Gender differences in professional identities and development of engineering skills among early career engineers in Finland

ABSTRACT

Formation of professional identity is a process where individuals attempt to bring together the social expectations set for them as professionals and their own interests and values. The cultural landscape of engineering is masculine in various ways, which can be challenging especially for female engineers who need to match the cultural expectations with their personal identities. So far, few studies have compared the professional identities of early-career men and women engineers. This study aims to understand the professional identities of newly graduated Finnish male and female engineers by analysing their perceptions of the importance and development of professional engineering skills. An analysis of cross-sectional survey data of more than 4000 early-career engineers suggests some gender differences related to professional identities and indicates that the observed differences in values and perceived skills can put women at a greater risk of dropping out of an engineering career.

KEYWORDS:

• Engineering identity
• professional skills
• gender difference

Introduction

Development of professional skills and identity is a central part of engineering education (Johri and Olds 2011). While learning the skills, an engineering student also builds up perceptions and understanding of the use and value of those skills. In the process of professional identity formation, individuals attempt to bring together the social expectations for them as professionals and their own interests and values (Tonso 2014).

The cultural landscape of engineering has been noted to be masculine in various ways, reflected for example in different valuations of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ skills, or the strong linkage of engineering identity and male norms (e.g. Faulkner 2007; Holth 2015). Yet among engineering educators, engineering knowledge and processes are widely thought to be gender-neutral (Beddoes and Borrego 2011; Godfrey and Parker 2010). This contradictory situation can be challenging especially for female engineers, who need to match these expectations with their personal identities. Cultural climate has been noted to drive female graduate engineers away from the workforce in many countries (Singh and Peers 2019), and female engineering students have been discovered to employ enculturation and professionalisation strategies that fail to value femaleness and can lead to ‘undoing gender’ while ‘doing engineering’ (Powell, Bagilhole, and Dainty 2009).

Engineering competencies and identities are inseparably linked and shape each other simultaneously (Tonso 2014). Hence, the professional identity of engineers is not a straightforward result of acquiring certain competences or skills, nor can the competencies be simply derived from the identity. Both the engineering identity and the engineering competencies are situated in terms of time and place and shaped by circumstances and changes outside the profession. Tonso (2014) suggests that claims about engineering identity and valuing some sorts of engineers ahead of others do not depend only on the past practices but also affect the future identity norms in engineering. When explicitly recognised, this provides engineering education powerful means to steer the course of the discipline.

This study assumes that the importance individuals attach to various skills reflects their perceptions of engineering identity and also steer further development of those skills. Moreover, we are convinced that the development of engineering identity and skills as well as the perception of them is contextual. Buckley et al. (2021) illustrate how the prototypical definition of an intelligent engineer is influenced by the cultural context and gender and suggest that the cultural context of participants may mediate people’s interests and associated gender differences. Hence, we believe that gaining a better understanding of the Finnish cultural context not only benefits the actions in the Finnish engineering education but also enriches the general understanding around gendered practices in engineering education.

Engineering identity

Tonso (2014) identifies two strands of sociocultural engineering identity research that contribute to the understanding of how professional identities in engineering are gendered. The research on technical/social dualism illustrates how engineers have two types of stories of what is considered proper engineering and, hence, two kinds of professional identities, one relying on a highly technical view of engineering and the other emphasising the more heterogeneous and networked engineering practice (Faulkner 2007; Faulkner 2011). The research on campus cultures in engineering reveals what kinds of norms and power relations the hidden curricula conveys and thus produces gendered order and influences the identity production (Tonso 2014).

The technical/social dualism shows in various ways in engineering work and education. According to Trevelyan and Williams (2019), the literature indicates that technological innovation is the principle site of value creation in engineering, even though the majority of engineers are not innovating. Trevelyan (2010) discovered that engineers relegate a peripheral status to the social aspects of their work and therefore fail to recognise many central aspects of their work. Human performance and social interactions are viewed as management issues and not as relevant constraints of design and problem-solving. The work related to technical functioning of a system is privileged over the work related to usability or the human interface of a system even when the work in essence is similar (e.g. coding software) (Trevelyan 2010). Framing engineering work through this dualism is not restricted to workplaces but is, in fact, even stronger among engineering students and faculty (Lagesen and Sørensen 2009).

