Keywords

Introduction: Shifting Perspective to Supporters

The previous chapters have demonstrated that most of the Norwegian women’s perceptions of IT had been shaped by stereotypical images of male gamers and geeks, before enrolling in an IT degree at university. This had made it difficult for young women to imagine themselves choosing IT, and they questioned whether they could succeed without a background involving gaming and programming that they associated with male students, such as other studies have found (Frieze & Quesenberry, 2019; Margolis & Fisher, 2002; Yates & Plagnol, 2022). Thus, there are several barriers and challenges that young women need to overcome before considering IT as a potential choice. Few of the women we have met had imagined studying IT during secondary school. A large group even started at university still unaware that IT would eventually become their chosen field. The turning point, the moment they started to think about IT as a potential study choice, could be identified as following an event or experience that had made them think differently about IT and how available it would be for them. The women’s experiences demonstrate that they had needed some kind of input and insight before IT appeared as a relevant choice. Such input could come from many potential supporters, such as parents and friends, or from school (Gerson et al., 2022; Jacobs et al., 2017). However, with some exceptions, these groups played a minor role in the women’s description of how they had come to study IT. Thus, while the analysis demonstrates the crucial role of input for women in choosing IT, it also documents that many women mainly recounted navigating this landscape alone.

From the previous chapters’ focus on the women’s experiences, this chapter shifts perspective to explore how schools approach the role of supporting and encouraging girls and women to become familiar with and consider IT. Nordic research has found family to be a more important source of insight into tech careers than early schooling for girls who made their choice early (Corneliussen, Seddighi, Simonsen, et al., 2021; Corneliussen, Seddighi, Urbaniak-Brekke, et al., 2021; Engström, 2018). School, however, represents a crucial arena for reaching a wider group of young women, in particular those without tech motivation from their home conditions. The survey among young women who had embarked on a pathway to technology education presented in Chap. 2 also identified a high proportion that reported about IT classes in upper secondary as an important motivation for pursuing a career in technology (see Corneliussen, Seddighi, Simonsen, et al., 2021). Considering the space invader challenge discussed in the previous chapter, this could indicate that experiences at school can have a significant role in preparing women to enter spaces of IT. But how do the schools consider the task as well as their own role in efforts to make girls and women consider IT as a future study and career path?

Interviews with teachers and counsellors from 12 lower and upper secondary schools across Norway were conducted in 2020 and 2021, as part of an evaluation of a national recruitment initiative for getting more women into technology.Footnote 1 The national Girls and technology campaign travelled across the country with a large show aimed at encouraging young women in lower and upper secondary school to pursue careers in technology (see Chap. 2). One key technique was to invite the young women to meet female role models in science, technology, and mathematics—some of the core disciplines leading to a career in technology. The campaign involved schools as organizers for sending the young women to these events. The schools that participated in the interviews had been part of this event, sending young women to the Girls and technology show, where only girls and women were invited to participate. The interviews explored how the schools responded to this as well as how the schools more generally approached the issue of gender disparity in technology educations and occupations (Corneliussen, Seddighi, Simonsen, et al., 2021).

Schools’ Attitudes and Strategies for Supporting Women into IT

Norway and its Nordic neighbours are recognized as the most egalitarian countries in the world, according to international ratings (World Economic Forum, 2020b) and there is a high level of trust in gender equality as a common goal in the Nordic countries (Martinsson & Griffin, 2016; Teigen & Skjeie, 2017). Gender equality is a widely accepted value in Norway (Larsen et al., 2021), and it is, together with equal access to education, a fundamental principle established by the Norwegian Education Act and the Equality and Anti-Discrimination Act.Footnote 2 Working towards the achievement of gender equality in education and educational choices is thus part of the schools mission. According to the Norwegian Education Act for primary and secondary education, all pupils are entitled to support independent of traditional gender roles. Though schools have some tools to work with, such as the subject educational choices in lower secondary school, there is no coherent framework for guiding the schools’ practices in detail, which leaves many decisions in this field to the individual schools.

The educators shared a general agreement of gender equality as a norm and a goal in education and in working life and never actually questioned the goal itself. Reflecting this, the school representatives also expressed sympathy to the goal of getting more women into fields of technology. Yet the interviews demonstrated diverse, even contradictory, ways that schools were engaged in questions regarding motivating and encouraging girls and young women to consider IT as a study choice. While there was some variation in terms of the schools’ responses, there were also some distinct patterns that appeared, and I will discuss four of these below.

