I'm planning on going to school for engineering next year and I wanted to create a space that would allow young women to explore engineering challenges in a supportive environment surrounded by girls the same age. Hopefully this will encourage them to consider engineering as a potential carer option since only 11% of working engineers are female.
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TED TalkI talk about the importance of having female mentors as a female engineer in the workforce. I also touch on the reason why there isn't many female engineers in the first place.
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Senior thesis paper
Does the lack of female mentors in engineering affect the gender gap in the field?
Abstract
Women are underrepresented in all aspects of engineering, from young women to professionals in the workplace. Women’s decisions not to stay in engineering includes; organizational climate, performing engineering tasks, or balancing work and family roles, and a lack of relatable mentors (Nadya). The value of mentorship is irreplaceable and very important for aspiring engineers and professionals in engineering. Finding a mentor in the early on in engineering jobs is critical, thus leading to a higher retention rate for female engineers. The people that we choose as mentors need to have the capacity and capability to lead female engineers toward success. A mentor is not only someone who is willing to take the time to teach them techniques and processes but also someone who takes an interest in our long-term advancement.
Part One
Women comprise more than 20% of engineering school graduates, but only 11% of practicing engineers are women (National Science Foundation, 2011), a statistic that has been true for nearly 20 years. Unfortunately women are, in fact, underrepresented in the field of engineering at every level. Even though there has been steady improvement over decades of academic, federal, and employer interventions to address this gender gap. Research shows that women are much more likely to leave an engineering career, therefore losing many of the engineers (Nadya). Most of the current research is on effective interventions that has successfully focused on increasing women’s choice of majoring in engineering. Women who earn engineering degrees are choosing not to persist in engineering careers; research has not systematically investigated what factors may contribute to their decisions to avoid this matter of contention for future female engineers. The proportion of women engineers has declined slightly in the past decade. The pool of qualified women engineering graduates has increased, they are not staying in the field of engineering, even though schools are having some success with recruiting and graduating women from engineering programs.
Women’s decisions not to stay includes; organizational climate, performing engineering tasks, or balancing work and family roles, and a lack of relatable mentors (Nadya). Another important concern is environmental barriers, such as facing a chilly organizational climate (particularly for women in engineering), especially during parenting years, when many have to take a career break (Nicholas).
Women can also encounter barriers when they have a reason to move into the management department from engineering roles, resulting in a lack of female mentors that are assigned a higher job position. It is therefore critical to understand the diversity of factors that lead some women to persist in engineering and others to leave it, as our educational system may have a role in better preparing women engineers for workforce challenges. Simultaneously, the organizations that employ women engineers have a vital role in creating work environments that both attract and retain women engineers.
Part TwoHistory of Female Engineers
The history of women in engineering guides the development of the profession of engineering. Before engineering was recognized as a formal profession, women with engineering skills often were recognized as inventors. In the 19th century, women who performed engineering work often had collegiate training in mathematics or science (Bix). In the early years of the twentieth century, a few women were admitted to engineering programs, but they were generally looked upon as curiosities by their male counterparts.
Although a lot of women sought recognition for their accomplishments; they made themselves heroines for the future development of female engineers. These engineers neglected the formalities and shattered the social prejustice of their time. Hypatia of Alexandria (370 CD – 415 CD), who is known for the invention of the hydrometer; in the 19th century, women who performed engineering work often had academic training in mathematics or science like Hypatia (Joshua). Ada Lovelace (1815–1852) She translated an article about an invention by Charles Babbage, and added her own comments. Because Ada introduced many computer concepts, she is considered the first computer programmer. Ada Lovelace was tutored by Mary Somerville, a Scottish astronomer and mathematician. Somerville was one of the first females to be admitted into the Royal Astronomical Society (Moore, 1977). Hertha Marks Ayrton (1854-1923), a British engineer/inventor who studied mathematics at Cambridge, which is unheard of in the 1880s. Hertha Ayrton was elected as member at the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1899, and was the first female to do so (Tattersall, 87-112).
The start of the United States into World War II created a major shortage of engineering talent as men were drafted into the armed forces. The General Electric Corporation offered on-the-job engineering training for women with degrees in mathematics and physics. The company partnered with Cornell, Penn State, Purdue, the University of Minnesota, the University of Texas, RPI, and Iowa State University to create an engineering curriculum that eventually enrolled over 600 women. The course lasted ten months and focused primarily on aircraft design and production (Bix). Although this advancement was enormous, women still faced many challenges trying to fit in the work environment.