The technical/social dualism is inherently gendered given the common association of sociality with femininity and technicality with masculinity. According to Faulkner (2007), ‘technicist engineering identities persist in part because they converge with (and perform) available masculinities, and that women’s (perceived and felt) membership as ‘real’ engineers is likely to be more fragile than men’s’ (Faulkner 2007, p. 331). The tinkering orientation of engineering can undermine many women’s confidence and sense of belonging in engineering especially at the beginning of engineering studies, but the challenges for balancing the personal and professional identities often continue throughout the career. Although transferring from technical to managerial roles, often through promotion, means giving up some technical aspects of work, for male engineers it does not mean giving up their credentials as a man, but rather changes from one type of masculinity (the one of science and technology) to another (the one of corporate authority and business). For a female engineer moving toward a more heterogeneous role, which may feel more gender authentic, can bring a greater risk of losing her identity as ‘real engineer’ than for the male colleagues (Faulkner 2007; Holth 2015).

Campus culture and educational practices are the interfaces through which the engineering students become socialised to the engineering culture and values. Seven facets of engineering curriculum and pedagogy have been identified as gendered: (1) assumptions about students’ experiences, values, and backgrounds, (2) aims and objectives of engineering programmes, (3) forms of assessment, (4) course content, (5) teaching and learning methods, (6) teaching practices, and (7) the learning environment (Mills, Ayre, and Gill 2010). The campus cultures in engineering education are known to be pervasively masculine. The male dominance shows in the physical surroundings (Du 2006), social interactions (Tonso 2006), as well as in the engineering way of thinking, doing and being (Godfrey and Parker 2010). Although female students can integrate into these environments by adapting to the prevalent thinking and finding a socially supportive niche, they often leave the traditions and culture intact (Godfrey 2007). The epistemic culture of engineering mitigates students’ public welfare interests over the course of their education (Cech 2014). This devaluation of the social and altruistic aspects of engineering can bring along challenges to the professional identity development especially to women, who more often than men enter the discipline with socially conscious motives (Seron et al. 2016).

Cech et al. (2011) suggest that professional role confidence consists of two dimensions; expertise confidence and career-fit confidence. Expertise confidence, that is, the confidence in one’s ability to master the needed professional skills and competencies, was discovered to matter for persistence in an engineering major, whereas the career-fit confidence, that is, the confidence that a career path in profession meets one’s interests and values, mattered for intentions to work in engineering after graduation. Men were discovered to have significantly more professional role confidence along both dimensions than women (Cech et al. 2011). Gender differences are also manifested in how well-suited women and men consider themselves for careers in engineering and technology. Powell, Dainty, and Bagilhole (2012) found that women engineering/technology students maintained contradictory viewpoints, at times upholding gendered stereotypes about women’s suitability for ‘masculine’ work such as engineering but also subscribing to an ideal that the sector is accessible to all who want to work in it. By upholding gendered stereotypes, for example, that men are more talented in mathematics and therefore more suited for a career in engineering, and at the same time distinguishing themselves from other women, the women studying engineering and technology seemed to align themselves with (male) engineers rather than other women (Powell, Dainty, and Bagilhole 2012). Considering oneself the exception rather than the rule, as a woman in engineering, comes across also in other studies (e.g. Seron et al. 2018).

The ways female students interpret the negative encounters with their male peers in collaborative projects and teamwork reflects the discipline’s deep beliefs in the individualism and meritocracy. In collaboration settings, female students are often allocated tasks that are less technical or otherwise perceived as less important. Yet women do not see this as a cultural feature, but, as a personal responsibility to develop their own strategies (Seron et al. 2016). The ethos of success through individual merits combined with illusions of gender-neutrality can lead female students to refrain from certain support measures in a fear of being perceived to take advantage of their gender (e.g. Seron et al. 2018). The stigmatisation of support functions and organisations happens despite the fact that female students report occurrences of sexism and implicit bias both in academic and workplace settings (Smith and Gayles 2018).

Engineering skills

Engineering identity and engineering knowledge are tightly linked to each other, but also to the culture and history of the national environment where the engineers are educated (Downey and Lucena 2004). Hence, it would be surprising to find a unified set of engineering skills adopted by all engineers. The historical differences in the development of national engineering education systems and cultures result in variance in understanding the concept of theory, the relationship between theory and practice, the measures of progress, and the status of the profession, to name a few examples (Downey and Lucena 2004). Yet, there are also many similarities between local views on appropriate engineering skills. In their extensive review study, Passow and Passow (2017) managed to identify 16 generically important competencies for engineering practices across the disciplines, practice areas and countries. The competencies were grouped to reflect four different realms of capabilities: applying technical foundations, collaborating with different stakeholders, engineering with constraints, and managing one’s own performance (Passow and Passow 2017).

