Abstract
Despite the dissemination of the diversity discourse in the digital and innovation-driven industries, the number of women occupying the top management roles in information and communications technology (ICT) has been low. The study questions the expression of postfeminist career retrenchment in female leaders in ICT sector in Northern Ireland. The research is based on seven (7) detailed semi-structured interviews with experienced women held mid-to-senior leadership positions using a qualitative methodology guided by an interpretivist approach.
The resultant findings of the data outline a chronological course through which retreatism is realised. First, members expressed a strong belief in organisational meritocracy, and they conceived ICT as a space that is being controlled by objectivity and performance measures. Effective later on, the issues of credibility and limited access to informal networks were commonly interpreted as personal failures as opposed to structural barriers, therefore, reflecting internalised sceptical attitudes towards leadership authority. In a third step, the participants show down their aspirations and redefined success so as not to be executive-level positions but instead reflected this redefinition as a strategic, premeditated recalibration.
The findings suggest that inequity is reinforced in small high-visibility regional economies like the ICT sector in Northern Ireland mainly by internalised self-regulation between the leaders of the incumbent women, instead of by explicit exclusionary practices. Therefore, the article contributes to existing scholarship on gender, leadership and digital transformation, and introduces a theoretical framework to be followed in future studies on the issue of internalised inequality in the world of innovation.