Investigation of students’ experiences of gendered cultures in engineering workplaces

ABSTRACT

Women remain severely under-represented in engineering in Australia as in all Western countries. This limits the pool of talent, standpoints and approaches within the profession. Furthermore, this under-representation equates to restriction of the benefits of being an engineer mainly to men. Gendered workplace experiences have been found to contribute to women leaving the profession. In this study we explore students’ experiences of gendered cultures in engineering workplaces, using interviews with a purposive sample of 13 students (4 male) recruited following a previous survey. Although the overall experience of workplace learning is positive for many students, male and female engineering students reported experiences consistent with masculine cultures. Educators and employers must proactively lead improvements to the culture in engineering workplaces, prepare students for gendered workplaces and support students to reflect during and after workplace experiences. The experiences presented here could be adapted to enhance inclusivity training.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• engineering education
• workplace learning

Acknowledgements

The Project Team Members, Nazim Khan, Nicoleta Maynard, Cara MacNish and Keith Willey are warmly thanked for their contributions to the overarching project. We sincerely thank the student participants, and gratefully acknowledge the Reference Group Members Elizabeth Godfrey, Bronwyn Holland, Anthony Kadi and Julie Mills. Support for this project has been provided by the Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching. The views in this paper do not necessarily reflect the views of the Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Sally A. Male has the Chair in Engineering Education at The University of Western Australia. She leads research on engineering education, women in engineering and higher education, funded by competitive grants and industry partners. Sally has a bachelor of engineering and PhD from The University of Western Australia and is a Fellow of Engineers Australia.

Anne Gardner (BE (Civil), MEngStud, PhD) is an engineering education researcher focusing in the areas of identity development, collaborative learning and professional practice. She has been awarded an Australian Government National Teaching Fellowship.

Eugenia Figueroa (DipIT (NSW), BAgriculturalEng, MAgSc(Syd)) is a Teaching & Learning Project Officer in the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology at University of Technology Sydney.

Dawn Bennett is Professor of Higher Education with Curtin University. Her research focuses on the development of employability, including identity and graduate work. Dawn has particular expertise in engineering and the arts, including international funded employability research. Publications appear at Academia.edu.

ORCID

Sally A. Male http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9852-3077

Dawn Bennett http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0676-1623

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching [grant number SD13-3416].