Many engineering societies and accreditation agencies regularly discuss the nature of engineering skills and competencies and thus set the stage for the production of professional identity of individual engineers (Tonso 2014). Although the skills repertoire represented for example in the accreditation criteria of the Accreditation Board for Technology and Engineering (ABET) in North America (ABET n.d.). and The European Network for Accreditation of Engineering Education (ENAEE n.d.) is wide and multifaceted, in practice some skills are valued over others. Trevelyan (2019) argues that in engineering education ‘money is usually seen as a topic of marginal importance’ (Trevelyan 2019, p. 826), written communication is preferred over face-to-face interactions, listening skills are overlooked, individual efforts are valued over collaboration, and emotions and beliefs are absent from the curricula. Although engineers identify a set of coordination and communication skills as the most important skills in their work, they still perceive technical problem-solving as the essence of ‘real’ engineering work and uphold the technical/social dualism in the conceptualisation of their work (Anderson et al. 2010).

Cech (2014) points to the precipitous decline in students’ beliefs about the importance of understanding the consequences of technology and understanding how people use machines during engineering education. When comparing engineering and business students’ perceptions of generic skills, Chan and Fong (2018) found that engineering students perceived self-management skills, interpersonal and communication skills, and community and citizenship knowledge less important than business students. Of all the listed generic skills, engineering students perceived the awareness of political, social, economic and environmental issues as the least important to their future career (Chan and Fong 2018). These findings suggest that engineering education places greater value on applying technical foundations on practical problem-solving over consideration of nontechnical constraints or communication and collaboration. This is consistent with the technical/social dualism discussed above.

Career expectations and workplace experiences

Do men and women have similar or different expectations of their careers in engineering? Some studies indicate that aspirations and motivation for careers in engineering/technology may differ between men and women (Kossek, Su, and Wu 2017). For example, VanAntwerp and Wilson (2018) discover gender differences in the expressed intrinsic and introjected motivation for engineering work by early-career engineers. They suggest that the non-technology-focused intrinsic motivation, more common among women, leads to a weaker commitment to an engineering career than the technology-focused intrinsic motivation commonly held by men. VanAntwerp and Wilson (2018) also conclude that women may be more vulnerable to engineering career exits because of the stronger connection between their self-esteem and the introjected motivation for engineering. Moreover, certain studies demonstrate that the career paths of women and men differ. Holth (2015) shows how women in Sweden, less often than men, end up in positions that do not match their educational level or qualifications while Xu (2017) presents similar findings from the United States: gender inequality pertaining to salary and employment status in STEM occupations is significant from the very beginning of post-baccalaureate employment.

The masculine, even hostile, culture of engineering workplaces and academia may be an important explanation for the lack and withdrawal of women. For example, Miner et al. (2019) find that junior women faculty in STEM experience an interpersonally chillier climate compared with junior men faculty in STEM and that working in such a climate has consequences for junior women’s well-being especially when they have chilly interpersonal experiences with male colleagues. Mallette (2017) describes in detail how numerous factors along with the culture that excluded communication from the engineering work made a competent female engineer to leave engineering. Hatmaker (2013) further illustrates how women engineers need to engage in at times extensive identity work and agency-building efforts to be recognised and becoming an accepted member; work that men do not necessarily need to do. Not gaining respect, not fitting in, and balancing between work and family are the main challenges identified by late-career and retired female engineers in the United States (Ettinger, Conroy, and Barr II 2019).