Hesitating to Focus on Gender Differences

One of the topics with diverging opinions between the school representatives concerned the issue of gender differences and gaps in education and occupations, and whether this was a topic for schools to engage in. Some schools involved issues of gender differences, in particular when discussing career choices: “Our strategy is to talk about gender and untraditional educations and occupations in the subject called ‘educational choice’. Here we talk about pathways to different occupations, and gender is a topic. Girls must dare to think unconventionally”, a teacher from lower secondary school said. Another teacher from a lower secondary school provided the opposite viewpoint: “We try to be gender neutral when we talk about professions and education, and we don’t say anything about boys’ professions or subjects”. The last view was shared by most of the school representatives, who rather preferred gender-neutral ways of approaching questions and information about occupations and career choices. This also applied to upper secondary schools where they preferred to “not focus specifically on gender”, as one of the teachers explained.

Other studies of career guidance in Norwegian primary education suggest that such attitudes are widespread. While gender is considered “one of the major influences” on career choice for girls and boys (Mordal et al., 2020), many school counsellors find questions about gender difficult to engage in, and therefore often put them aside (Buland et al., 2020). The reluctance to problematize gender as an influence on career choice in school, however, indicates that the mere idea of initiatives targeting girls can be perceived as challenging. The interviews confirmed that most schools preferred recruitment initiatives for both boys and girls: “We participate in science events, but they are targeting all pupils, not just girls”, a teacher from upper secondary school explained. In addition, sending only girls to events happening during school time like the Girls and technology shows did, was not very popular. Som of the teachers suggested that it exaggerated gender as a difference and left the boys without a similarly engaging activity. The concept of targeting girls rather than focusing on all students thus seemed at odds with a core value of sameness in Norwegian schools (Corral-Granados et al., 2022), here interpreted as treating all pupils in a similar way. This, along with what appeared as a silent agreement of not exposing gender as a differentiating category in education and working life (Corneliussen, Seddighi, Simonsen, et al., 2021) in most of the schools, challenged the ability to engage in activities which targeted only girls to start with.

Distrusting Women’s Interest in Technology

Can girls be recruited to IT? The question of whether initiatives for recruiting girls to technology could be successful at all, also seemed to split the school representatives into different camps. Some thought that such initiatives had a positive influence on girls and were quite certain that they had made more young women choose to study technology. This made the recruitment campaign targeting girls unique and therefore quite important as a resource offering up-to-date information about technology professions, one of the teachers admitted. Others rather assumed that any potential effects of the event would wear off quickly, while yet others doubted altogether that it had any effect at all:

Unfortunately, the girls mostly listen to each other. Or they have an older sibling, and some have parents [in technology]—I think that is a major influence. The final decision, however, is often based on what their female friend does. (teacher, upper secondary school)

A common rhetoric among the teachers and counsellors was the recognition of the unfortunate situation that fewer girls than boys choose to study science, technology, and mathematics. This, however, often appeared together with a fatalist observation such as this: “often the girls don’t continue with sciences after upper secondary school, unfortunately. But that’s just how it is” (teacher, upper secondary). This rhetoric demonstrates that the teachers are certainly aware of the gender patterns in educational choices and describe them as unfortunate. However, this rhetoric also indicates that the teachers perceived this as something that was impossible to change. Consequently, the task of turning young women’s interest towards technology was perceived as outside the school’s control.

Attitudes to these questions among the relevant school personnel affected the schools’ strategies and activities for dealing with the gender imbalance in technology. Few of the schools in this study had an active strategy for making girls more interested in technology:

We have nothing special. In my opinion, it is the girls’ choice. […] There are quite equal opportunities [for men and women] in Norway. I therefore believe that girls and women must have a wish to do it. (teacher, upper secondary school)

The upper secondary school teacher confirms that the school does not have a specific strategy for encouraging girls to think about technology. They doubted any such effort was necessary, trusting that national gender equality policies over time have removed any barriers for girls and women to choose the career they want in Norway. Taking for granted that formal gender barriers have been cleared away, what is left appears to be girls’ and women’s wish to study technology.

Thus, while the school does not have an active response to the gender disparity in technology, the teacher’s reflections suggest that the passive strategy can be understood as an intended support for women to make up their own opinion. Thus, the doubt about girls’ and women’s interest in technology, which the teacher shared with several of the school representatives, indicates an acceptance of the gender differences in educational choices as a reflection of girls and women pursuing the career they want.

