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I Still Wanna be an Engineer! Women, Education and the Engineering Profession

  1. Context/background. Gender inequity in engineering enrollments at university continues  despite the frequent claim of the unmet demand for more trained professionals. Previous studies have suggested that women lack the necessary cognitive and practical skills as evidenced by their lack of academic achievement in maths and science. In the past decade significant numbers of young women leave school with high achievement in these areas and yet do not take up enrolment in engineering.
  2. Research questions.
  3. Theoretical background. Professional identity, emerging as  a key feature of the problem, is approached through three theoretical frames: Bourdieu’s concept (2000) of habitus in terms of the connection between social context and individual agency. Identity is here conceived as constructed by the ongoing interactions between individual and environment and thus a fluid, changing concept (Shotter & Gergen,1989). Wenger’s notion (1998) of workplaces as comprising “communities of practice” and sites in which identities are formed.
  4. Methodology: mixed methods. Stage 1. Qualitative interview based study of a widespread range of professional engineers, 41 women and 10 men. Stage 2. Survey of 357 engineering workers across 3 large engineering firms, followed by targeted interviews with 44 women and 52 men and focus groups at each site (7.5.7 N=19). Survey data analysed using SPSS; interview data organised using NVIVO.
  5. Findings and analysis
  6. Educational implications  

    a.        Maths science education is very important for girls in the choice of engineering. The women engineers had found their school experience in these subjects both pleasurable and formative in their self understanding of their capacities and talents. Related to this is the value of teacher support in choosing a non-traditional career such as engineering, especially in the case of young women who do not have any family connections with the profession.

    b.      In terms of professional education there is a need for an educational experience that includes more than skilling for the job in order to fit people for the workplace environment. None of the engineers interviewed had any doubts about the adequacy of their initial degree in terms of preparing then with the necessary skills for the technical work. However many engineers, and most particularly the women, did look for more understanding of the politics of the workplace and the development of strategies in order to position themselves more effectively and comfortably as colleagues.   The women’s experience of working life could have been improved had the pre-service courses   engaged with some socially aware study whereby students were introduced to the history and traditions of engineering and the need for change contingent upon the present climate of globalisation and the knowledge economy.

References

Bourdieu, P., 2000. The politics of protest. An interview with Kevin Ovenden. Socialist Review, 42, 18–20.

Shotter, J. and Gergen, K. eds., 1989. Texts of identity. London: Sage.

Wenger, E., 1998. Communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press

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Article Link: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tandf/teee/2008/00000033/00000004/art00001 }}} [https://stemedhub.org/groups/cleerhub/wiki/issue:1326 : Back to 2009 Winter Issue, Vol. 4, No. 2] [[Include(issues:footer)]]