Combining family responsibilities with careers in engineering seems to be problematic even in varying national contexts. Cech and Blair-Loy (2019) show that in the United States, up to 43% of women leave fulltime STEM employment after their first child. New mothers are more likely than new fathers to leave STEM, to switch to part-time work, and to exit the labour force. On the other hand, combining STEM work with caregiving responsibilities appears problematic also for fathers, since 23% of new fathers leave STEM after their first child (Cech and Blair-Loy 2019). In Sweden, Holth (2015) found that in contrast to men, women working in IT rejected both management and consultant roles in favour of duties and positions, normally project and team leaders, where their availability for family life could be prioritised to a greater degree. These positions of project leader and team leader, however, lead the women away from the organisation’s technical core business, entailing the loss of women’s technical skills in the long term (Holth 2015). Even the significant efforts to advance women’s careers in engineering by actively promoting them to managerial positions can have countereffective consequences, as the inverted role hierarchy in engineering favouring the status of technical over managerial roles can make female managers question their status and identity as engineers and hence increase the risk of exiting the profession at some point of their career (Cardador 2017).

The persistence of women in the engineering profession appears to be connected to steps women have taken to ensure that their work environment matches their expectations of interesting, challenging, and enjoyable work in a supportive and inclusive culture (Ayre, Mills, and Gill 2013). Ayre, Mills, and Gill (2013) point out that while the interviewed women had all entered the profession strongly believing in themselves as engineers, and this belief had endured despite the difficulties they encountered, many of these women had experienced being isolated, overlooked, and marginalised in the prevailing masculine culture of engineering workplaces (Ayre, Mills, and Gill 2013). O’Connor, O’Hagan, and Gray (2018), who identify four types of femininities within STEM (careerist, individualissed, vocational, and family-oriented femininity) underline that all of these are constituted in relation to the meanings attached to the masculinist STEM career, which performatively render women outsiders. The most common orientation (career orientation) involves adopting characteristics associated with masculinity – although experienced and read as feminine – and requires remaining silent about sexism and making constant and creative efforts to ‘blend in’ (O’Connor, O’Hagan, and Gray 2018).

Identity, skills, and gender differences among Finnish engineers

Finnish technical universities and faculties and the Finnish Association of Academic Engineers and Architects TEK have conducted a joint feedback survey for Master’s level engineering graduates since 2011 (Hyötynen, Kokko, and Teini 2015). Among many other things, the survey asks about graduates’ perceptions of the importance of different professional skills in working life as well as the development of these skills in education and work experience during studies. Pyrhönen, Niiranen, and Pajarre (2019) amended the graduate survey data with data of academics’ and employers’ perceptions of the importance of different engineering skills. Their findings suggest that graduates’ perceptions of the most important skills resemble those of employers’ but differ from the respective perceptions of academics. However, the learning outcomes seem to follow the academic valuation of skills as the skills perceived most important by academics are also those which graduates perceive to develop most during the studies. Pyrhönen, Niiranen, and Pajarre (2019) point out that this happens even when the graduates find the skill to be among the least important ones. Graduates and employers value the more general and practical skills, such as time management and team working, whereas academics value the more theoretical skills, such as knowledge in mathematics and natural sciences (Pyrhönen, Niiranen, and Pajarre 2019).

Even though Finnish engineering students highly appreciate preserving and enhancing the welfare of the people (Teini, Mursu, and Piri 2018), ethics and sustainable development are among the skills perceived to be least important by graduates (Pyrhönen, Niiranen, and Pajarre 2019). This suggests that the culture of disengagement discovered by Cech (2014) in the US engineering education may be present also in the Finnish engineering education. The suggestion is also supported by the fact that sustainable development was among the skills perceived least important also by academics. Other less important skills in academics’ eyes were the practical application of theories, management skills, leadership, and creativity. The practical application of theories was considered very important by graduates, and thus highlights again the difference between the graduate and academic views (Pyrhönen, Niiranen, and Pajarre 2019).

Both the results of the graduate survey and a workshop for various different stakeholders manifest the growing importance of interpersonal skills (Hyötynen, Kokko, and Teini 2015). In the study by Pyrhönen, Niiranen, and Pajarre (2019), employers mentioned team work, social skills, self-knowledge, and self-confidence as skills that are most often lacking among graduates. Finnish female engineering students have been noted to value social and interdisciplinary teaching and benefit from that (Paloheimo 2015). However, especially academics’ perceptions of the skills needed in engineering seem to emphasise the theoretical and technical aspects of engineering so heavily that the social and human aspects may not appear very visible in the Finnish engineering education.

