Navigating sexualised visibility: A study of British women engineers

Abstract

In this article we use the term 'sexualised visibility' to describe how in male dominated work settings such as engineering, women are inscribed with sexual attributes that overshadow and obscure other attributes and values. From a career point of view, sexualised visibility is deeply problematic. However, as yet we have only limited understanding of how women in such settings navigate sexualised visibility and what this means for their careers. Drawing on social identity based impression management (SIM) to examine the career experiences of 50 women in petroleum, mechanical and automotive engineering in the UK, we develop new insights into the relationship between perception, power and relations of visibility. Specifically we identify the interplay between career stage and power and show how the strategies that women adopt to navigate sexualised visibility in their work settings vary by career stage. Furthermore we argue that women's collective efforts to ensure a favourable representation of their group leads to the reproduction of an implicit but powerful prescriptive gender stereotype which constrains their career progression.

Challenging the cross-national transfer of diversity management in MNCs: Exploring the ‘identity effects’ of diversity discourses

“…Mid-career engineer Nadia argued that the gender-based quota system for leadership is founded on the assumption that women have excellent people management skills, and explained how she challenges this assumption in her daily interactions with other female Nadia uses herself as an example in order to refute gender-based stereotypes, and highlights the career costs of this kind of stereotyping for women engineers (Fernando et al 2018). She grounds her point in the broader Sri Lankan cultural context, suggesting that Sri Lankans place a higher value on technical skills than soft skills.…”

Does How Pre-College Engineering and Technology Role Models See Themselves Relate to Girls' Engagement in the Fields? [Research To Practice]

“…Their career success may be enhanced, but at what cost to esteem and happiness? Stuffing one's expressive or feminine aspects into a closet during the day unless and until they serve the needs of the in-group can induce significant cognitive and psychological conflict [20], [36].…”

“…In male-dominant occupations, organizational Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) levels are directly related to the number of males [24]. Females must thus walk a narrow balance beam between being perceived as too masculine, that is, self-promoting [35], [36] and too radically feminist [37], or they are otherwise penalized [20], [38]. Pratto, et al [24] highlighted Eagly and Steffen's theory that gender stereotypes evolved from observing people in gendered social roles [39] and Eccles' explanation of "how beliefs about gender could cause men and women to make different career choices (through gender role socialization of personal and professional values) and how such beliefs will lead others to pressure males and females into different social roles" [40, p. 50].…”

“…To avoid being socially and economically penalized (backlash), it is not uncommon for women to either avoid or exit situations that expose them to negative bias [51], [52], [53], [35], [36]. Alternatively or additionally, they may embrace protective paternalism and equivocal egalitarianism as practices of sexism [54], [55], [56], [57] or adopt a 'Queen Bee' approach [58], [59], which strategies seem to provide sufficient individual benefit to them to warrant the denial and forfeiture of both feminism and gender equality for the collective group.…”

“…Based on social research on sexism and gender bias in women in non-traditional sex roles [64], [65], [66] and generally [56], [24], it is likely that more than a few of the women who volunteer as role models today may exhibit some level of sexism or gender bias in favor of males in the male-dominant workplace [58], [67], [59], [36]. Research data point towards the value of interrupting a semi-automatic cognitive process that could otherwise result in unwanted behaviors (sex role stereotypes) becoming embedded [68], [69], habituated [70], [43], and disseminated further as more legitimizing myths for females in engineering and technology [71], [31], [72].…”