GSE/RES: Women's Persistence in Engineering Careers: Barriers and Supports

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Intellectual Merit: This study is designed to understand the factors that lead some women to persist in engineering careers and others to leave it. Most of the research on effective interventions has focused on increasing women's choice of engineering major. However, though women are now 20% of engineering graduates only 11% of professional engineers are women. Clearly, women are disproportionately choosing not to enter or persist in engineering careers, but research has not systematically investigated what factors may contribute to their decisions. This may be due to their own concerns about managing the organizational climate, performing engineering tasks, or balancing work and family roles or could be due to environmental barriers, such as a chilly organizational climate. The Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) model may help to explain the factors related to retention for women in engineering career. SCCT predicts that self-efficacy and outcome expectations act indirectly on persistence through their influence on interests, which in turn influences choice behavior (e.g., choice to stay in the career or leave). This study will extend this SCCT research to women in engineering careers (or who have left those careers) by examining three domains of self-efficacy and outcome expectations (engineering tasks, work/family balance, and organizational climate), interests and barriers and supports for women in different stages of their career (5, 10, 15, 20 years post graduation). One premise of the work is that career commitment and job satisfaction predict withdrawal cognitions and the intent to quit, which in turn, predict either persistence or turnover. The study will follow cohorts of women longitudinally, providing both cross-sectional and a longitudinal perspective on factors influencing their decisions to stay, or leave, an engineering career. Broader Impact: Beyond the publication in relevant professional journals, the findings will also be used to provide practical guidance to organizations that may help them in designing and implementing effective policies that lead to the retention of women engineers. The findings may also be used to help develop interventions that may help to increase the retention of women in engineering careers. Finally, the broader impact will include preparing graduate students as future professionals with an expertise in social cognitive career theory and in examining careers of women engineers.