Digital technologies have become an integral part of today’s working life. Information and communication technologies, so-called ICTs, play a special role here: these include all electronic devices and technologies that are capable of collecting, storing and transmitting information. Examples include e-mails, video conferencing systems and digital office management systems.
Research results show that the perception and appraisal of these technologies can differ between employees based on their characteristics. Based on the digital gender gap, which can reveal differences in attitudes between men and women in particular, we ask ourselves whether there is a systematic gender difference in the perception of technologies and whether this interacts with various characteristics of the technologies.
Since digitalization will be a central topic for all companies in the coming years, we also look at the adaptation to newly introduced technologies in the workplace. These adaptation processes can be significantly influenced by the original perception and appraisal of the technologies.
In our project “Digital Technologies and Gender Inequality in Working Life”, which is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), we are investigating these potential gender differences using various study designs (including longitudinal studies).