The women who did work in this profession faced unique challenges, from being denied positions because of anti-woman irrationality in mines and on ships. Men feared they would become pregnant and leave the workforce, to being overlooked for field assignments simply because women typically never performed an assignment before. This discrimination made it very difficult for women to be successful as engineers, because they went desirable by employers (Cuneo).
Women also received less than five percent of engineering bachelor degrees, and as students they experienced challenges unique to their gender. Some female engineering students were prohibited from certain classes, special programs or even some universities. Others found that there were few (if any) women’s restrooms in the engineering buildings, which had been built with the assumption that the students would be male (Eller, 202). At this time female engineers needed some sort of support.
The Society of Women Engineers was founded in the 1950s, when less than 5% of engineers in the United States were women. It was in this environment that several independent organizations formed in the late 1940s, each calling their organization The Society of Women Engineers. They formed in a few cities and universities where there existed small concentrations of women engineers: New York City, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. Each of these local organizations was formed to provide social and professional support to its members, however as the organizations became aware of each other the members began wanting a larger organization that could make a bigger impact on women’s careers and on the engineering profession as a whole.
Lack of STEM Talent U.S. leadership in technical innovation has been a big force behind economic marketing for at least the last 50 years. Recent concern about declining numbers of U.S. citizens choosing to enter technical careers and the increase in technological talent and jobs overseas led Congress to ask the National Academy of Sciences to analyze the U.S. technical talent pool and make policy recommendations to advance U.S. competitiveness in global research and development markets (Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy, 2007). The report effectively argues for the increased importance of technology to the U.S. economy, demonstrates global trends in research and development that favor other countries, and highlights the need for concrete action to enhance U.S. competitiveness.
However, while the report briefly notes that U.S. women and minorities are underrepresented in science and technology, it does not address the additional loss of women from technology careers, post-graduation, which represents a substantial loss of talent from the technical workforce. As noted above, women are the most underrepresented in the engineering disciplines.
The loss of women from the profession after they complete their undergraduate degree is particularly disheartening as well as costly for the educational system, society, and to women in general, given the large time, effort, and monetary investment in their education. As noted in a recent review of research on girls’ persistence in science and engineering, little is known about what happens to women once they enter the engineering workforce (National Science Foundation, 2006).
Part ThreeEarly Age Segregation Debbie Sterling is one of the leading voices in the movement to encourage young girl’s interest in engineering and technology. For years, she has gotten skeptical looks when she tells people she's an engineer. In her Tedx talks she mentioned “Usually when I tell people I’m an engineer they look at me and they say, ‘Ha! No, really, what do you do?’ or they look at me and say, ‘Oh, whoa, you must be some kind of genius.” In her Tedx talk, Sterling explains why she thinks her profession shouldn’t be so surprising, and proposes how we might make engineering a more inviting field for young girls. Sterling thought of the idea of making a engineering toy for girls. She wanted to introduce a toy that would give them the opportunity to discover a passion for engineering, like she did.
Sterling was so determined that she quit her job to create the perfect new engineering toy set. In the Tedx talk she explains how she did her research. She said “I met with little girls, and I found something really interesting. I’d buy construction toys and watch them play with them to see how they could be improved, and time and time again, the girls would get bored with the toys. And so I would say, ‘Well, what is your favorite toy?’ and they would run upstairs and they would bring back down a book and they’d say, ‘I love reading. Let’s read together.’” What lead next was the toy called “GoldieBox”, a toy that incorporates storytelling and engineering. She tried to gain support for GoldieBlox at a New York toy fair but encountered skepticism that girls would want anything that isn't princesses or dolls. Despite the backlash, Sterling launched a kickstarter campaign that raised nearly $300,000. GoldieBlox is now available for purchase at hundreds of retailers including major stores like Toys "R" Us. GoldieBlox was named one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company in 2014. The Toy Industry Association has given GoldieBlox multiple Toy of the Year nominations and victories, including 2014 Education Toy of the Year.
As well as an engineer, Sterling is a spokesperson, and one of the leading voices in the movement to encourage girls’ interest in engineering and technology. Sterling was named TIME’s person of the moment and Business Insider’s 30 Women Who Are Changing the World.
Employee Turnover for Female Engineers
Employee turnover has been the subject of intense empirical and theoretical scrutiny for several decades and has generated an impressive body of knowledge about the withdrawal process (Griffith, 2001). Turnover decision research points out that employees think about quitting which may or may not result in actual quitting; instead these thought processes (withdrawal cognitions) may trigger alternative forms of withdrawal such as plans to search for alternative job opportunities, general thoughts or considerations of quitting, and intentions to quit (Hanisch, 1995). Withdrawal cognitions also include the concept of psychological withdrawal, which refers to a redirection of thought processes and personal plans away from one’s current position. These cognitions are manifested in a broad, encompassing reduction of inputs to one’s current role such as lateness, and inattention, or basic neglect of duties (Hanisch, 1995; Shaffer & Harrison, 1998). Employees who remain in the organization but are psychologically withdrawn may incur indirect costs to their organizations through reduced productivity and reduced staff. Further, withdrawal may also be damaging to the employee in the form of ruining self-esteem, impaired relationships at work and home, and interrupted careers.
