I still wanna be an engineer! Women, education and the engineering profession

Abstract

Women's low enrolment in post-school engineering degrees continues to be a problem for engineering faculties and the profession generally. A qualitative interview-based study of Australian women engineers across the range of engineering disciplines showed the relevance of success in math and science at school to their enrolling in engineering at university. However, for a significant number of the women the positive self-image connected with school success was not maintained by their workplace experience. Using a mixed methods approach, further investigations of the attitudes and experiences of working engineers at three large firms suggest that engineering workplaces continue to be uneasy environments for professional women. Particular issues for women working as professional engineers are identified in this paper and some educational strategies are suggested in order to better prepare engineers for an inclusive and participatory professional life.

Full text

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I still wanna be an engineer EJEE 2008 1
I still wanna be an engineer! Women, education
and the engineering profession.
Judith Gill, Rhonda Sharp, Julie Mills and Suzanne Franzway
University of South Australia

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I still wanna be an engineer EJEE 2008 2
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Abstract
Women’s low enrolment in post school engineering degrees continues to be a problem
for engineering faculties and the profession generally. A qualitative interview-based
study of Australian women engineers across the range of engineering disciplines showed
the relevance of success in math and science at school to their enrolling in engineering at
university. However for a significant number of the women the positive self image
connected with school success was not maintained by their workplace experience. Using
a mixed methods approach, further investigations of the attitudes and experiences of
working engineers at three large firms suggest that engineering workplaces continue to be
uneasy environments for professional women. Particular issues for women working as
professional engineers are identified in this paper and some educational strategies are
suggested in order to better prepare engineers for an inclusive and participatory
professional life.
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Keywords: engineering education, gender, workplace culture, mathematics achievement

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I still wanna be an engineer EJEE 2008 3
1. Introduction
The scarcity of engineering professionals is a global phenomenon and one that is likely to
be exacerbated in the current competitive neo-liberal climate. Increasingly governments
are looking to education to produce more engineering students and more qualified
engineers because national advancement and increasing prosperity is seen to depend on a
highly skilled populace. Engineering skills regularly appear among those most frequently
identified as pertaining to societal advancement. This paper addresses a particular issue to
do with the recruitment and maintenance of professional engineers – basically the
homogenous nature of the profession and its associated resistance to greater inclusivity of
people other than the mainstream males. While the engineering profession continues to
be comprised of a narrow range of people – far narrower than the populations it serves -
its potential to develop innovative and people centred solutions is going to be limited.
The research detailed here presents an analysis of the experience of the minority of
women within the profession and suggests ways of making professional education in this
area more appropriate for the engineering workplaces of the future.
2. The Case of Professional Education in Engineering
Around the western world the under representation of women in engineering enrolments
continues to be regarded as a problem (National Science Foundation, 2004; Frehill,1997,
ETAN, 2000). In the US marked differences between the numbers of women enrolled
across the range of engineering schools suggests specific features of some universities
and/or some courses may be more attractive to women students (ASEE 2006). The
percentage of female graduations in engineering in the UK was only 9.5% in 2005/6, and
has been decreasing steadily from a peak of 12.2% in 1995/6 (UK Resource Centre for
Women in SET, 2006). Female student percentages in other European countries are
variable, but are typically around 20% or less (Daudt and Salgado, 2006).
Engineering is a well regarded and well paid profession in Australia, requiring high
tertiary entrance scores for admission to university and enjoying high levels of
employment from graduate entry level onwards. Engineering study in Australia consists
of a 4 year undergraduate program, requiring the completion of advanced mathematics,

