. The majority disagreed with these promotions and it was unbelievable to witness that about 10 males left the company because of this situation. They said that females cannot do this (be successful leaders) and this decision will definitely end in failure. But after two years, everybody accepted that these two girls were highly capable team leaders.

The experiences of Geethika and Chekani demonstrate how women’s leadership capabilities are not acknowledged or recognized by males in these teams, once again making women work harder at proving not only their technical competence, but also their leadership capabilities. Past research also highlights how leadership opportunities are rare for women in IT (Ahuja, 2002; Fountain, 2000). This evidently creates further implications to women where their career advancement opportunities also become limited. It is thus clear how gender role stereotypical beliefs about females’ capabilities and skills spill over to the workplace and continue to persist in these work settings creating challenging and testing work environments for women.

The discussion hitherto suggests how women face performance pressures (Kanter, 1977) in their teams where they constantly strive to prove their technical and leadership capabilities. As also discussed above, while two of the sub-concepts identified by Kanter under performance pressure (attention to tokens’ discrepant characteristics and extension of consequences) were reflected here, there was no evidence to indicate the presence of the other two sub-concepts (public pressure and fear of retaliation). In other words, the female respondents of the study did not appear to feel performance pressure due to being overly observed (public pressure) or due to fear of outstanding performance in group events and tasks (fear of retaliation).

Do the women feel the need to prove their capabilities due to a heightened visibility and the intense scrutiny they face as a result of their numerical minority status, as suggested by Kanter? In light of the discussion above, rather than their numerical minority status it appears that the existence of stereotypical gender role beliefs and sexist attitudes (Izraeli, 1983; Lewis & Simpson, 2012; Zimmer, 1988) about women’s capabilities, work roles and gendered occupational segregation appear to be the predominant cause for this need for women to prove themselves.

Gaining the Team’s Acceptance

There was also a very strong sense of exclusion among the female respondents, where they felt like “outsiders” within the team. This feeling of exclusion was manifested in many forms from the language men spoke to the way they behaved. One aspect the women highlighted was the language men spoke and the nature of what they discussed within teams or in team gatherings. Consider, for example this statement by Chekani:

I am the only girl in my team. Though I’m an adult I feel embarrassed sometimes in front of my team-mates. When they talk while at work, they use mostly informal language (sexualized language) with so many unusual words (sexualized words). You know…many unnecessary stories. Because of team spirit I can’t avoid these situations. Because of the fewer number of females in the team I don’t have a voice to speak against this. Even when the team members go for a team outing they talk about high tech matters or do “guys’ talk”. They have a perception that “she” doesn’t match our gang.

It is interesting to note how Chekani feels uncomfortable and excluded within her team due to the use of sexualized language as well as talk of a technical nature. This poses an important question whether the men in her team actually perceive Chekani as an outsider who “doesn’t match their gang” or whether it is Chekani’s insecurity and perceptions that lead her to believe that she does not belong. With the IT sector having always been identified as a masculine sector in Sri Lanka, females come to the IT field with the preconception that it is male dominant and that women are a minority group. The numerical dominance of males in IT companies as well as their behaviour and underlying attitudes (as discussed above under “proving themselves”) reinforces this belief, with women being conscious of this fact in their day to day dealings at work. Hence, technical discussions outside work time and use of sexualized language/comments might be making women feel like outsiders.

As female respondents shared similar experiences of embarrassment and discomfort with team members’ use of slander or comments and jokes of a sexual nature, further explorations and analysis in this regard is important. Similar to Chekani, both Vijini and Samanthi (34-year-old married female team member, working as a software developer) too stated how difficult it is for them to be among the male majority when jokes and stories shared by these males cause them frequent embarrassment. It is important to note that girls and women in Sri Lankan society are socialized to adhere to gender role expectations of the “respectable girl” and the “good girl” image through the manner they dress and behave (De Alwis, 1997, 2002; Obeysekere, 1984). It is in this context that female respondents indicate their embarrassment at the language men in their teams use. Thus, how women face the pressure of adhering to gender role expectations within their teams are also indirectly highlighted by the perceptions of women towards the language men use. It further indicates how women become or feel more visible, and excluded as well as exposed in these teams as they do not (or are not expected to) participate in these discussions.