“Withdrawal cognitions, in turn, are usually precipitated by negative evaluations about one’s job (i.e., lower job satisfaction) and lowered commitment to the organization. This is consistent with attitude theory” (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980), which posits that behavior is determined by the intention to perform the behavior and that this intention is, in turn, a function of the attitude toward the behavior. Research on voluntary turnover process has shown general support for this unfolding sequence of exit behavior, like job dissatisfaction and lowered commitment progresses toward withdrawing, and withdrawing in turn, lead to turnover. “Research on the relationship between turnover intentions and attitudinal variables such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment have found that both job satisfaction and commitment were negatively correlated with withdrawal cognitions, and withdrawal cognitions predicted turnover.” (e.g., Hom & Kinicki, 2001).
Despite differences in labor market behaviors by men and women, research on gender differences in voluntary turnover has been surprisingly meager. Existing research has produced inconsistent findings, making it hard to draw conclusions. “Some studies indicate that women and people of color tend to leave their jobs at a higher rate than Caucasian males” (Cox & Blake, 1991) while other studies report the opposite effect: turnover for males is greater than that for females (Strauss, 1994).
Given that withdrawal behavior progresses in these clearly identifiable stages, it is important to understand a broad range of barriers and supports that may lead to poor career commitment, psychological withdrawal, and intentions to quit the organization and the engineering profession. By understanding the process that leads to turnover from engineering careers, we can design appropriate interventions that facilitate women’s decision to persist in engineering careers.
While we know very little about the factors that predict the turnover of employed engineers, there has been research to predict initial vocational choices of engineering as a career within K-16 educational settings. This research has examined not only engineering as a career choice, but also the choices to take the advanced classes of mathematics and science that are critical to engineering education.
Research has shown interventions that focus on increasing girls’ participation that include promoting math/science interests, promoting the human-value characteristics of engineering, increasing parental support for math and advanced classes, promoting positive environments, focusing on the outcome expectations of math and science and increasing math/science and engineering self-efficacy. Colleges have also instituted systemic interventions, such as the Model Institutes for Excellence, a National Science Foundation program, that include mentoring, tutoring, targeted advising, and faculty development. Indeed, there has been a small but measurable improvement in women’s graduation rates in engineering over the last decade. For example, from 1995 to 2010, the percentage of women who have earned bachelor’s degrees in engineering has increased from 17.3% to 20.1% (National Science Foundation, 2011), and the impact of recent educational intervention efforts will likely be seen in coming years.
Women who do choose engineering and persist through the educational system to achieve a technical degree have demonstrated interest in their field, expect positive outcomes from their participation, possess the math, science, and engineering self-efficacy sufficient to navigate required technical coursework, and value the occupational characteristics of technical jobs. Therefore, one would expect that women who earn engineering degrees would be likely to persist and be successful in their careers.
Preston (2004) reported that engineers leave the field at a rate four times that of doctors, three and a half times that of lawyers and judges, and 15-30% more than nurses or college teachers. Specific to engineering, the Society of Women Engineers recently reported that one in four women who enter engineering have left the profession after age 30, compared to one in ten male engineers (Society of Women Engineers, 2007). Nonetheless, these studies have documented that women who have left the field of engineering have not focused on the psychological processes involved in making their decision to leave their career. Their decision could be related to concerns with work/family balance or lack of advancement opportunities. Because they reach a crossroads where they have to decide to either enter a management career, or face the possibly limited opportunities that may come with an exclusively technical engineering role. It could be that they no longer enjoy the work of an engineer. It could be because they encounter a organizational climate. There are many possibilities that have surfaced from anecdotal accounts but little research to offer some tangible evidence supporting these claims.
The Importance of Having Female MentorsMentors who can give advice, share experiences, or make social connections to help young women to find their place in an often hostile field. In a year-long study, Dasgupta, a professor at Harvard University, was able to show that female engineering undergraduates who are paired with a female mentor felt more motivated, more self-assured, and less anxious than those who had either no mentor or a male one. They were less likely to drop out of their courses, and successfully look for engineering jobs after they graduated. “And this study isn’t just about women,” adds Radhika Nagpal, also from Harvard. “It’s about all the groups who have been historically and legally excluded, and are now slowly entering a world from which their members were barred. There’s a famous saying: You can’t be what you can’t see.” Radhika Nagpal.