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I still wanna be an engineer EJEE 2008 4
physics and chemistry during the final year of high school for entry. Australia is currently
experiencing a severe skills shortage in the engineering profession, but women still make
up less than 10% of professional engineers in Australia (Engineers Australia, 2006).
Following vigorous strategies to encourage women to enrol in university engineering
programs, there has been some improvement, but the numbers have plateaued and now
decreased in the last four years with females constituting just 14% of the total first year
enrolment (Mills, Bastalich, Franzway, Gill & Sharp, 2006). A further concern is that
women are seen to be leaving the profession at a much higher rate than men (Ayre 2001,
APESMA 2007), a situation that indicates the under representation of women in the
engineering profession is likely to continue.
In recent years educational developments in Australia have seen considerable numbers of
women complete school with high achievement in the math and science subjects which
would logically lead to engineering. Female achievement in these areas forms part of the
call for assistance for boys and the ‘crisis’ in boys’ education (Healey, 2005). However
the high achieving young women have not taken up places in engineering faculties,
appearing to prefer other high status courses such as law and medicine in which women
now form over 50% of the first year student intake (Lewis, Harris & Cox, 2007). Little is
known about motivation to enter engineering courses, especially so with respect to
women, and even less is known about women’s experience when working as professional
engineers. The research reported here constituted one attempt to discover the reasons for
women choosing to study engineering and to identify features of their work experience
that might lead to them leaving the profession after they had qualified.
The nationally funded study on which this paper is based took place in two parts. The
first investigated the accounts of practising engineers, men and women, in terms of their
educational experiences and their motivation to enter the profession. Elements of this
study raised questions about the quality of working life of professional engineers and
specifically the workplace culture. The second part of the study comprised an
investigation of workplace culture at three large engineering firms.

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This paper reports on findings from the study that have evident educational implications
in order to respond to the following objectives:
• To investigate connections between school achievement and enrolment in
engineering at tertiary level.
• To conduct a quantitative and qualitative investigation of engineering
workplace cultures in order to better understand the ongoing gender imbalance
in the profession.
• To make suggestions about professional education that could provide a more
appropriate knowledge base for successful entry into the profession.
3. Theoretical framework
Some previous studies of the problem have suggested that there are too few women with
the necessary educational background in mathematics and science subjects, that women
are ‘naturally’ turned off the dirty heavy work that engineering entails, that women have
insufficient experience in playing with machines in the early years, and so on (McIlwee
& Robinson 1992; Evetts 1996; Frehill,1997). Such explanations, known here as the
difference model, emphasized deficiencies in ability, preparation, or socialization of
women which rendered them unlikely to take up education and careers in a system
organized and dominated historically by men (see Sonnert 1999 for a full discussion).
Instead of this ‘blaming the victim’ approach which focuses on a female deficit, we
suggest a socio-cultural explanation in which the problem can be understood as an
emergent property of the situation that begins in school – girls as a minority in senior
mathematics and science classes, women as a minority in the engineering student body
and in engineering workplaces. Thus we focus on social systemic issues such as the
gendering of certain school subjects, the lack of senior women role models along with the
taken for granted assumptions about men’s work and women’s work which combine to
orient girls and women away from careers in engineering. This approach adopts the
position that individual and environment are inevitably interrelated and thus avoids the
heavily individualised focus of some of the previous work. In this we follow Bourdieu’s
concept of habitus in which he attempts “to incorporate the objective structures of society
and the subjective role of agents within it” in his theorisation of the relation between
social context and individual agency (Bourdieu,2000, p.19). Hence the women are not
simply the victims of outside pressures but rather seen as working with their social

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contexts to produce varying levels of self awareness and fit with their chosen profession -
a question of professional identity.
Recent research into engineering education has focused on questions of identity as being
centrally important for minorities and women (Capobianco, 2006). Our approach is that
identity is not a singular entity emerging from a knowable unique self but rather is
constructed by the ongoing interactions between individual and environment. Hence
identity can be fluid, changing and frequently operating through multiple sets of
identifications (Shotter and Gergen,1989). Thus identity is a process whereby individuals
are actively involved in identity formation as they both shape and are shaped by the
world around them. From this perspective then identity is a social product, a piece of
work that is amenable to change rather than an innate essence to be gradually revealed.
Anthropological investigations of workplaces as ‘communities of practice’ (Wenger,
1998, 2000) focus on workplaces as contexts in which identities are produced, maintained
and sometimes changed and/or challenged. This theoretical frame is particularly relevant
because engineering work is frequently organised in teams – possibly more so than that
of other professions. Wenger’s theory has been used in other recent investigations of
engineering identity and gender in the higher education environment (Du, 2006). Hence
our study called for the recognition of the collaborative nature of engineering work, the
requirement for individuals to work together in teams within a broader competitive
culture of high achievement. Wenger’s formulation allows for the recognition of people’s
different positioning with the group with different responsibilities – leader, follower etc –
but with a conjoint task orientation. In engineering work project management is a key
function of group leaders and constitutes an area of structured leadership in the work of
the groups and of the firm as a whole. Working in teams poses particular challenges for
people who are different from the mainstream and is a likely site of problems for young
highly qualified women working as a singular minority within male teams.
Thus in our investigation of women’s experience as professionals in engineering
workplaces we were interested in the ways in which women worked with questions of
identity in their efforts to establish for themselves the respect and recognition of