While the educators had diverging views upon whether efforts to recruit girls to IT would work, their views upon when this recruitment could take place was even more divergent—also this affecting the schools’ decisions to focus on this topic. One school representative recommended starting early, “even at kindergarten”, to make girls familiar with technology. Another suggested that lower secondary was “too early” to make girls interested in any specific occupation including technology, while yet another claimed that it was “too late at upper secondary”; by then, the women had already made some fundamental educational choices that opened some career paths while closing others. Paradoxically, when these two educators’ viewpoints came together, they would in fact be right: not encouraging girls at lower secondary to consider choosing science, technology, and mathematics would not equip them to be considered a target group for arrangements such as Girls and technology at upper secondary.

Sorting Women by Interest

Similar thoughts were reflected in the way schools filtered who they invited to recruitment arrangements such as the national Girls and technology campaign. Lower secondary schools mostly involved girls from entire classes for the campaign events, where technology and related occupations were presented by female role models. However, some lower secondary and most upper secondary schools rather invited individual girls based on who they thought would be interested: “as adviser I encourage girls who are good at maths and science”, one explained, while another school only involved “girls who have chosen science. We can’t reach all, only those who are interested”.

The logic by which some of the schools operated reflected a negative circle, where girls who had not explicitly expressed an interest in computers, technology, science or mathematic were not perceived as interested in technology. Thus, they were not always invited to learn about technology or to attend recruitment activities targeting girls, thus leaving them with less insight and less interest. The schools doubt that young women’s study aspirations could be influenced by school more than by family and friends resulted in a paradox in which young women’s greatest chance of receiving support and encouragement to learn about IT was if they were already considered to be interested in IT. Figure 5.1 illustrates the paradox of defining interest in IT as a prerequisite for being invited to learn about IT.

Fig. 5.1
A cycle diagram illustrates the paradox of defining interest in I T. It includes that interest in I T is associated with boys, girls don't express interest in I T, interpreted as a lack of interest, less likely to be invited to learn about I T, and little insight into I T gives limited knowledge about I T.

The paradox of recognized interest as a prerequisite for being invited to learn about IT

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Although all the schools participating in the study had sent young women to the Girls and technology events, they also had various arguments for not sending individual women or classes to the events, from too busy at school to challenging logistics. However, the logic expressed by some of the school representatives, of only inviting the girls and women who were assumed to already have an interest in technology, reduced the number of young women who were likely to participate in such recruitment initiatives. The schools’ sorting of women by interest also reduced the possibility of seeing the more dramatic effect of recruitment initiatives and other events, identified when women who had never before imagined themselves studying or working with technology, experienced something that had put technology on the map as a potential study for them.

A Burden of Doubt Paired with Postfeminist Assumptions

Many of the educators shared a doubt about girls’ and women’s interest in computers and IT, reflecting the “burden of doubt” that often challenges space invaders in Puwar’s vocabulary (2004). Furthermore, many were also doubtful that the women’s study aspirations could be changed, echoing an essentialist understanding of gender as innate qualities of men and women, rather than seeing gender as a result of what we do and how it has been constructed through social relations (West & Zimmerman, 1987). One effect of this doubt was, as discussed above, that mainly girls already recognized as interested in technology would be invited to learn more about technology at schools. Thus, while gender stereotypes work as a barrier for young women to imagine themselves fitting into the male spaces of IT, educators add to these barriers when they are limiting invitations to learn about IT to women already considered interested. The women this is likely to affect the most are those who do not have family, friends, or other sources for motivation and insights into technology, thus making it even more difficult for this group to find support or encouragement, or to be recruited through school.

The educators’ doubt in women’s interest in IT resulted in weak attempts to become active agents for increasing gender equality in disciplines of technology. The lack of engagement, however, was not perceived as being in breach with the gender equality norm. The impression of gender equality already being installed in society was strong in the schools, reflecting a Nordic myth (Martinsson & Griffin, 2016) and a branding of Norway as a superpower where gender equality is already in place (Larsen et al., 2021). This reflects a postfeminist attitude, which is not a branch of feminism but rather refers to an assumption that whatever structures in society which previously produced gender barriers have been removed and that any remaining gender inequality “can be accounted for by choices knowingly made by individuals” (Budgeon, 2015, p. 304; Corneliussen, 2021a). Thus, what is left, is individual choice. This changes the responsibility for gender inequality from policy and societal structures to individuals, in this case to women. Furthermore, it contributes to a perception of gender-typical career choices as a legitimate result of free choices and therefore as something that needs to be supported rather than resisted (Ellingsæter, 2014, p. 87). This describes the educators’ responses quite well; their regrets but still fatalistic claims of trusting that the young women follow their hearts when making career choices. In a postfeminist perspective, women’s underrepresentation in IT is thus interpreted as a result of girls and women not wanting to participate in fields of IT, and not as a result of, for instance, not inviting girls and young women to learn about technology. The postfeminist trust in gender equality already being achieved thus supports a rhetoric of not forcing women to change. Furthermore, it justifies the schools’ weak efforts to create change or become active agents for gender equality interventions in fields of technology.