Compared to their mentor-less peers, the students with female mentors felt more accepted by their peers and less invisible. They were more confident in their engineering skills, and more likely to think they had a talent for the subject. “It’s not that having a female mentor increased belonging or confidence—it just preserved it,” Dasgupta notes. This is a critical point. Without any mentorship at all, the volunteers felt increasingly anxious, under-confident, and out of the place through the year.
Dennehy and Dasgupta found that women without mentors increasingly thought about switching majors, and became less keen on pursuing graduate degrees in engineering. By the end of the first year, 11% of them had dropped out. By contrast, the students with female mentors remained equally committed to their fields, and every single one of them stayed the course.
The students’ actual grades had no bearing on their odds of staying in engineering. Instead, “the active ingredients are belonging and confidence,” “Humans are social animals. Our ability alone does not determine whether we stay in or leave a field. It’s ability mixed in that feeling that these are your people, this is where you belong. Absent, that even high-performers might not feel motivated to stay.”(Dasgupta), Which makes you wonder: how many brilliant minds have been lost from engineering and other STEM disciplines because those disciplines did not create spaces for them?
Dennehy and Dasgupta also found that male mentors were somewhat of a mixed bag. In some measures, they were just as effective as female mentors. In others, they were indistinguishable from having no mentor at all. And in some cases, they were worse: they actually increased women’s anxiety about their performance over time.
Why? Dasgupta expected that the female mentors would provide more social and emotional support, but that was not the case. The mentors all kept diaries about their conversations with their mentees, and these revealed that both genders largely talked about the same kinds of academic problems. The mentees themselves felt that the male mentors were just as supportive and available as the female ones. Men just could not act as role models in the same way that other women could, and so could not catalyze those all-important feelings of belonging (Dasgupta).
That’s not to say that the men have no role to play. “They could connect women to other women in engineering, or to female faculty who could do the work of social belonging in a way that the male mentors can not provide themselves,” (Dasgupta).
Lin Bian from the University of Illinois, who recently showed that gendered stereotypes about intelligence take root at the young age of 6, says that Dasgupta’s study reveals how “role models inoculate women against negative beliefs during critical transitions.” The start of college is one such transition: a point when life gets upended, and when people feel a surge of uncertainty about their place in the world. That’s when mentoring can make the most difference.
“It makes an incredible case for near-peer mentoring to increase the graduation rate of women in engineering degree programs,” says Sheila Boyington, the president of the Million Women Mentors initiative. “While much of the study is indeed intuitive, it affirms a well-defined path forward for universities to follow if they want to increase diversity in STEM.” And although mentoring is just one of many possible solutions, “it’s not an either-or situation,” (Nagpal.) “We need to do everything, like mentoring, fighting sexist exclusionary behaviors, training men to behave better, and investing money in better practices. We need to make up for a century of neither-nor.”
Part FourAs a society, we learn more about the world and enhance our lives through science and engineering. The United States may be known around the world for its higher education, but compared to many other leading and steadily emerging countries we lack a strong focus on educating scientists and engineers (Issapour, 315). One very significant reason why the United States have fallen behind is that we don’t encourage our female students to pursue career paths in Science, Technology, Engineering or Math (STEM). All students, regardless of sex, deserve fair opportunities to explore math and science throughout elementary, middle and high school. If we strive to attract the brightest minds into the fields that will move us forward, we can no longer look to only half of the population. More women can contribute to our field and we can help make that happen.
One of the most important confidence builders can be found day to day on the job or in school in the form of a mentor. Teaming up with a mentor is a career strategy that can bring huge benefits, especially for women in unbalanced work environments like engineering. The majority of successful women credit their participation in some sort of mentorship for dramatically helping them reach their career goals.
The value of mentorship is irreplaceable. Finding a mentor in jobs will help us tramadussy, leading to a higher retention rate. Mentors need to have the capacity and capability to lead them toward success. A mentor is not only someone who is willing to take the time to teach them techniques and processes but also someone who takes an interest in our long-term advancement. Because this person can see one’s potential, he or she is willing to go beyond job duties and put in the extra work to ensure that we gain the understanding that is needed to progress.
As women become more common in engineering and STEM careers as a whole, many more young girls will begin to recognize the number of career opportunities that are open to them. With more women in the field, it will become more know to young girls what they, as engineers, can offer to the world. Without being able to see the other women succeed in engineering, they will continue to have problems envisioning themselves being successful as well, even if they have some inherent interest in the subject matter. If young women cannot visualize themselves in engineering careers because they have never seen women in those positions, they will most likely be less inclined to want to pursue a career in engineering. That will truly be a loss of gigantic proportion, for our women, our profession and our country.