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colleagues. Their work within groups constituted a particular area of relevance to the
investigation.
4. Methodology: Mixed methods
The mixed methods approach combined some quantitative survey work with qualitative
interview-based approaches in order to develop a more complete picture of the life
experiences of professional engineers (Tashakkori and Teddlie, 2003).
The initial driver for this research was a commissioned survey showing gender
differences in the work experiences of male and female engineers, with the women
significantly more likely to report having experienced sexual harassment and more likely
to leave the profession (Roberts & Ayre 2002). Stage One of the present study comprised
qualitative individual interviews with 51 engineers (41 women and 10 men) to flesh out
dimensions revealed by the survey responses. Interviewees, most of whom had
participated in the survey, were selected from the range of engineering disciplines and
locations currently operating in Australia. Participants were asked to outline their
reasons for entering the engineering field, their school experiences and significant aspects
of their working lives.
In our analysis of the engineers’ responses we were guided by the work of discourse
analysts such as Potter and Wetherell (1987) which directs attention to the ways in which
people describe themselves as providing a key to the processes of identity construction.
The second part of the study comprised an investigation of three large engineering firms
responsible for different types of engineering in different parts of the country. Three
hundred and fifty seven workers (62 women and 295 men) from these firms (all of whom
were engaged in engineering work with the majority being professional engineers)
responded to an electronic survey to produce a profile of engineers at each site in terms
of gender, age, qualifications, present position, including levels of satisfaction with the
workplace and future career intentions. The survey was followed by targeted interviews
with engineers, managers, HR personnel and CEOs at each site. The interviews (44
women and 52 men) were taped, transcribed and analysed using the NVIVO software

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package. In addition, focus groups of women engineers not previously interviewed were
conducted at each site (N =19: 7,5,7) and the material was treated in the same way as the
individual interviews.
Data sources were threefold:
1. In depth interviews with 51 engineers
2. Electronic survey of three large engineering firms (N=357)
3. Interviews and focus groups across the three firms. (N=96 + 19)
4. Results and discussion
Part 1
The initial stage of the study confirmed the importance of a recognised capacity in math
and science at school for undertaking engineering, with this dimension being more
important for girls. A clear majority of the women engineers (36 of 41) spontaneously
identified their proven ability in math and science as part of their reasons for electing to
study engineering. A feature of their school experience was that they took pride in their
achievements in the areas of maths and science; they believed they were good at these
subjects in the sense of natural gifts. When asked about their decision to become an
engineer most spontaneously identified themselves as ‘very good at’, ‘naturally interested
in ‘ and as ‘having enjoyed’ the maths and science subjects at school. This response held
true across all types of engineering. Women engineers named mathematics and science
subjects as their key areas of school success and which logically predisposed them to a
career in engineering.
In this aspect the Australian women engineers echoed the comments of American and
English women engineers (McIlwee & Robinson, 1992; Evetts, 1996), which suggests
that ability in maths and science forms a generalisable feature of women’s pathways to
engineering. In particular McIlwee and Robinson had noted:
Excellence in math and science was a primary factor propelling our female
respondents toward engineering. This distinguished them sharply from the
men in our sample. (McIlwee & Robinson, 1992, p. 24)

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I still wanna be an engineer EJEE 2008 9
The men interviewed were much less likely to mention particular skill in these areas, in
contrast to the majority of the women.
Many of the women interviewees also commented that they had been known to be
‘bright’ and that their capacity in these subject areas had caused them to stand out as
‘different’ from the majority of their female colleagues. They interpreted this difference
as a consequence of their unusual ability. They appeared to be self confident in this
respect and showed no indication of finding their skill an embarrassment. The women
recognised that their success was regarded as somewhat unusual because they were
female and they took evident pleasure in standing out as talented in an area known as
‘hard’ and male dominated. Several mentioned enjoying the competition with male peers.
Their experience was not one of dominating, however – these comments are constructed
against a background recognition that their success was rather special because it was
unusual. Thus their achievement divided them from other women at the same time as
orienting them towards male fields of endeavour. It is evident that their aptitude for and
achievement in maths and science formed a key factor in their identity formation as
directed towards engineering.
Unfortunately their self identification as different did not prepare them for their reported
sense of being different from the men they worked with as professional engineers, as this
later difference was not grounded in recognition of their ability, rather the reverse. Their
stories of work included incidents wherein they were continually reminded of their
femaleness as an impediment to being seen as a competent colleague whether it be male
colleagues apologising for swearing, insisting on doing particular tasks, not necessarily
heavy, not being included in after work socialising at the pub (bar) and so on.
And they do make it obvious that you are in the room and very .. careful
you know? In terms of the things they say .. in meetings and things like
that. They’re quite happy to swear but the minute I come into the room it’s
apologies and things like that. Which is uncalled for because number one
I didn’t say I was offended by it. I’m quite fine if you want to use those
words or whatever. Just because I don’t do it they automatically think she
must be a prude.
(female mining engineer, 27, rural base)

