Women remain significantly underrepresented in leadership within the information technology (IT) sector. Empirical studies indicate that they occupy roughly 18% of leadership positions in IT globally. Despite growing interest in gender equity in STEM, limited attention has been given to the psychological and institutional factors that shape women’s motivation to pursue leadership roles in IT contexts. Motivation to lead (MTL), defined by Chan and Drasgow as individual differences in the desire to attain and fulfill leadership roles, offers a powerful lens for this inquiry. MTL comprises three forms: affective-identity motivation (enjoying and identifying with leadership), social-normative motivation (leading out of duty or obligation), and non-calculative motivation (leading despite personal costs). Although MTL has been linked to leadership effectiveness and training outcomes, it has rarely been applied in IT settings. This study addresses that gap by examining how individual characteristics and perceptions of gender equity policies (GEP) relate to MTL among IT professionals.
The study draws on Social Cognitive Theory to examine the impact of self-efficacy defined as beliefs in one’s ability to succeed in STEM, self-confidence defined as perceptions of one’s competence relative to others, and perceived gender inequality, perceptions that women have fewer opportunities than men on MTL. We hypothesize that individuals with higher self-efficacy and self-confidence are expected to show greater affective-identity and social-normative motivation, while stronger perceptions of gender inequality may suppress MTL by signaling an unwelcoming environment. In addition, we use Institutional Theory, to examine how individual perceptions about institutional GEP, encompassing the perceived importance of such policies, awareness of their existence within organizations, and experienced consequences of their absence, are positively associated with MTL. The model controls for gender, IT vs. non-IT sector, leadership experience, and generational group.
Authors:
Indira R. Guzman, Florencia Sánchez-Guillén, Boris Branisa, Guillermo Guzmán Prudencio, Elizabeth Jimenez Zamora & Cristiano Maciel
References (APA):
Guzman, I. R., Sánchez-Guillén, F., Branisa, B., Guzmán Prudencio, G., Jimenez Zamora, E., & Maciel, C. (2026). Understanding motivation to lead in IT through individual traits and gender policy perceptions. In Proceedings of the 63rd ACM Conference on Computers and People Research (SIGMIS-CPR ’26) (p. 129). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3768310.3807831