Gendered Words in Canadian Engineering Recruitment Documents

Abstract

Gender imbalance exists in nearly everyundergraduate engineering department in Canada. Thereis evidence that subtle gendered wording may influenceperceptions of women’s fit in a field. In this study, weapplied a content analysis approach to evaluating thepresence of gendered words in engineeringundergraduate recruitment materials and compared theseresults to enrolment data and other factors for 18English-language Canadian engineering schools. To ourknowledge, this is the first evaluation of genderedwording in recruitment materials as a factor in theenrolment of women in engineering. We found that the useof feminine wording in recruitment materials has a weak,negative correlation with enrolment of women students,but a positive correlation with percentage of femalefaculty members. Our data point to the need for furtheranalysis of recruitment material and with attentionfocused on the performance of gender in this material,and how it and other factors may influence enrolment.

Imagery and Gender in Canadian Engineering Recruitment Documents

“…The images and videos used here were collected together with the website text collected for earlier work examining gendered words in recruitment materials [2].…”

“…Building on a previous study [2] that established a positive correlation between feminine wording in recruitment material and the percentage of female faculty members, this research examines how gender is depicted in images and videos targeted at prospective students.…”

Gendered Words in U.S. Engineering Recruitment Documents

“…This could have an impact on the culture of a department or school. In similar Canadian data, we found correlations between percentage of female faculty and fractions of masculine and feminine words by total words (d'Entremont et al 2015).…”

Images of the Future: Gender and Portrayals of Faculty and Industry Members in Canadian Engineering School Recruitment Materials

“…We used content analysis to code images and videos collected during the 2014-2015 school year from the websites of 18 English-language Canadian engineering schools (out of a total of 38 such schools) representing a wide range of location, size, and female enrolment. This material was collected simultaneously with text used in another analysis [4]. Faculty members at these schools are 9.3-33.3% women, with all but one school below 19.5% women faculty, and with an overall median of 14.2% women faculty.…”

“…While there are some concerns about retention [2], the imbalance primarily begins with the low enrolment of women into engineering programs [3]. In exploring this issue, we previously examined Canadian engineering schools' recruitment materials for the presentation of gender in the text [4] and in the imagery involving students [5]. In this paper, we consider how people working in engineering -faculty members and industry members -are presented in recruitment materials, given that these images may also influence how students anticipate what a career in engineering might be like and what potential role models may be available for them along the way.…”