Women remain underrepresented in the engineering profession comprising only 10% of the employed engineers in 2010 while in that same year women exceeded more than half of those employed in professional, managerial and related occupations according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. While others studies have identified the reasons women leave engineering, this study focuses on women who persist in the profession. A complex, three stage mixed methods study has been conducted. The first stage was a qualitative research study based on semi-structured interviews with 31 women engineers, ten of whom had left an engineering career and 21 persisting for on average 21 years leading to a conceptual model and the development of a new construct to measure the ideal self. Next, a field experiment was conducted which surveyed 495 women ages 21 to 70 with engineering degrees. A structural equation model has been developed showing that women’s commitment to an engineering career is impacted by their levels of self efficacy, the interaction of age and number of children, and their ability to articulate a personal vision as operationalized by the ideal self. A woman’s relationship with her manager and level of work engagement also impact career commitment. The final stage of this research compared the factors and relationships important to a woman’s career commitment to engineering to a sample of 138 male engineers. Findings show that the factors important to persistence for women engineers have little or no impact on a man’s commitment to an engineering career. Women engineers have lower levels of self efficacy than men, and for men self efficacy has no statistically significant relationship to career commitment to engineering. Further both the relationship with the manager, one’s ideal self, and work engagement influence a woman’s career commitment to engineering more than for a man.
A conceptual model adapted from the intentional change theory (Boyatzis, 2008) is presented that integrates the findings from each of the studies to explain women’s persistence in an engineering career. The model describes a woman’s persistence in engineering as a complex system where a recursive relationship exists between the dynamic of the ideal self and the real self or between one’s dreams and one’s reality. The discontinuities involved with adapting and learning within an engineering career, the supporting nature of one’s relationships and the multiple levels of individual, family, organizational and occupational are shown as impacting career persistence.
The findings from this study can be used by both practitioners and scholars to design systems that that will enable sustainable careers for women in the engineering profession.