When Doing Nothing Appears to be the Right Thing to Do

The previous chapter illustrated that many Norwegian young women had shared a space invader experience of disturbing the norm in a masculine space of IT. However, norms producing excluding boundaries only become visible when they are challenged by bodies “out of place” (Puwar, 2004, p. 49). Gender boundaries have a tendency of remaining invisible for those “able to pass as neutral and universal” and who do not challenge the norm (Puwar, 2004, p. 131). The educators did not share the women’s perspective and their experience of being constructed out (Puwar, 2004, p. 42) by the masculine norms of IT. The “myth of sameness”, Puwar explains, rather makes gendered spaces such as IT appear as neutral and universal (2004, p. 131). This undermines charges of barriers or challenges affecting women more than men (Kaiser et al., 2013).

Gender equality can, in these examples, also be understood in terms of a different type of myth, that is, in Laclau and Mouffe’s notion of a myth as something everybody apparently knows without, however, having agreed upon a precise definition (1985). While gender equality for some indicated a need to increase women’s participation in IT, for others it translated into a freedom to choose, or what Charles and Bradley refer to as a liberal egalitarianism and “the right to choose poorly paid female labelled career paths” (2006, p. 195). This means that supporting women in whatever choices they make rather than trying to convince them of making less gender-conventional choices, is also perceived as supporting the goal of gender equality in the shape of the right to free choices (Corneliussen, 2021a).

For some of the school representatives, the low proportion of women studying IT seemed to confirm the assumption of women’s low interest in IT. This worked to further reduce the school representatives’ perceived responsibility for producing change. Interpreting this in the light of gender equality translated into free choice simultaneously reassured that they were not in conflict with the gender equality norm. This explains how schools’ rather passive response to gender imbalance in IT was not necessarily perceived as a fault to support gender equality and not as a resistance to or disagreement with the goal, such as gender equality actions have faced in many examples (Bleijenbergh, 2018; Dick, 2004). Here it was rather interpreted as a support for the democratic qualities of a free and gender-egalitarian society (Corneliussen & Seddighi, 2020a). Thus, it made it seem like doing nothing was the right thing to do in the name of gender equality.

The Schools’ Responses Versus the Women’s Experiences

Above we have seen the school representatives describing the schools’ responses to questions of gender disparity in technology. While there was certainly variation between the schools, four distinct patterns were apparent; firstly, hesitating to put gender on the agenda; secondly, distrusting women’s interest in IT; thirdly, sorting women by interest before distributing invitations to learn more about technology; and finally, trusting the national level of gender equality to already have sorted the issue, thus making no response the right response. These four patterns are worth noting since similar patterns have been identified in previous research of schools (Mordal et al., 2020), computer clubs (Corneliussen & Prøitz, 2016), and IT sector responses to gender disparities in IT (Corneliussen & Seddighi, 2020a, 2020b). Furthermore, these attitudes, affecting the choices made by schools in these matters, have consequences for how girls and young women experience school as an arena for motivating them to think about IT as a relevant career path. Thus, the interesting questions here are: how do the attitudes and responses illustrated by the school representatives match with the experiences of the women we met in the previous chapters? How well are the schools’ strategies aimed to support women into putting IT on their educational horizon?

Avoiding Gender Issues Reduces Schools’ Role as Supporters for Women

Several of the schools adhered to a limited focus on gender differences as their preferred way of dealing with gender gaps in education and occupations. This response makes sense in light of schools’ emphasis on activities that target boys and girls in similar ways, and in light of “sameness” as a core value for schools (Corral-Granados et al., 2022). The tendency of avoiding discussions about gender differences has also been identified in previous research as a general lack of focusing on gender equality at schools, and such questions are often put aside because they are difficult to engage in (Buland et al., 2020; NOU, 2019: 19), not only in STEM fields, but also in the female-dominated field of nursing (Lien, 2021). Furthermore, a similar strategy of avoiding putting words to challenges of recruiting women into IT jobs has also been identified in the IT sector. Here, issues of gender difference and gender equality involved notable challenges for IT companies with little knowledge about how to deal with such questions (Corneliussen & Seddighi, 2020a).