In addition to feeling excluded from teams due to the use of language, women felt excluded from these teams because they could not socialize with men or were not invited to socialize with them. Vijini outlined the details:

Because of tight deadlines we cannot socialize during work. So they [men] had unofficial team outings in which we never participate. Then building a rapport with the team is difficult for me.

Similar sentiments shared by many female respondents strongly signify how outcast and reclusive the women feel among their male colleagues. Hence, these women apparently face the challenge of gaining entry into this tight-knit male group and receiving their acceptance or surviving in the team while being secluded. This appears to be a common situation that minority group members face. Members in the majority are identified as the in-group and the minority members are identified as the out-group (Baxter & Wallace, 2009; Syed & Murray, 2008; Tolbert et al., 1999). Kanter (1977) also highlights how male members sometimes refrain from sharing in-group understanding with women by treating them as the out-group under “boundary heightening” an outcome of “polarization”. However, the dynamics of boundary heightening as suggested by Kanter did not surface during this study where there was no indication that men in these IT teams intentionally exaggerated their dominant culture, reminded women of their differences, informally isolated the women or tested their loyalty. However, the incidents Kanter (1977) mentioned such as use of sexual innuendo, and talk about sports and high-tech matters were very much present in these teams. Yet whether this “guy talk” was used intentionally to heighten the difference between genders and make women feel left out was questionable. Rather what surfaced primarily was the existence of gender role stereotyping beliefs about what is proper and appropriate among women and men, which lead women to feel uncomfortable and isolated. Female respondents have felt the difference between them and their male colleagues, leading them to feel isolated due to a persistent consciousness about their token status, both numerically and normatively.

In this setting, women appear to seek acceptance in the group by attempting to blend-in through various means. One such method is by dressing in a manner so as not to bring attention to their female status/sexual attributes. Consider, for example, this statement by Chekani:

I’m extremely careful about my attire. Since I’m the only female in my team; I feel it is not nice to be fashionable in front of them.

However, here, Vijini brought to notice her concern about how such dressing can contradict social expectations about the appropriate dress for women.

Usually I don’t wear fashionable clothes when I go to work. You know, as I am the only girl, I don’t want to be highlighted through my dress. Usually we dress in denims and T shirts, but then it is a kind of a problem to the outside world.

Hence, while women try not to bring attention to their femininity in their teams, in certain instances they are also confused, where they attempt to balance the expectations of the “outside” world and the inside world (that is, inside their teams). As Vijini highlights, denims and shirts will not fall within the gender role social expectation of a working woman.

This attempt of women to blend into the background or into their teams is discussed in prior research (Kanter, 1977; Schwarzwald, Koslowsky & Bernstein, 2013). The response of women in attempting to gain the acceptance of the rest of the team is in contrast to Kanter’s potential reactions of women to boundary heightening. Kanter (1977) specifically speaks of the female’s attempt to be socially invisible and blend into the background, as a response of women to visibility and related performance pressure they face in the work setting.

Women tried to adopt masculine qualities in order to be accepted by the teams. While Kanter does not talk about this, more recent scholars have identified similar behaviour of females in male domains, who adapt the masculine characteristics, which is also called “doing gender” (Kvande, 1999), “fixing the females” (Martin, 2003), “defeminization” (Denissen, 2010) and becoming a “social man” (Lohan & Faulkner, 2004).

Dulini (32, an unmarried female member with five years of work experience in IT) acknowledged this explicitly when she stated, “When working with males I don’t want to differentiate myself with them. I’m one of them.” Dulini went on to describe how she changed herself and adopted more masculine characteristics:

When I become tougher, more committed towards my job, I sacrifice a lot from my personal life. Though I didn’t like to move with males, I changed myself. I have given up my female character. When the team is going through a hard time, by default, I also spend my whole life at work, just like my male counterparts. Most of the time I work till late.

Vijini described how she had to adopt masculine qualities:

Most of the time males talk about guy’s things. Initially I was a little upset since I did not have things to share with them. Gradually I adjusted myself. Now I also prefer to watch and talk about things such as cricket matches and other sports. Now I show a little interest in vehicles and technologies. If not, I will definitely be isolated in my team.