Citations
Women are underrepresented in all aspects of engineering, from young women to professionals in the workplace. Women’s decisions not to stay in engineering includes; organizational climate, performing engineering tasks, or balancing work and family roles, and a lack of relatable mentors (Nadya). The value of mentorship is irreplaceable and very important for aspiring engineers and professionals in engineering. Finding a mentor in the early on in engineering jobs is critical, thus leading to a higher retention rate for female engineers. The people that we choose as mentors need to have the capacity and capability to lead female engineers toward success. A mentor is not only someone who is willing to take the time to teach them techniques and processes but also someone who takes an interest in our long-term advancement.
Part One
Women comprise more than 20% of engineering school graduates, but only 11% of practicing engineers are women (National Science Foundation, 2011), a statistic that has been true for nearly 20 years. Unfortunately women are, in fact, underrepresented in the field of engineering at every level. Even though there has been steady improvement over decades of academic, federal, and employer interventions to address this gender gap. Research shows that women are much more likely to leave an engineering career, therefore losing many of the engineers (Nadya). Most of the current research is on effective interventions that has successfully focused on increasing women’s choice of majoring in engineering. Women who earn engineering degrees are choosing not to persist in engineering careers; research has not systematically investigated what factors may contribute to their decisions to avoid this matter of contention for future female engineers. The proportion of women engineers has declined slightly in the past decade. The pool of qualified women engineering graduates has increased, they are not staying in the field of engineering, even though schools are having some success with recruiting and graduating women from engineering programs.
Women’s decisions not to stay includes; organizational climate, performing engineering tasks, or balancing work and family roles, and a lack of relatable mentors (Nadya). Another important concern is environmental barriers, such as facing a chilly organizational climate (particularly for women in engineering), especially during parenting years, when many have to take a career break (Nicholas).
Women can also encounter barriers when they have a reason to move into the management department from engineering roles, resulting in a lack of female mentors that are assigned a higher job position. It is therefore critical to understand the diversity of factors that lead some women to persist in engineering and others to leave it, as our educational system may have a role in better preparing women engineers for workforce challenges. Simultaneously, the organizations that employ women engineers have a vital role in creating work environments that both attract and retain women engineers.
Part TwoHistory of Female Engineers
The history of women in engineering guides the development of the profession of engineering. Before engineering was recognized as a formal profession, women with engineering skills often were recognized as inventors. In the 19th century, women who performed engineering work often had collegiate training in mathematics or science (Bix). In the early years of the twentieth century, a few women were admitted to engineering programs, but they were generally looked upon as curiosities by their male counterparts.
Although a lot of women sought recognition for their accomplishments; they made themselves heroines for the future development of female engineers. These engineers neglected the formalities and shattered the social prejustice of their time. Hypatia of Alexandria (370 CD – 415 CD), who is known for the invention of the hydrometer; in the 19th century, women who performed engineering work often had academic training in mathematics or science like Hypatia (Joshua). Ada Lovelace (1815–1852) She translated an article about an invention by Charles Babbage, and added her own comments. Because Ada introduced many computer concepts, she is considered the first computer programmer. Ada Lovelace was tutored by Mary Somerville, a Scottish astronomer and mathematician. Somerville was one of the first females to be admitted into the Royal Astronomical Society (Moore, 1977). Hertha Marks Ayrton (1854-1923), a British engineer/inventor who studied mathematics at Cambridge, which is unheard of in the 1880s. Hertha Ayrton was elected as member at the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1899, and was the first female to do so (Tattersall, 87-112).
The start of the United States into World War II created a major shortage of engineering talent as men were drafted into the armed forces. The General Electric Corporation offered on-the-job engineering training for women with degrees in mathematics and physics. The company partnered with Cornell, Penn State, Purdue, the University of Minnesota, the University of Texas, RPI, and Iowa State University to create an engineering curriculum that eventually enrolled over 600 women. The course lasted ten months and focused primarily on aircraft design and production (Bix). Although this advancement was enormous, women still faced many challenges trying to fit in the work environment.
The women who did work in this profession faced unique challenges, from being denied positions because of anti-woman irrationality in mines and on ships. Men feared they would become pregnant and leave the workforce, to being overlooked for field assignments simply because women typically never performed an assignment before. This discrimination made it very difficult for women to be successful as engineers, because they went desirable by employers (Cuneo).