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I still wanna be an engineer EJEE 2008 10
…sometimes I think the men I have to work with don’t have listening skills.
I was at a presentation recently and I thought it was quite clear what I
was asking for – it was there in writing – and then I said it and then I had
a handout and then Zoom! it went off in another direction and so the ship
was being steered right out there and they didn’t listen to what I was
asking for…
(female water engineer, 32 , city based)
Both speakers appear to be acutely conscious of being different because of being female,
a difference that is imposed by the male colleagues and that may appear in relatively
trivial matters such as the issue of uncouth language or in more serious matters such as
being unable to be heard in a professional discussion. At school being different, clever
and female were part of the same package whereas as professional engineers being
female appeared to mark the women as incapable of the high level skills necessary for
engineering in the eyes of their male colleagues.
For many of the women interviewed there was a family connection with engineering,
most commonly a father but sometimes it was another family member or friend who had
affirmed the potential pleasure of getting involved in engineering work.
I always liked science and I’d always done science but at that stage if girls
did science you became a science teacher and I didn’t want to teach. My
dad worked for the airline as a maintenance engineer and I think that
probably influenced me.
(female electrical engineer, 48, city-based)
Women with family connections were able to sustain the idea that their talents were a
natural or even genetic product and they also had a better idea of what an engineer does
than those who had no connection with the field. Another obvious advantage was that
they came into a culture about which they had some prior knowledge and they were more
prepared for the work environment than some of their female peers.
Encouragement from teachers was seen as very important by the women engineers
(Capobianco, 2006; Evetts, 1996). Teachers had often been inspiring motivators who
had led them into taking up engineering at University. Most of the women had sought to
find out about the profession before signing up and for them engineering was a conscious

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choice. In this they differed from the men who had some gender appropriate
identification with the profession even if they were less than clear about what was
actually involved.
When asked to reflect on their professional education in terms of their time at University
the women engineers felt that the university preparation was deficient in that it had not
prepared them for the realities of the workplace culture and the development of the social
and management skills necessary to survive. They had developed high expectations of
themselves in their formal education and had anticipated moving into fulfilling roles in
the workplace where they could use their well developed engineering skills to good
effect. Instead in a significant number of cases their experience was profoundly affected
by the need to adopt strategies whereby the fact of their being female did not compromise
their capacity to perform effectively and to be respected as a worthy colleague.
The overall impression from the first part of the study was of professional women
struggling for recognition in a deeply gendered workplace. The fact that the interviews
were drawn from women engineers working all around the country and across many
engineering sub disciplines – mining, civil, electrical, chemical, minerals, environmental
and more – served to reinforce the concept of the gendered nature of the profession as a
whole. Most of the interviewees were randomly selected from volunteers who had
completed the original survey, a practice which may have unwittingly recruited those
more likely to have had negative experiences. Consequently in Part 2 the study adopted a
more general orientation and used a framework less clearly identifiable as a study of
gender issues.
Part 2
The second stage investigation of workplace culture within three large engineering firms
in different states involving different types of engineering produced some partial
explanations for the difficulties the women in Part 1 had reported experiencing. At each
site an electronic survey of engineers and those engaged in engineering work was sent to
a total of 633 staff (97 women and 536 men). Responses were received from 62 women
(64%) and 295 men (55%). The age profile of survey respondents is shown in Table 1.