In a space invader vocabulary, the avoidance of bringing up issues relating to gender differences, can be interpreted as an endorsement of IT as a seemingly neutral space “that can be filled by any(body)” (Puwar, 2004, p. 32). However, as the women have shown us, they had experienced IT not as neutral, but rather as a masculine space defined by assumptions about young men’s intense relationships with computers. Bodies that fit the norm can pass through gender boundaries without resistance (Ahmed, 2012); however, many women’s experiences include uncertainty of whether they would fit and whether they could compete with men who had been playing with computers since their early teenage years (Margolis & Fisher, 2002; Yates & Plagnol, 2022)

One question that remains to be answered, is whether it would have mattered for the women if schools had focused on gender as a difference in IT in the classes. However, failing to consider how gender structures and stereotypes affected young women’s attitudes to IT as a potential career path might have not only affected girls directly, but also worked to limit the schools’ response to this challenge. Schools’ avoidance of addressing gender differences thus seemed to reduce the schools’ potential role as supporters for those women who never had thought about studying IT.

A Narrow Definition of Interest in IT Excludes Alternative Types of Interest

The tendency to distrust girls’ and women’s interest in IT developed into a pattern of sorting women by (recognized) interest in IT when deciding who to invite to events for learning more about technology. This suggests a doubt that women’s interest for IT can be sparked at all, if it was not present already. This distrust echoes, for instance, studies documenting that very few girls compared to boys are aspiring to pursue a career in IT (Borgonovi et al., 2018), and few become interested through school (Alshahrani et al., 2018; Engström, 2018). The assumption of women’s lower interest in IT has been identified across many other contexts (Sultan et al., 2019), such as family (Tænketanken DEA, 2019), leisure activities (Corneliussen & Prøitz, 2016), gaming (Dralega & Corneliussen, 2018; Sevin & Decamp, 2016), and in the IT sector (Corneliussen & Seddighi, 2020a). Research has even found that women themselves doubt that they have enough interest in IT compared to men (Margolis & Fisher, 2002).

Also this focus on interest in IT can be understood in light of the space invader vocabulary as a doubt about the motivation behind women’s participation; a “burden of doubt” that questions their willingness and ability to participate (Puwar, 2004, p. 11). How well does this distrust in women’s interest and the related sorting match with the women’s own experiences? More importantly: how does it fulfil the support that women need for considering to study IT?

Putting interest in IT as a key qualifier for receiving support to think of IT as a career path fails to identify that many different topics and disciplines had led women to an interest in studying IT, from science and mathematics to arts and creative writing. Nor does it recognize that neither might an interest in IT be enough to lead women to choosing IT when they face other gender barriers (Corneliussen & Seddighi, 2022).

Furthermore, this attitude also fails to recognize one of the most common situations that the women reported in the previous chapters, that of lacking insight and thus only having had vague ideas about what a career in IT really involved. Few of the women recalled activities at school sparking their interest in IT. Thus, the negative circle of interest leading to excluding the young women who had not expressed an interest in IT reflects the women’s experiences of weak support at school. This includes Lene, who pointed out the obvious, that “it’s no wonder that I didn’t become interested in IT when there was nothing available”, and Gro, who suggested she would have “sat down and started programming right away” if anyone at all had showed her the fascinating world of programming earlier. Remembering Ingrid’s struggle of how to bridge the two seemingly contradictory positions of being a girl and being interested in technology, the interviews with the school representatives suggest that girls who had not been able to bridge these positions, were less likely to be invited to contexts where they could learn about and become familiar with technology. Furthermore, while a certain set of technology- and science-related interests were central for whom the schools would invite to initiatives such as the Girls and technology events, Ingrid and the other women challenged this by identifying a much wider set of interests that had led them on to an IT degree at university.

The negative circle of excluding girls who did not already express interest in technology from arenas for learning more about technology, undermines the effect of such initiatives. The evaluation of the Girls and technology campaign, for instance, illustrated a dramatic and abrupt change of direction for some of the girls who had no other sources for learning about technology as a career path. A similar effect was illustrated in the women’s narratives presented in the previous chapters, with many examples of how different experiences had sparked their interest in technology in surprising and unexpected ways. These stories illustrate that young women without sufficient knowledge about technology also might find it difficult to express interest in technology, simply because they lack knowledge about what to express interest in. The previous chapter showed that women’s perception of IT transformed from seeing it as a narrow space for male gamers and programming enthusiasts, to a more open space where “normal people”, including women with a wider set of interests and competences, were also welcome. While the school representatives seemed, to a large degree, to share the initial gender-stereotypical notion of IT as a masculine field, they had not been through the same transformation. The women’s many alternative ways of describing their interest for studying IT, including topics such as arts and creative writing, using technology for shaping society or an interest in the world, were not part of interests that the school representatives mentioned as qualifying for being considered interested in technology. Thus, sorting women by interest in technology undermines the possibility of raising this interest in women who had not yet quite made up their mind about technology.

