ABSTRACT
By bringing a gender lens, this discussion offers a counter narrative to dominant notions about educating the global workforce. In particular it challenges the lack of differentiation and notion of a generic worker and training strategy. While the dominant discourse about working in IT claims that workers must acquire formal training, almost all of our study participants entered IT without such credentials and learned their skills informally and on the job. While in many IT training programmes theoretical knowledge and linear problem solving pathways dominate, our study participants valued training that was more practically oriented and were quite successful in solving IT problems with intuitive and artful approaches. Our participants found IT to be a good place for women to work, but they also had to learn, in addition to their IT skills, how to deal with sexist attitudes. These fi ndings are further explored in the discussion below which begins by outlining the study’s feminist orientation, briefl y describing the IT fi eld in Canada, and noting previous research that has explored women’s participation in IT training and workplaces.