Women also received less than five percent of engineering bachelor degrees, and as students they experienced challenges unique to their gender. Some female engineering students were prohibited from certain classes, special programs or even some universities. Others found that there were few (if any) women’s restrooms in the engineering buildings, which had been built with the assumption that the students would be male (Eller, 202). At this time female engineers needed some sort of support.
The Society of Women Engineers was founded in the 1950s, when less than 5% of engineers in the United States were women. It was in this environment that several independent organizations formed in the late 1940s, each calling their organization The Society of Women Engineers. They formed in a few cities and universities where there existed small concentrations of women engineers: New York City, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. Each of these local organizations was formed to provide social and professional support to its members, however as the organizations became aware of each other the members began wanting a larger organization that could make a bigger impact on women’s careers and on the engineering profession as a whole.
Lack of STEM Talent U.S. leadership in technical innovation has been a big force behind economic marketing for at least the last 50 years. Recent concern about declining numbers of U.S. citizens choosing to enter technical careers and the increase in technological talent and jobs overseas led Congress to ask the National Academy of Sciences to analyze the U.S. technical talent pool and make policy recommendations to advance U.S. competitiveness in global research and development markets (Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy, 2007). The report effectively argues for the increased importance of technology to the U.S. economy, demonstrates global trends in research and development that favor other countries, and highlights the need for concrete action to enhance U.S. competitiveness.
However, while the report briefly notes that U.S. women and minorities are underrepresented in science and technology, it does not address the additional loss of women from technology careers, post-graduation, which represents a substantial loss of talent from the technical workforce. As noted above, women are the most underrepresented in the engineering disciplines.
The loss of women from the profession after they complete their undergraduate degree is particularly disheartening as well as costly for the educational system, society, and to women in general, given the large time, effort, and monetary investment in their education. As noted in a recent review of research on girls’ persistence in science and engineering, little is known about what happens to women once they enter the engineering workforce (National Science Foundation, 2006).
Part ThreeEarly Age Segregation Debbie Sterling is one of the leading voices in the movement to encourage young girl’s interest in engineering and technology. For years, she has gotten skeptical looks when she tells people she's an engineer. In her Tedx talks she mentioned “Usually when I tell people I’m an engineer they look at me and they say, ‘Ha! No, really, what do you do?’ or they look at me and say, ‘Oh, whoa, you must be some kind of genius.” In her Tedx talk, Sterling explains why she thinks her profession shouldn’t be so surprising, and proposes how we might make engineering a more inviting field for young girls. Sterling thought of the idea of making a engineering toy for girls. She wanted to introduce a toy that would give them the opportunity to discover a passion for engineering, like she did.
Sterling was so determined that she quit her job to create the perfect new engineering toy set. In the Tedx talk she explains how she did her research. She said “I met with little girls, and I found something really interesting. I’d buy construction toys and watch them play with them to see how they could be improved, and time and time again, the girls would get bored with the toys. And so I would say, ‘Well, what is your favorite toy?’ and they would run upstairs and they would bring back down a book and they’d say, ‘I love reading. Let’s read together.’” What lead next was the toy called “GoldieBox”, a toy that incorporates storytelling and engineering. She tried to gain support for GoldieBlox at a New York toy fair but encountered skepticism that girls would want anything that isn't princesses or dolls. Despite the backlash, Sterling launched a kickstarter campaign that raised nearly $300,000. GoldieBlox is now available for purchase at hundreds of retailers including major stores like Toys "R" Us. GoldieBlox was named one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company in 2014. The Toy Industry Association has given GoldieBlox multiple Toy of the Year nominations and victories, including 2014 Education Toy of the Year.
As well as an engineer, Sterling is a spokesperson, and one of the leading voices in the movement to encourage girls’ interest in engineering and technology. Sterling was named TIME’s person of the moment and Business Insider’s 30 Women Who Are Changing the World.
Employee Turnover for Female Engineers
Employee turnover has been the subject of intense empirical and theoretical scrutiny for several decades and has generated an impressive body of knowledge about the withdrawal process (Griffith, 2001). Turnover decision research points out that employees think about quitting which may or may not result in actual quitting; instead these thought processes (withdrawal cognitions) may trigger alternative forms of withdrawal such as plans to search for alternative job opportunities, general thoughts or considerations of quitting, and intentions to quit (Hanisch, 1995). Withdrawal cognitions also include the concept of psychological withdrawal, which refers to a redirection of thought processes and personal plans away from one’s current position. These cognitions are manifested in a broad, encompassing reduction of inputs to one’s current role such as lateness, and inattention, or basic neglect of duties (Hanisch, 1995; Shaffer & Harrison, 1998). Employees who remain in the organization but are psychologically withdrawn may incur indirect costs to their organizations through reduced productivity and reduced staff. Further, withdrawal may also be damaging to the employee in the form of ruining self-esteem, impaired relationships at work and home, and interrupted careers.
