This report offers summary results from the Germany survey of the Cross-National, Cross-Sectional Study of Women’s Retention and Advancement in Information Technology and Engineering Careers project.

Women continue to be underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematic (STEM) fields. This project highlights factors that contribute to the retention and attrition rates of women working in engineering and information and communication technology (EICT) jobs across Canada, Sweden, and Germany. The primary objective of this project is to identify the impact of welfare state entitlements, job factors, and family/individual circumstances on women’s intent to stay or leave their jobs.

Our findings from the Germany survey suggest that job-related factors such as limited contract terms, dissatisfaction with salary, few promotion opportunities, and hostile climate are the main reasons for respondents’ job attrition. As well, turnover intention is impacted by experiences of workplace hostility, incivility, and harassment; lack of work-life balance; and workplaces that are gender-biased and/or unsupportive of women. Therefore, supportive workplaces that promote job security, work-life balance, good pay, peer inclusion, and work autonomy can improve job retention.

Improvements to welfare state entitlements for childcare, elder care, child-related benefits, parental leave, and illness/injury leave may also reduce the pressures of work-life interference and improve the work-life balance of EICT women who continue to be primary caregivers. The respondents for the Germany survey also highlight the continued presence of gendered informal and formal networks that are male-dominated within EICT workplaces. It remains a challenge to find “good” mentors and mentors of diversity that can assist them with career advancement.

Another objective of this study is to evaluate the impact and variation of these circumstances by employment sector and work type. We directly compared the experiences of women working in engineering to computer science and information technology (CSIT), as well as women working in the academic sector to the non-academic sector. Our findings indicate that there are pros and cons to working in each work area and/or sector. Broadly, there is more job retention within the academic sector compared to non-academic sector but there are challenges to obtaining permanent employment in the academic sector. We find no notable differences in the turnover intention of engineering and CSIT respondents. However, engineering respondents are overall more satisfied with their careers and experience less workplace alienation than CSIT respondents.

In the future, we will compare these results to similar surveys administered in Sweden and Canada to uncover potential similarities and differences in job attrition and retention cross-nationally. Overall, the statistical analysis demonstrates that, despite increased efforts to improve gender equity across STEM fields, gender inequalities, stereotypes, and biases remain problems within EICT in Germany, shaping women’s day to day workplace experiences across employment sectors.

We would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for their support and funding of this project.