Yet, it was also revealed that while women adopt this masculine role, they feel that it is sometimes not appreciated or valued by male counterparts since these “masculine” women are often disliked and disrespected. What is considered assertive for a man is considered aggressive for a woman (Syed & Murray, 2008). Most women will be less successful than most men in acting like a man (Denissen, 2010; Dodge, Valcore & Gomez, 2011; Syed & Murray, 2008). Thus, women are more likely to fail if a “Fixing the Woman” strategy is adopted. If they succeed, they do so by learning to act like a male by assimilating male norms (Martin, 2003).

Samitha, for example, stated how this happens in IT teams:

Females are expected to be soft but at the same time they should be able to deliver their work properly. She (a woman) should not go beyond her feminine limits. Males don’t like it when females exceed their limits.

Women are thus faced with disrespect and disdain when they try to be accepted by teams. This places them in a confusing and difficult situation. This complex situation brings definite work related issues for women such as stress and demotivation which in turn can be a reason for leaving the industry.

Overcoming Role Entrapment

Female respondents also recalled many instances where they are trapped in “feminine” roles within the team, which undermines their technical capabilities and thus blocks their career advancement. Overcoming this role entrapment is a key challenge which is also related to the challenge of proving their technical capabilities as discussed above. Vijini, for example, explains her experiences:

I have a sort of special role in my team. When the whole team is under pressure or under heavy stress, male members usually come to me and discuss their problems, sometimes even their personal problems. By talking to me, they get some sort of relief from me. Sometimes it disturbs me. But I can’t avoid such incidents since they expect my help during certain situations.

Vijini’s and other respondents’ observations indicate how women are assigned “feminine” roles such as relationship building, customer care, team documentation and other clerical work.

Vjini clearly indicates her unease with this role she has to play, but seems helpless to do anything about it. In contrast, Kokila appears to accept this role entrapment:

Females can bring social balance to a team. IT project teams are very stressful. Here girls are important in building team relations. Even in the celebrations of birthdays, it’s really nice to have a girl in a team. Girls contribute a lot to building relationships.

The male respondents supported this observation when they explicitly stated how women are more suitable for certain work which is socially accepted as more appropriate for women, such as secretarial work. Amal (40, married male team member with 12 years working experience in the IT industry) described how he assigns such work responsibilities to female team members in his team:

Since my team consists of a male majority, for back-office support and management areas such as coordination of teamwork, female members will have to participate. My point is, these ladies are very good at this kind of work. They are very particular about actions and deliverables and they contribute a lot in these areas. They establish good relationships with team members. Their follow-up is superb, much better than males. I always encourage having females in our teams.

While Amal talks positively about the women in his team, he also highlights how he expects women to play socially accepted work roles rather than technical roles:

In general, females are methodical and carry out documentation to perfection…Most of the time we assign duties related to documentation to a female project member.

Similar sentiments are shared by Samitha:

It has been proven that females are best at performing follow-up activities and secretarial work. When a project team has a female, she is the one who sends reminders and does the follow up to make sure that delivery is on time. Secretaries are always females. I have not seen any male secretaries. Females are good at following up and work on time and they are good at secretarial work.

Observations of Vijini, Kokila, Amal and Samitha strongly suggest how women in these male-dominant project teams are trapped in gender stereotypical work roles and how these stereotypical work expectations have become informal work organizing mechanisms in work settings. Role entrapment is also discussed by Kanter under the broader phenomenon of “assimilation”, where she states that “…the distortion of the characteristics of tokens to fit preexisting generalizations about their category. Stereotypical assumptions and mistaken attributions made about tokens tend to force them into playing limited and caricatured roles in the system” (1977, p. 980). Looking at “status leveling” and “stereotyped role induction”, two sub-areas under role entrapment that Kanter discusses, evidence for the presence of “status leveling” could not be found, as information did not reveal any instances of misperceived and misjudged status of women in the teams such as receptionists, secretaries or wives. Yet, as discussed above, while women were not misperceived to be secretaries, the men in these teams tended to provide work responsibilities and duties of secretaries to women. Nevertheless, it was observed how stereotyped role induction takes place where men inducted women into stereotypical roles such as mother and iron lady (Kanter, 1977). Samitha’s comments clearly indicate how stereotyped role induction takes place in these teams:

My personal experience as a kid was that our mother always pushed us to work hard. And now my wife is doing exactly that, always providing behind-the-scene support to me. That’s our culture. Most of the males are driven by females. So similarly ladies in project teams drive the males and provide the background support.