When Gender Barriers are Cleared Away, Free Choice Remains

The last pattern was the burden of doubt paired with a postfeminist assumption, trusting the national gender equality policies to have cleared out any gender barriers. This leaves women’s choices as the challenge, and the postfeminist free choice argument moves responsibility for women’s underrepresentation in IT from a structural level to individual women (Corneliussen, 2021a). The consequence of this belief is reflected in few active interventions for raising young women’s interest in IT. Instead, translating gender equality into a democratic right of free choice rather transforms this into a question of supporting women in whatever choice they make. The assumption that gender equality is already doing its job for the young women covers up the problematic structures and the experiences that many young women have of IT as a masculine space. This challenge is discernible in gender statistics which even finds this to be a more intense challenge in Norway than the OECD average (OECD, 2021; The Norwegian Universities and Colleges Admission Service, 2022). This suggests that the national branding of Norway as a superpower of gender equality (Larsen et al., 2021) has become a blockage for the very thing it names. The notion of gender equality itself does not do anything, but rather works as what Ahmed describes as a non-performative policy that appears to solve the issue merely by existing (2012). The assumption of equal opportunities that one of the teachers points to does not consider, for instance, women’s struggle to bridge the seemingly contradictory positions of both being a girl and being interested in IT.

Putting the pieces together we find that recruitment events can have a major impact by making IT a visible and interesting study choice for young women. However, the passive responses of some schools are also reflected in how most of the women had rather experienced a lack of early support for thinking of IT as a relevant choice. This had shaped their pathways to IT, leading to a delayed entry into IT, penalty rounds, or just accidentally ending up in IT. Thus, the weak focus on these issues in the schools’ strategies to a large degree reflects the women’s experiences of having had to navigate the gendered landscape of IT mainly on their own, finding support in other places rather than through school.

Girls Still Doing IT for Themselves

Women do not operate in isolation when navigating the landscape of education, work, and career. Norwegian youth are affected by gender stereotypes when making their study and career choices (NOU, 2019: 19). Growing up in a culture where IT is associated with men made support, motivation, and insight into IT vital for the Norwegian women to consider IT as a relevant study choice. There is no doubt that gender equality is considered a treasured value in Norwegian schools. Thus, all the school representatives agreed with gender equality as a goal; however, what gender equality actually means, was less obvious. While all the participating schools had sent young women to the Girls and technology events, they had different attitudes towards the campaign and, more generally, to how to deal with gender disparities in educational choices. The gender perspective of doing gender underpinning the analysis here emphasizes that gender is constantly produced and reproduced in social interaction (West & Zimmerman, 1987). Fenstermaker and West’s notion of “doing difference” points to how people are producing or “doing difference” between themselves and others, resulting in such differences appearing as natural, “as if the social order were merely a rational accommodation to ‘natural differences’ among social beings” (2002, p. 207). Here we find this illustrated in how some of the school representatives assume that a low proportion of girls signing up for IT classes or aiming for a career involving IT are reflections of natural gender differences, which further undermines the ability to work for change.

Although the number of interviews with schoolteachers and counsellors were limited and should therefore not be considered representative for all schools in Norway, the patterns reflecting the women’s experiences indicate that they are not isolated examples. The tendency of schools avoiding topics relating to gender differences in education and working life also reflect previous research finding that gender equality is among the lowest-prioritized target areas in Norwegian schools (NOU, 2019: 19) and that questions of gender and career choice are often experienced as a challenging topic for career counsellors at schools (Buland et al., 2020).

“In Norwegian public schools, the teacher holds a role as a representative of society. The teacher converts the values and attitudes that the Norwegian state, through official documents, has defined as important in shaping well-functioning democratic citizens”, Andresen explains (2020). In this case, however, the schools’ autonomy and their varied responses to the task of encouraging girls and women to think about IT rather suggests an absence of clearly defined national strategies. The result is a lack of routines to ensure that schools become active agents for making IT appear as an equally relevant career path for young women as it does for many young men.