We Are Thriving: Increasing the Number of Women in Engineering

Kate Redmond Author

07/27/2021 Added

14 Plays

Description

This is a summary of my research this summer at UNL. I worked with Dr. Mojdeh Pajouh and we explored what factors allow women to thrive in engineering. We hope to use these factors to inspire other women to go into the field and create a framework for how institutions can support the women in their undergraduate engineering programs.

Searchable Transcript

Search:

[00:00:01.740]My name is Kate and I'm a psychology major at Amherst College.
[00:00:06.000]This summer, I'm doing research
[00:00:07.380]at UNL with Dr. Mojdeh Pajouh.
[00:00:10.440]The title of my research is "We Are Thriving:
[00:00:14.130]Increasing the Number of Women in Engineering."
[00:00:19.200]This is the research question that's been guiding my work this summer.
[00:00:23.820]It is, "what are the personal characteristics
[00:00:27.870]and institutional factors that have allowed women to thrive in
[00:00:32.280]engineering."
[00:00:33.930]Now, why do we care about
[00:00:37.110]the number of women thriving in engineering?
[00:00:42.600]Here are some statistics from the society of women engineers.
[00:00:47.160]They found that only 30%
[00:00:49.320]of women who get bachelor's degrees in engineering
[00:00:52.350]remain in the field 20 years later.
[00:00:55.650]Additionally,
[00:00:56.700]out of all of the bachelor's degrees awarded in engineering each year,
[00:01:01.830]women only earn 20% of them.
[00:01:05.310]These numbers are very low
[00:01:07.290]despite 40 years of efforts to increase the number of women.
[00:01:12.450]With all these low numbers, previous researchers have looked at the question,
[00:01:17.850]"Why do women not pursue engineering? And why do they leave the field?"
[00:01:24.100]From this research they've compiled a list of negative
[00:01:27.460]experiences women have had in the field. The sexism, biases,
[00:01:32.140]and harassment they received.
[00:01:34.990]As you can imagine, this only deters
[00:01:37.810]women further from going into the field.
[00:01:41.020]I don't know about you, but hearing about
[00:01:43.100]discrimination and harassment does not make me want to pursue engineering.
[00:01:48.290]Thus, we're trying to create a more positive dialogue focusing
[00:01:52.790]on the women who are thriving in engineering.
[00:01:56.180]We want to look at the personal characteristics
[00:01:58.910]that allow these women to thrive and to create a framework for the universities
[00:02:03.590]to implement policies that support these women.
[00:02:07.910]Now,
[00:02:09.620]there are many other underrepresented groups in engineering,
[00:02:12.950]but we can only focus on one. Yet,
[00:02:17.000]by just focusing on this one group, on women, we'll have a large impact
[00:02:21.890]on the field.
[00:02:23.990]Increasing diversity at all, brings in new perspectives
[00:02:27.590]and ideas that push others to think more critically.
[00:02:31.520]This is vital in a field
[00:02:33.110]like engineering that is based off of innovation and new ideas.
[00:02:39.390]Now this summer I've worked with preliminary data to set the framework for when
[00:02:43.820]the real data collection begins this fall.
[00:02:47.330]These preliminary data
[00:02:48.800]are interviews from two different participants.
[00:02:52.550]The participants
[00:02:53.360]are women who are selected and identified as women who are thriving in
[00:02:57.680]engineering.
[00:03:00.250]Since we're the first to do research like this,
[00:03:02.860]we're able to set the definition of thriving. We define
[00:03:07.060]thriving as a woman who has been on a project team for two to three years.
[00:03:12.580]Project teams are extracurricular groups that allow women to do engineering
[00:03:17.470]outside of the classroom.
[00:03:20.020]They show that the women have a passion and drive for engineering,
[00:03:26.020]that they pursue an activity
[00:03:27.460]that can take up much of their free time, and may not necessarily be the most
[00:03:31.540]welcoming environment, but they do it because they love engineering.
[00:03:36.910]So each woman
[00:03:37.660]conducted three interviews and I coded the interviews to create three different
[00:03:41.890]code books.
[00:03:43.720]These code books list and explain themes observed throughout the interviews
[00:03:48.910]which include personal characteristics
[00:03:51.160]and experiences that shaped these women as well as policies that have
[00:03:55.990]helped or hurt them.
[00:03:58.810]We'll use this to build interview questions for the fall and researchers will
[00:04:03.010]use the code books next year to code the new data they gather.
[00:04:07.240]This slide also includes all the steps that will be taken over the course of the
[00:04:11.800]three-year project. I worked on the first three here.
[00:04:19.430]We have found both women had similar experiences and personal characteristics.
[00:04:24.980]Both women had
[00:04:26.090]supportive families that push them to not be afraid of failure.
[00:04:31.280]This led the woman to be involved
[00:04:33.830]in more challenging situations, often in male dominated spaces.
[00:04:39.800]Through these situations
[00:04:41.360]they experienced gender biases and discrimination.
[00:04:45.740]This caused them to carefully consider their identities,
[00:04:49.670]how others perceive them
[00:04:50.930]and how they'd like to be perceived.
[00:04:54.080]Both women decided they don't want to be seen
[00:04:57.320]as just female engineers.
[00:05:00.770]They want to be identified as engineers - and good ones at that.
[00:05:05.960]Through embracing this identity, they're willing to remain in project teams,
[00:05:10.670]despite sometimes hostile environments, and eventually become leaders.
[00:05:19.250]While in leadership positions,
[00:05:21.200]these women implemented policies that helped younger students.
[00:05:27.420]They implemented informal mentoring for the younger team members,
[00:05:31.560]they provided support, and they acted as role models.
[00:05:36.360]Institutions should
[00:05:37.800]learn from this and try to create more formal policies for mentoring and
[00:05:42.240]supporting these women. Since the research is ongoing,
[00:05:46.920]we don't have a concrete framework for the policies yet, though we hope to.
[00:05:53.570]And that's a major limitation of the study. It's only preliminary
[00:05:57.320]data right now, with a small sample size.
[00:06:00.590]And so no formal conclusions can be drawn right now.
[00:06:05.090]In the fall, researchers will conduct
[00:06:07.100]interviews with women from four different universities.
[00:06:10.640]Each university with a unique environment,
[00:06:14.030]specialized policies, and varying levels of funding.
[00:06:18.920]This further research will
[00:06:20.480]allow us to draw more formal conclusions.
[00:06:24.920]Now to recap,
[00:06:27.740]we hope by looking at the women's personal
[00:06:30.050]characteristics and the institutional factors that have allowed them to thrive,
[00:06:35.540]we'll create a more positive dialogue.
[00:06:38.990]We believe this dialogue will increase the number of women in engineering
[00:06:44.030]and
[00:06:44.300]retain them in the field to help improve engineering as a whole.
[00:06:49.820]And I would just like to thank
[00:06:51.110]everyone who has made this research possible. Thank you so much.

The screen size you are trying to search captions on is too small!

You can always jump over to MediaHub and check it out there.

Comments

0 Comments

We Are Thriving: Increasing the Number of Women in Engineering

Description

Searchable Transcript

Comments icon comment

Related Channels

Comments