“Withdrawal cognitions, in turn, are usually precipitated by negative evaluations about one’s job (i.e., lower job satisfaction) and lowered commitment to the organization. This is consistent with attitude theory” (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980), which posits that behavior is determined by the intention to perform the behavior and that this intention is, in turn, a function of the attitude toward the behavior. Research on voluntary turnover process has shown general support for this unfolding sequence of exit behavior, like job dissatisfaction and lowered commitment progresses toward withdrawing, and withdrawing in turn, lead to turnover. “Research on the relationship between turnover intentions and attitudinal variables such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment have found that both job satisfaction and commitment were negatively correlated with withdrawal cognitions, and withdrawal cognitions predicted turnover.” (e.g., Hom & Kinicki, 2001).
Despite differences in labor market behaviors by men and women, research on gender differences in voluntary turnover has been surprisingly meager. Existing research has produced inconsistent findings, making it hard to draw conclusions. “Some studies indicate that women and people of color tend to leave their jobs at a higher rate than Caucasian males” (Cox & Blake, 1991) while other studies report the opposite effect: turnover for males is greater than that for females (Strauss, 1994).
Given that withdrawal behavior progresses in these clearly identifiable stages, it is important to understand a broad range of barriers and supports that may lead to poor career commitment, psychological withdrawal, and intentions to quit the organization and the engineering profession. By understanding the process that leads to turnover from engineering careers, we can design appropriate interventions that facilitate women’s decision to persist in engineering careers.
While we know very little about the factors that predict the turnover of employed engineers, there has been research to predict initial vocational choices of engineering as a career within K-16 educational settings. This research has examined not only engineering as a career choice, but also the choices to take the advanced classes of mathematics and science that are critical to engineering education.
Research has shown interventions that focus on increasing girls’ participation that include promoting math/science interests, promoting the human-value characteristics of engineering, increasing parental support for math and advanced classes, promoting positive environments, focusing on the outcome expectations of math and science and increasing math/science and engineering self-efficacy. Colleges have also instituted systemic interventions, such as the Model Institutes for Excellence, a National Science Foundation program, that include mentoring, tutoring, targeted advising, and faculty development. Indeed, there has been a small but measurable improvement in women’s graduation rates in engineering over the last decade. For example, from 1995 to 2010, the percentage of women who have earned bachelor’s degrees in engineering has increased from 17.3% to 20.1% (National Science Foundation, 2011), and the impact of recent educational intervention efforts will likely be seen in coming years.
Women who do choose engineering and persist through the educational system to achieve a technical degree have demonstrated interest in their field, expect positive outcomes from their participation, possess the math, science, and engineering self-efficacy sufficient to navigate required technical coursework, and value the occupational characteristics of technical jobs. Therefore, one would expect that women who earn engineering degrees would be likely to persist and be successful in their careers.
Preston (2004) reported that engineers leave the field at a rate four times that of doctors, three and a half times that of lawyers and judges, and 15-30% more than nurses or college teachers. Specific to engineering, the Society of Women Engineers recently reported that one in four women who enter engineering have left the profession after age 30, compared to one in ten male engineers (Society of Women Engineers, 2007). Nonetheless, these studies have documented that women who have left the field of engineering have not focused on the psychological processes involved in making their decision to leave their career. Their decision could be related to concerns with work/family balance or lack of advancement opportunities. Because they reach a crossroads where they have to decide to either enter a management career, or face the possibly limited opportunities that may come with an exclusively technical engineering role. It could be that they no longer enjoy the work of an engineer. It could be because they encounter a organizational climate. There are many possibilities that have surfaced from anecdotal accounts but little research to offer some tangible evidence supporting these claims.
The Importance of Having Female MentorsMentors who can give advice, share experiences, or make social connections to help young women to find their place in an often hostile field. In a year-long study, Dasgupta, a professor at Harvard University, was able to show that female engineering undergraduates who are paired with a female mentor felt more motivated, more self-assured, and less anxious than those who had either no mentor or a male one. They were less likely to drop out of their courses, and successfully look for engineering jobs after they graduated. “And this study isn’t just about women,” adds Radhika Nagpal, also from Harvard. “It’s about all the groups who have been historically and legally excluded, and are now slowly entering a world from which their members were barred. There’s a famous saying: You can’t be what you can’t see.” Radhika Nagpal.
