Disrupting Masculinities

Abstract

The disproportionate under-representation of women among engineering faculty and workplaces, and the tendency of women engineers to drop out of the profession in higher numbers than their male counterparts, continues to be a problem in Englishspeaking countries. 1 Within the literature on women in engineering there has been an increased emphasis upon the need to refocus attention away from strategies that target women as the site of solutions, to those that address the workplace culture within engineering faculty and workplaces (Mills et al. 2006). This paper aims to contribute to this work via an exploration of cultural imaginaries of the 'engineer' and the implications of this for women engineers and the gender balance in engineering. The discussion flows from a research project about women engineers based on 51 in-depth interviews with 10 men and 41 women engineers. 2 The interview sample is generally representative of the spread of Australian women engineers in terms of age, career progression, employment type, geography and engineering field. We interviewed civil, structural, electrical, metallurgical, mechanical, aeronautical, chemical and environmental engineers at a range of ages and career stages in companies, consultancies and government agencies. We also interviewed engineers in regional and remote parts of Australia.The paper opens by canvassing two of the main explanations for women's underrepresentation within the engineering profession. Each revolves around a representation of women and their actions as either driven by reproductive roles or, alternatively, as technically under-confident and unskilled by virtue of their socialisation into femininity. Gathering support from feminist studies on women and technology, this paper suggests that these explanations recirculate a discourse about women and technology that circumscribes the possibilities for women within the profession of engineering.In the discussion that follows we argue that there are two distinctive and dominant narratives about what it means to be a woman engineer. While all the women engineers interviewed expressed confidence and passion in the technical aspects of engineering work, one group of interviews (just less than half the sample) recirculate discourse in which women engineers are 'just as good as' men engineers. A second group of interviews emphasise women's difference and offer a more far-reaching critique of engineering work culture and its effects upon the quality of engineering interventions. 'Difference' narratives offer a radical alternative to prevailing perceptions of the 'good engineer', emphasising professional values and ethics within engineering work. In exploring the way women engineers negotiate the contradictions and limitations of prevailing cultural norms about women and engineering, we hope to challenge cultural perceptions about women and

Career experiences of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields: A systematic literature review

“…Finally, unlike previous research that focuses primarily on describing women's experiences in STEM, this review extends our knowledge by revealing three specific strategies (i.e., conforming, impression management, proactivity) that women used to address the challenges they encountered. However, due to the limited amount of empirical evidence available, we remain unclear about the degree of impact of women's efforts on challenging the status quo (Bastalich et al, 2007;Evetts, 1998). This limitation opens a door for many future research opportunities.…”

“…A few prominent contributors include gender bias (Buse & Bilimoria, 2014a;Dasgupta & Stout, 2014;Hart, 2016), feeling of isolation, hostile male-dominated work environments (Buday, Jayne, & Zoë, 2012;Herman, 2015), ineffective executive feedback, and a lack of adequate sponsorship (Center for Talent Innovation, 2014). More specifically, women working in STEM often found themselves challenged by gendered organizational structures, cultures, and management practices, all of which have created barriers to their career advancement and acceptance as professionals (Acker, 1990;Bastalich, Franzway, Gill, Mills, & Sharp, 2007;Blickenstaff, 2005;Kossek, Su, & Wu, 2017). These barriers are rooted in the largely male-dominated STEM fields (Stout, Grunberg, & Ito, 2016); as a result, women are often not welcomed.…”

Gendered by Design: The Socialization of Women in Engineering School

“…Ample research also exists highlighting the damaging effect of STEM's masculine workplace culture. A study by Bastalich et al (2007) emphasizes the masculine environment of engineering workplaces as a contributing factor to women's underrepresentation. This study emphasizes the incongruency of women existing in a space built on masculine norms, stating that male-dominated workplaces isolate women structurally (e.g., lacking adequate family-friendly policies), and socially (e.g., as a masculine environment is not welcoming to femininity).…”

“…When considering the specific context of this research, the necessity of a feminist epistemological standpoint and treating women as knowledge-producers, becomes even more palpable. Engineering, a predominately male space (Bastalich et al, 2007;Gale, 1994), has historically been shaped by and for men without the perspectives of women. Creating knowledge about engineering, the environment, the culture, and gender issues with the voices of women engineering students, may thus shed light on potentially hostile socialization processes and experiences that have been overlooked by those who are not marginalized in this arena.…”

“…For example, a number of studies have shown how both women and men who behave in ways that contradict traditional notions of femininity and masculinity (respectively), routinely experience sex-based mistreatment (e.g., Berdahl, 2007;McLaughlin, Uggen & Blackstone, 2012;Waldo, Berdahl, & Fitzgerald, 1998). As engineering is undeniably a masculine profession (Bastalich et al, 2007), for women, engineering may be seen as an inappropriate way of "doing gender" (West and Zimmerman 1987), and as a result, female engineering students may experience various forms of messaging -and (mis)treatment -from others in the environment.…”