Thesis (MTech. degree in Business Information Systems.) / The study aims to investigate the intervention programmes that are currently being implemented in South African organisations in an effort to increase the recruitment and retention of women in the Information and Communication Technology industry.

Almost any woman who has worked in a male dominated industry has faced a gender stereotype or bias of some type. Some of these women have even developed coping mechanisms to counteract these biases and make day-to-day interactions at work tolerable. Gathering information to reveal these stereotypes and biases can pose a distinctive challenge. Many women do not want to reveal the challenges that they have faced in their careers, and the vastness of types of challenges makes asking the correct questions very difficult. Through testing, this study has developed a valid data collection instrument that can be used to gather the varying data. The final instrument yielded 22 items that have strong validity and reliability results.

From the 1880s, a new type of designed green space appeared in the industrial landscape in England and the USA - the factory pleasure garden or park. At the same time, industrialists began to enhance their office and factory buildings with landscaping and planting, and some opened allotment gardens for the children of factory workers. The making of gardens and parks around or near office and factory buildings, designed by professionals, was driven by belief in the value of gardens and parks to recruitment and retention of staff, to industrial welfare, and to advertising, corporate identity and public relations. The thesis will show how industrialists appropriated the historical, cultural and metaphorical meanings of gardens in a bid to redefine industry as progressive and responsible and to shift the image of factory labour from unhealthy and exploitative to healthy, caring, respectable and sociable. The thesis will argue that companies employed landscape professionals to contribute to a positive image of industry and industrial development in the suburban or rural landscape, and to harmonise industry and nature. It will show how the factory gardens and parks supported numerous and varied opportunities for outdoor recreation that in some districts would not have been so readily accessible to working people, particularly to women and young people. The thesis will show how companies exploited the social and cultural capital of gardens and recreation space through photography, illustration and film for promotional purposes. It will suggest that although the sporting and other outdoor recreational opportunities at factories were likely to be beneficial to many, the greater value to companies of factory pleasure gardens was in advertising and public relations. The thesis will build on existing research that highlights the valuable contribution of industry to sports and recreation provision in this period. It will also suggest that industry had more influence on gardens and gardening than is currently understood.