Like in many other countries, also in Finland the early career in engineering is a rockier road for women than for men (Paloheimo 2015; Vuorinen-Lampila 2016). Paloheimo (2015) noted that at the time of graduation men had better employment and were more often permanently employed than women. During the first five years of their career women had more unemployment periods and more and longer family leave periods, and they achieved fewer managerial positions than their male peers (Paloheimo 2015). These findings were confirmed by Vuorinen-Lampila (2016), who also discovered that during the first three years of their career ‘men have been more successful in the labour market irrespective of whether they have graduated from male-dominated, female-dominated, or gender-balanced study fields’ (Vuorinen-Lampila 2016, p. 300).

Research questions, data and methods

Hardly any studies have compared the professional identities of early-career men and women engineers, especially with large data sets covering several educational institutions (Rodriguez, Lu, and Bartlett 2018). The objective of this study is to understand the professional identities of newly graduated engineers in Finland by analysing their perceptions of professional skills. Based on previous studies, we anticipate that gender has an impact on how early-career engineers perceive the importance and development of professional skills. On the other hand, the field of engineering may also have a significant impact. Therefore, we ask:

Q1. How do the perceived importance and development of professional skills differ between early-career female and male engineers?

Q2. Can the gender differences in Q1 be explained by different gender distributions in various fields of engineering education?

The study uses cross-sectional survey data from the TEK Graduate Survey, collected between January 2018 and December 2019. The TEK Graduate Survey is a joint process organised together by TEK (Academic Engineers and Architects in Finland) and all Finnish universities awarding Master’s level university degrees in Engineering and Architecture. All these universities share a process where feedback related to academic study is collected from every student at the time of their graduation. Approximately 80% of all graduates within the scope of the TEK Graduate Survey answer it (in 2018, 83% and in 2019, 76%). The data have not been previously studied extensively with respect to gender differences. In the survey, the respondents can identify their gender as male, female, or other. However, only ten persons identified themselves as ‘other’ in our data, and thus, their responses were excluded from our analysis.

Information on respondents is presented in Table 1; 76% of the respondents are male and 78.5% are Finnish nationals. The majority were 27–28 years of age at the time of responding to the Graduate Survey. The most common fields of education are IT and Telecom, Electrical and Automation, and Mechanical and Energy Technology.¹ The percentage of female graduates differs considerably between the fields, from 13.9% in Mechanical & Energy to 45.6% in Process & Materials Engineering.

Table 1. Background information of respondents.

	Number (n)			Percent (%)
	Male	Female	Total	Male	Female	Total
Respondents	3133	971	4104	76.3	23.7	100.0
Nationality: Finnish	2488	733	3221	77.2	22.8	100.0
Other EU/ETA country	103	30	133	77.4	22.6	100.0
Country outside of EU/ETA	542	208	750	72.3	27.7	100.0
Year of Birth: Mean	1990	1990	1990
Median	1991	1992	1992
Field of Education (Eng./Tech.)
Mechanical & Energy	617	100	717	86.1	13.9	100.0
Electrical & Automation	735	124	859	85.6	14.4	100.0
IT & Telecom	710	178	888	80.0	20.0	100.0
Process & Materials	318	267	585	54.4	45.6	100.0
Construction & Surveying	296	134	430	68.8	31.2	100.0
Industrial Management	454	165	619	73.3	26.7	100.0

In Finland, university graduates in engineering/technology have gained approximately 1–2 years of relevant work experience during their studies by working alongside experts in companies, with similar tasks and roles but with a lower salary. Typically, students in the master’s phase (i.e. with 180 study points or after three years of higher engineering studies) work fulltime during the summer (May–August) and part-time during the semester (September–April), often for the same employer. Thus, the respondents can be considered early-career engineers although they had just received their Master’s degree at the time of answering the survey. Nearly 80% of respondents (79% of males and 76% of females) were employed at the time of graduation, with further 2% working as entrepreneurs or freelancers. Furthermore, the respondents on average have 19 months of work experience during their studies of which 13 months are related to their field of study. Interestingly, women on average have two months less work experience compared to men at the time of graduation.

The respondents were asked to rate 29 professional skills items on a Likert scale of 1–6 (1 = Not at all, 6 = Very much) on three aspects: (a) the importance of these items, (b) their development in studies, and (c) their development at work during the studies. The average ratings of the three aspects of the 29 items by gender are presented in Figure 1. In order to assess differences between male and female respondents, Mann–Whitney U tests were conducted to identify statistically significant differences. Hedges’ g values were calculated to estimate the effect size as Hedges’ g instead of Cohen’s d is recommended when the groups to be compared are different in size (e.g. Ellis 2010). Pooled standard deviation required for calculating Hedges g values was derived from Glen (2020). The results of the Mann–Whitney U tests and the Hedges g values for all the 29 items are presented in Table 3.