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Table 1 Age Group x Gender
Age
Case Study 1
Case Study 2
Case Study 3
Combined
Group
Male
Female
Total
Male
Female
Total
Male
Female
Total
Male
Female
Total
20-29
yrs
19
12
31
5
6
11
22
15
37
46
33
79
30-39
yrs
11
14
25
14
1
15
39
9
48
64
24
88
40-49
yrs
35
3
38
23
0
23
25
1
26
83
4
87
50-59
yrs
48
0
48
18
0
18
24
1
25
90
1
91
60-69
yrs
3
0
3
7
0
7
2
0
2
12
0
12
Total
116
29
145
67
7
74
112
26
138
295
62
357
In terms of survey respondents there were marked differences in the age and gender
profiles of the three companies:
• In the first and second company over 72% of the men were over 40 years of age;
and in the third there was a more even spread with the largest cohort of men in the
30 to 39 years age group
• In the first case study nearly all the women (90%) were under 40 years of age; in
the second study six of seven women were in the youngest cohort and there were
no women in the three older age groups; while in the third study the largest cohort
of women was in the 20 to 29 years age group (15 females or 58% of the women)
and there were only two women engineers over 40 years of age.
The differences in age were also reflected in the time working with the particular firm as
shown in Table 2. The combined factors of age and experience resulted in the male and
female groups occupying different structural positions within the organisations with the
overwhelming majority of women in the more junior positions.
Table 2 Time Working for the Corporation x Gender
Time
Case Study 1
Case Study 2
Case Study 3
Combined
Working
Male
Female
Total
Male
Female
Total
Male
Female
Total
Male
Female
Total
No
response
8
1
9
1
0
1
4
0
4
13
1
14
<1 year
12
6
18
5
0
5
12
8
20
29
14
43
1-5 yrs
25
16
41
3
7
10
47
13
60
75
36
111

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I still wanna be an engineer EJEE 2008 13
6-10 yrs
8
3
11
10
0
10
24
3
27
42
6
48
11-15
yrs
7
3
10
7
0
7
4
0
4
18
3
21
16-20
yrs
3
0
3
18
0
18
18
1
19
39
1
40
>20 yrs
53
0
53
23
0
23
3
1
4
79
1
80
Total
108
28
136
66
7
73
108
26
134
282
61
343
• In the first and second case studies, the largest cohort of men had been working
for that corporation for over 20 years, whereas in the third case study the largest
cohort of men and women had been working for that corporation for 1 to 5 years
• In all case studies the largest cohort of women had been working for that
corporation for less than 5 years
• In the first case study no woman engineer had worked for that corporation beyond
15 years, and not beyond 5 years in the second case study, while the third case
study had one woman who had been working with that corporation for 15 to 20
years and one who had been working for more than 20 years.
The survey results showed striking differences in age and length of experience between
male and female engineers working across the three sites. For instance whereas most of
the women engineers were recent graduates and had consequently less than five years
experience of professional work, more of the men were at the other end of the age and
experience spectrum. In all cases there were some men who were starting out as
engineers with under one year’s experience but they were a small proportion of the male
majority whose numbers dominated in the experienced section.
Subsequent interviews showed that young women engineers were likely to be thinking
about moving across firms and locations whereas the older men appeared to have stayed
with the same firm in the same areas for over 20 years. The psychological implications of
this different positioning within the career structure of their current employment
constituted a key discriminating factor between the groups. All three organisations were
undergoing pronounced change and restructuring as the management sought to position
the organisation within the increasingly competitive global market. Consequently men
who had worked in the same firm for a long time – in some cases all their working lives –
reported feeling resentful of the new drive for change and doing things differently. To
the degree that the influx of young women was associated with this change there was

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I still wanna be an engineer EJEE 2008 14
resentment of the women as part of the new breed of engineer. But there were also
examples of an older more embedded resentment coming from positions that were more
evidently sexist – “it’s not a job for a girl!”
Focus groups at each site provided a space in which women engineers were able to voice
their impressions both positive and negative of the conditions and culture within which
they worked. Within these engineering workplaces the focus group provided a rare
occasion at which the widely dispersed women came together in small groups – in several
instances for the first time – to talk about what life in the firm was like for them.
For example, young women engineers in Case Study 3 Focus Group reported that they
were more likely to be asked by older men to assist with new technology e.g. latest
software applications than were their young male peers. They reported this jokingly and
clearly enjoyed being able to demonstrate their skills and up to the minute training but
also the role of the helper was one in which both the young woman and the older man
were relatively comfortable. The women engineers believed the men would find it harder
to ask for help from young men whereas in asking the women the men could participate
in an almost flirtatious gender game which enabled them to claim the attention of the
younger woman in a display of amusing – but not serious – incompetence. Other
instances were more damaging. Women in Case Study 1 Focus Group had reported their
lack of opportunity for leadership and advancement as a result of male networks
governing choice about leadership roles such as working as a project manager, taking an
advanced course, being invited to key meetings or being mentioned in newsletters.
Several of the women spoke of their frustration at not being positioned in terms of career
advancement but rather being used as a resource to fill gaps. The following exchange was
recorded in Case Study #3:
S: So far as the question asked about whether we supervise anyone, no. But
we’re still quite low on the rung within my direct group. And there’s quite a
lot of engineers who have got less experience than me that are higher up,
even in this office because of the different projects they work on…. And the
different structure within that section.
Q. So there’s a bit of luck about projects?( General nods and Yes!)

