How Women Cope: Being a Numerical Minority in a Male-Dominated Profession

Abstract

Women who have academic careers in engineering have successfully navigated the social identity threats that prevent many other women from feeling that they belong in science, technology, engineering, and math fields. In this research, we examined what factors may be related to resilience in these academic environments. Female academics in engineering and nonengineering fields watched a fictitious conference video depicting either an unbalanced ratio of men to women or a balanced ratio. Subjective measures of identity threat werecollected. Past experience with discrimination, positive experience with female role models, family support, and general social support were associated with a greater sense of belonging to or desire to participate in the conference. These variables all buffered negative responding to social identity threat. Implications are discussed for understanding resilience to social identity threat, particularly among women in engineering.Women in the United States and other industrialized nations increasingly are entering traditionally male fields of study, employment, and athletic competition (Wood & Eagly, in press). This remarkable social change is evident especially in engineering and math-intensive science fields. For example, women in 1958 earned less than 1% of the doctorates in engineering, but in 2006 they earned 20% of those doctorates (National Science Foundation, 2008 less than 1% of tenure-track or tenured engineering faculty through 1979, they increased to 11% of engineering faculty in 2006 (National Science Foundation, 2008). Yet, these gains are smaller at the higher levels of the academy, with women making up only 5% of the full professors in engineering in 2006. This overall pattern typifies women's inroads into math-intensive science fields: Despite the substantial increase over the past half century, women are still a distinct minority, especially in higher status positions.The changing role of women in science thus has several faces. On the downside, women continue to be in the minority. On the upside, women's increasingly greater entry and success indicates that some women are coping effectively with their minority status in math-intensive science and engineering fields. How do they do it? What are the factors that enable some women to be relatively impervious to the threats of being a minority in a traditionally male-dominated field?In the present article, we address these questions by identifying sources of resilience for women academics, including freedom from discrimination, helpful female role models, and social support outside of work. Thus, our focus is not on whether identity threat occurs-this already has been well documented. Instead, we are trying to understand how some women succeed despite this threat. Specifically, we report the results of an experimental study testing the buffering factors that help women academics to cope with exposure to the identity threat of being in a numerical minority in a professional setting. By examining how successful women academics...

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“…It also showed that most women face and overcome the same challenges and fears [34]. This supports the argument by Richman and van Dellen [33] that successful female engineers developed a means of coping with social identity threats that arose from being a minority in the field.…”

“…In addition, women who reported being influenced by positive role models had higher career aspirations in engineering fields [28,32]. It was found that female role models who demonstrated success in the engineering field contributed to other female engineers' feelings of belonging [33].…”

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“…68-74). Research with civilians also suggests that the presence of multiple women in a group reduces this effect and provides social support that can increase performance and resilience (Richman, vanDellen, and Wood, 2011).…”

“…Nevertheless, some researchers assert that when very small numbers of minorities (one or two) are in a group, their performance declines (Lord and Saenz, 1985, p. 918;Sekaquaptewa and Thompson, 2003, pp. 68-74;Richman, vanDellen, and Wood, 2011).…”