Gender and work-life balance in the IT field

This chapter provides a reflection on my career journey regarding gender and IT research themes. In the backdrop of various studies related to this issue, I discuss my views on where we are today, and what more needs to be done. I provide the context and circumstances surrounding the genesis of my conceptual paper on gender in IT (Ahuja, 2002) and the research it generated. I focus in detail on the research related to the specific issue of work-life balance (WLB) and its relationship to career persistence and advancement of women in IT. Most of this work is framed in the context of western, and more specifically, the US culture. I conclude with a discussion of the caregiving crisis as the pandemic gave rise to the Work From Home phenomenon, transforming the nature of work and how it affected women’s employment status.