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S. I find that you get recognised for projects that make money. And you
don’t get to choose which projects you work on and you’re a resource and if
they need you they use you. So I started on a building project that was
already $2M over budget when I started working on it. So they brought
people on board to try to get it finished. And you’re never going to get
recognised for working on something like that, but someone has to do it.
The speaker is reflecting on the hierarchical nature of the organisation (‘low on the
rung’) as she notes that none of her colleagues are in supervisory positions and that their
talents are being used in stop gap ways to respond to the organisations’ needs rather than
to further their own careers. There is a shared sense of frustration at their powerlessness –
you don’t get to pick your project – and the decisions are made higher up, beyond their
reach in the organisation. Others spoke of ‘the general lack of role clarity within the
company’ as they endeavoured to find out how career progression was managed, and the
age structure contributed to their perceptions of a bottleneck as in:
And there’s a huge gap as well in our area and it’s pretty much the same in
the whole industry. There’s a lot of people about my age and younger and
then there’s a lot of people about fifty.
(Case study #3 Focus group.)
Issues of career planning were important for these highly achieving young women. They
spoke of researching which firms had ‘women friendly’ policies in place which would
make working there more feasible for women with family responsibilities. Some women
had learned through experience that the policies on maternity leave and part time work
may be in place but the actuality was far from ideal with several giving accounts of trying
to return part time from maternity leave and being given ‘rubbish jobs’ rather than the
sorts of innovative problem solving work which they had been doing previously. There
were two recent accounts of women ‘going back full time’ sooner than they’d wished as
only as full time employees could they participate at their proper level. Most agreed that
the economic imperative exerted by a client driven workplace created problems for
women who might prefer more flexible working hours, maternity leave and the
possibility of going part time at least for some period of time.

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For young women interested in the prospect of pregnancy career timelines took on a
degree of urgency especially as they approached the mid thirties. Some had worked out
the level they felt they had to achieve before taking time out could be managed without
significant professional damage. Their calculations still left them with the need to
achieve a fast promotion in a difficult and highly competitive field which included long
working hours and a degree of good fortune in getting the right placements and the right
projects so that their achievements would be recognised. None of these issues had been
envisaged before joining the workplace.
Senior management appeared aware of the issues for women and engineering and
facilitated the research in the hope of finding solutions. However it seemed that many of
the male engineers were largely unaware of the issues for female colleagues, unlike the
women all of whom ‘had always known’ that engineering was a relatively unusual career
choice for women. When asked to account for the under representation of women, many
men initially looked bemused and said the question had never occurred to them before.
When pressed they frequently resorted to biological explanations of women’s ‘natural’
nurturing capacities which turned the women away from the hard real world of
engineering. This feature has been characterised as an example of epistemology of
ignorance (Franzway et al, 2007) at work. At the same time many of the senior engineers
in the first two sites operated in what was still very much a man’s world – there were no
women involved in work on the mine in Case Study 2 or in the water treatment plant in
Case Study 1, both sites in which male engineers had worked all their lives.
Phase 2 of the study led to some general conclusions about engineering organisations and
the profession in general:
1. Gender equity should be seen as a systemic rather than an individual issue. While
some of the men’s comments in discussions revealed unreconstructed gender
stereotypical views it is the profession itself, its culture, its processes as well as its
gendered composition that many women are unprepared for and find difficult.
2. Engineering as a profession has been constructed within the framework of a
man’s world – the huge size and scale of projects as well as the metaphors used –
conquering nature, seizing the metals, rolling out the roads. Features such as