Compared to their mentor-less peers, the students with female mentors felt more accepted by their peers and less invisible. They were more confident in their engineering skills, and more likely to think they had a talent for the subject. “It’s not that having a female mentor increased belonging or confidence—it just preserved it,” Dasgupta notes. This is a critical point. Without any mentorship at all, the volunteers felt increasingly anxious, under-confident, and out of the place through the year.
Dennehy and Dasgupta found that women without mentors increasingly thought about switching majors, and became less keen on pursuing graduate degrees in engineering. By the end of the first year, 11% of them had dropped out. By contrast, the students with female mentors remained equally committed to their fields, and every single one of them stayed the course.
The students’ actual grades had no bearing on their odds of staying in engineering. Instead, “the active ingredients are belonging and confidence,” “Humans are social animals. Our ability alone does not determine whether we stay in or leave a field. It’s ability mixed in that feeling that these are your people, this is where you belong. Absent, that even high-performers might not feel motivated to stay.”(Dasgupta), Which makes you wonder: how many brilliant minds have been lost from engineering and other STEM disciplines because those disciplines did not create spaces for them?
Dennehy and Dasgupta also found that male mentors were somewhat of a mixed bag. In some measures, they were just as effective as female mentors. In others, they were indistinguishable from having no mentor at all. And in some cases, they were worse: they actually increased women’s anxiety about their performance over time.
Why? Dasgupta expected that the female mentors would provide more social and emotional support, but that was not the case. The mentors all kept diaries about their conversations with their mentees, and these revealed that both genders largely talked about the same kinds of academic problems. The mentees themselves felt that the male mentors were just as supportive and available as the female ones. Men just could not act as role models in the same way that other women could, and so could not catalyze those all-important feelings of belonging (Dasgupta).
That’s not to say that the men have no role to play. “They could connect women to other women in engineering, or to female faculty who could do the work of social belonging in a way that the male mentors can not provide themselves,” (Dasgupta).
Lin Bian from the University of Illinois, who recently showed that gendered stereotypes about intelligence take root at the young age of 6, says that Dasgupta’s study reveals how “role models inoculate women against negative beliefs during critical transitions.” The start of college is one such transition: a point when life gets upended, and when people feel a surge of uncertainty about their place in the world. That’s when mentoring can make the most difference.
“It makes an incredible case for near-peer mentoring to increase the graduation rate of women in engineering degree programs,” says Sheila Boyington, the president of the Million Women Mentors initiative. “While much of the study is indeed intuitive, it affirms a well-defined path forward for universities to follow if they want to increase diversity in STEM.” And although mentoring is just one of many possible solutions, “it’s not an either-or situation,” (Nagpal.) “We need to do everything, like mentoring, fighting sexist exclusionary behaviors, training men to behave better, and investing money in better practices. We need to make up for a century of neither-nor.”
Part FourAs a society, we learn more about the world and enhance our lives through science and engineering. The United States may be known around the world for its higher education, but compared to many other leading and steadily emerging countries we lack a strong focus on educating scientists and engineers (Issapour, 315). One very significant reason why the United States have fallen behind is that we don’t encourage our female students to pursue career paths in Science, Technology, Engineering or Math (STEM). All students, regardless of sex, deserve fair opportunities to explore math and science throughout elementary, middle and high school. If we strive to attract the brightest minds into the fields that will move us forward, we can no longer look to only half of the population. More women can contribute to our field and we can help make that happen.
One of the most important confidence builders can be found day to day on the job or in school in the form of a mentor. Teaming up with a mentor is a career strategy that can bring huge benefits, especially for women in unbalanced work environments like engineering. The majority of successful women credit their participation in some sort of mentorship for dramatically helping them reach their career goals.
The value of mentorship is irreplaceable. Finding a mentor in jobs will help us tramadussy, leading to a higher retention rate. Mentors need to have the capacity and capability to lead them toward success. A mentor is not only someone who is willing to take the time to teach them techniques and processes but also someone who takes an interest in our long-term advancement. Because this person can see one’s potential, he or she is willing to go beyond job duties and put in the extra work to ensure that we gain the understanding that is needed to progress.
As women become more common in engineering and STEM careers as a whole, many more young girls will begin to recognize the number of career opportunities that are open to them. With more women in the field, it will become more know to young girls what they, as engineers, can offer to the world. Without being able to see the other women succeed in engineering, they will continue to have problems envisioning themselves being successful as well, even if they have some inherent interest in the subject matter. If young women cannot visualize themselves in engineering careers because they have never seen women in those positions, they will most likely be less inclined to want to pursue a career in engineering. That will truly be a loss of gigantic proportion, for our women, our profession and our country.
Citations
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- Society of Women Engineers, 2007
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