Hence the challenge women face is moving out of this role entrapment to realize their full potential as equal members of their project teams. The findings indicate how this challenge of overcoming role entrapment is linked to gender stereotypical beliefs rather than numerical minority status of women.

Gaining Due Recognition

Another challenge and issue women face in these IT teams is gaining due recognition. Iresha (37-year-old female, married and possessing seven years working experience in the IT industry) described her observations:

My team leader doesn’t want to recognize my potential in front of other team members. He normally uses my work and learns from me and shares that with the management and the rest of the team. He doesn’t like others to recognize my potential.

Iresha goes on to say:

When it comes to promotions and recognition, we (females) get less compared to males. I have seen in some other teams how females need to build unnecessary relationships with managers to be team leaders…But most of the time males get the opportunities. I know there are girls who work very hard but they stagnate in the same position without any recognition. That’s nature.

These negative experiences shared by female respondents can be related to the ideas of Kanter (1977, p. 974) who states that “paradoxically, while the token females felt they had to do better than others in order to be seen as a competent and allowed to continue, they also felt in some cases that their success would not be rewarded and should be kept secret”. This happened in the case of Vijini:

I remember when I worked in my previous team I had a male counterpart who worked in a similar capacity as myself. We both worked equally, but I was a very silent character. I just did my work and that was it. So when it came to appreciation and appraisals he got a better ranking than me. People don’t recognize their female team members.

According to Samanthi, even if women do get recognition for work, it is accompanied by backlash:

Males have a predetermined mindset that girls won’t fit in IT teams. My husband also works in an IT project team in another IT company. In his company, a girl recently got recognition in her team with an increment. But other team members, including my husband, told me that this lady doesn’t have enough to do at home, in a very sarcastic way.

This statement also indicates how men are reluctant to accept good work/recognition of women and try to play down their achievement by criticizing and pointing out some other area in which they are lacking. It is also noticeable how men expect women to bear the responsibilities of housework while they are also in paid employment and how they are sarcastic about women they assume do not fulfil that main role of domesticity.

Even when a woman is successful, it was be attributed by men to an ulterior reason as they appeared to be reluctant to accept her capability. Vijini discussed such a case:

Once I got an increment, but some of my teammates didn’t accept it. I didn’t know that. After that increment, some of them had monitored my behavior. They had observed my telephone conversations and had even monitored the number of times I went to the wash room. All these things were because they suspected something about my increment and they thought that, I had received this increment because my team leader had favoured me unnecessarily. It was a very embarrassing incident for me.

Vijini’s experience also indicates “over-observation” related to public performance, yet not in the context that Kanter mentions. Vijini has not received automatic notice where all her actions are public (Kanter, 1977), but rather, she attracted the attention due to the increment she received, as the males wanted to prove their assumption that she (the female) is not sufficiently capable. Here, too, it is highlighted how men stick to their gender role stereotypical and sexist beliefs about women’s capabilities in this male dominant industry. Samanthi’s and Vijini’s observations also strongly indicate how challenging it is for women to gain recognition and how men are reluctant to grant due recognition to women.

It was not only in relation to promotions and increments that women felt that they were not recognized. Women also stated that their voices were not recognized in their teams and their opinions and ideas were overlooked in many instances. Dulini’s account of her experience illustrates this:

Usually we have team meetings and in those meetings we (females) too have ideas and opinions related to work issues. But if we voice them first they will not be accepted directly. There will be many arguments. But if the same idea comes from a male, it will be more readily accepted without any reluctance. Males sometimes just say OK to certain matters, but that too is recognized as significant. Even the males who joined the team after me received that privilege (the privilege of being heard at discussions) but I didn’t, because I’m the only girl in my team.

Chekani shared similar experiences:

It is difficult to voice my opinions at team meetings. When it comes to decision making, my voice gets only a little space. If I raise an issue, or point out a problem in the project, it might not get highlighted as when a guy raises that same issue or problem. It is expected that females should be silent of the team meetings and their contribution is immaterial when it comes to decision making.

This lack of recognition that women get in these teams can be linked to Kanter’s (1977) “attention to token’s discrepant characteristics” under visibility, where it is stated that female team members among male members do not have to work hard to have her presence noticed (her presence as a female being noticed), but she did have to work hard to have her achievements noticed.