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I still wanna be an engineer EJEE 2008 17
these combine with the lack of family friendly workplace arrangements in terms
of hours and leave available work to render the engineering workplace an
uncomfortable environment for significant numbers of women. (Lewis, Harris &
Cox, 2007; Mills et al, 2008). The profession needs to undergo profound cultural
change if it is to be able to make use of more women and to keep them in the job.
3. Existing engineering firms are characterised by pronounced differences along a
series of dimensions including age, experience, length of service with a particular
employer, technological skills, qualifications and gender. Often the reported
tensions appeared to result from the interaction between these variables rather
than a simple effect of gender. In this last point we agree with American
researcher Luckenbill-Edds (2002:p.2) who comments:
Investigators postulate complex interactions between structural
deficits within the system and gender behavioral differences,
rather than a single group of causes, to account for differences
(Selby 1999, Sonnert 1999).
6. Educational implications
Educational implications begin with the finding that maths science education is very
important for girls in the choice of engineering. The women engineers had found their
school experience in these subjects both pleasurable and formative in their self
understanding of their capacities and talents. Related to this is the value of teacher
support in choosing a non-traditional career such as engineering, especially in the case of
young women who do not have any family connections with the profession.
In terms of professional education such as university courses the clear indication coming
from the research is that there is a need for an educational experience that includes more
than skilling for the job in order to fit people for the workplace environment. None of the
engineers interviewed had any doubts about the adequacy of their initial degree in terms
of preparing then with the necessary skills for the technical work. However many
engineers, and most particularly the women, did look for more understanding of the
politics of the workplace and the development of strategies in order to position
themselves more effectively and comfortably as colleagues. Several of the women saw
their male colleagues as able to ‘naturally’ understand how to get on in work teams and to
make themselves heard in meetings whereas their own experience was frequently

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I still wanna be an engineer EJEE 2008 18
frustrating. The women’s experience of working life could have been improved had the
pre-service courses also engaged with some socially aware study whereby students were
introduced to the history and traditions of engineering and the need for change contingent
upon the present climate of globalisation and the knowledge economy.
Some women at each site spoke of encountering resentment as a consequence of the
equity strategies which the company had introduced which had led to more young women
being employed and which appeared to some of the more senior men to be unfair and
discriminatory. This is evidently a professional education issue for current staff.
Organisations must take responsibility for preparing employees for the changes they have
decided to implement so that there is a broadly shared understanding of the value of
diversifying their workplaces, not just for the sake of political correctness but rather for
the current economic and global imperatives. Workplaces are changing and it could be
that the manifest skills base of engineering firms has until recently rendered them
impervious to the changes occurring elsewhere. From this study we argue that workplace
cultural change is necessary and must involve a recognition of the importance of people
skills as well as professional skills in order to maintain and develop a workplace that is
both equitable and diverse.
7. Conclusions
Key dimensions of engineering workplace environments have been described in this
study to suggest the ways in which the hegemonic masculine culture (Connell, 1987)
currently serves to marginalise all those who don’t belong. It seems that professional
education at colleges and universities should recognise the difficulties for graduates who
are non-mainstream in their professions. Given the increasing emphasis on the need for
more skilled workers in engineering we argue that it is time for professional education to
address issues of workplace culture in order to achieve higher retention and to produce a
greater degree of equity and diversity in careers in engineering.
It is almost 40 years since Peggy Seeger sang about a young girl who was drawn to defy
convention and assert her right to pursue a career that she found appealing. In the heady
days of the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s women took up the cry “I wanna

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I still wanna be an engineer EJEE 2008 19
be an engineer!” Audiences responded intuitively to the idea that the world was geared
against the inclusion of women and this profession constituted one clear space in which
you could see the exclusion happening. Women joined in the chorus – but very few of
them actually took the plunge and entered the profession. Even if some had wanted to do
so there were subject prerequisites, mostly connected with taking senior math classes in
high school that meant for the vast majority of women there was little chance of being
accepted at engineering school. Four decades later attention is being directed to the
educational institutions to supply more engineers in the interests of economic
development and global sustainability. In this environment Seeger’s song takes on new
meaning. It is no longer the simple case of young women needing to assert their
particular motivations but rather a matter for all engineering workplaces and faculty to
reflect on their ways of teaching, leading and working together to develop a more diverse
and inclusive professional body.
Acknowledgement
The authors wish to acknowledge the assistance of participants at the AERA meeting in
Chicago 2007 and the reviewers for EJEE who commented on earlier versions of this
paper.
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