Figure 1. Average of respondents’ ratings of the survey items with respect to the three aspects of interest (importance, development in studies, and development at work) by gender.

Since our analysis revealed that the difference between male and female respondents is most significant in relation to the importance of the 29 items, we conducted a factor analysis (principal components analysis) of the importance scores. Our aim was to identify a more limited number of factors for comparison purposes as well as highlight potential gender differences at a more general level. To analyse the suitability of the data for exploratory factor analysis, a correlation matrix of all 29 variables (importance scores) was produced. The level of correlation considered adequate was r ≥ 0.3 at least with one other variable. The Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy was 0.936 (marvelous), all the KMO measures were higher than 0.9, and Bartlett’s test of sphericity was significant (p < .0005), and thus, the PCA analysis was deemed appropriate.

The principal components analysis with varimax rotation revealed five components that had eigenvalues greater than one (Model F1). These five components explained 51.4% of the total variance and adding a sixth component increased this to 54.8%. The scree plot showed an inflection point at component 5. However, the rotated component matrix revealed that several variables had high factor loadings on more than one component (cross-loadings). Therefore, another factor analysis (Model F2) was conducted with a fixed number of factors increased to six. The rotated component matrix still showed several cross-loadings. Another factor analysis (Model F3) was then conducted with a fixed number of factors (six) and with a different rotation method (Oblimin). In this model, the variables fitted sufficiently well into the six components. Therefore, we decided to proceed with F3, although the variance explained (55%) is somewhat lower than recommended in the literature (<60%, see, for example, HairJr et al. 2014), and the sixth component has an eigenvalue lower than 1 (0.98).

To evaluate the internal consistency of the identified six factors, Cronbach’s alpha was used. The Cronbach’s alpha values range from 0.65 to 0.84, and thus, the internal consistency of the factors was considered adequate. Results of the factor analysis are presented in Table 2. Four items could have been deleted since their loadings are below the 0.5 threshold (as instructed e.g. by HairJr et al. 2014), but we decided to retain them, mainly to keep more items in the analysis. For each factor, we then summated the item scores and divided them by the number of items within the factor to calculate combined means on the original scale (1–6).

Table 2. Factors (see Appendix for full factor loadings of items).

Factor name	Eigenvalue	% of Variance	Cronbach’s alpha
Working life skills	8.75	30.17	0.84
Business and management	2.11	7.29	0.65
Expertise and substance knowledge	1.69	5.69	0.69
Analytical skills	1.32	4.56	0.80
Communication skills	1.07	3.67	0.70
Social skills	0.98	3.38	0.73

To examine the effect of the field of engineering on gender differences, we conducted regression analysis (first, ordinal logistic regression and then, multinomial logistic regression) on the combined mean score for the importance of communication skills, that is, the skills area with greatest gender differences. However, we discovered that the dependent variable did not sufficiently lend itself to a regression analysis and concluded that this is mainly due to its distribution. The respondents gave scores of 1–6 to each item, and there are four items in the factor; thus, the combined means can only gain values of .00, .25, .50, or .75. The cumulated mean scores for the importance of Communication Skills are far from evenly distributed (the range is 1.75–6.00) and cluster around the high end: almost 20% of women and 13% of men give the highest score (6) to all four items in this factor, as their combined mean score is 6.00.

The regression analysis indicated that besides gender, the field of engineering may have an impact on the importance scores of Communication Skills. We thus analysed the combined mean scores for the importance of Communication Skills by cross-tabulating them by field of engineering and furthermore by gender for selected fields (discussed further in the Results section).

Results

The average of respondents’ ratings of the survey items with respect to the three aspects of interest (importance, development in studies, development at work) by gender are illustrated in Figure 1, and the statistical significance and effect size of the difference are presented in Table 3. Figure 1 shows that, in general, the gender differences in the perceptions of graduates are small. With most of the items, the perception of the development of the respective skill both during the studies and the employment is rated lower than the perceived importance. The only exceptions to this are the items Mathematical and natural science skills, Knowledge of the research in my own field of studies, and Knowledge of the history and development of my own field, where the development during the studies was rated higher than or equal to the perceived importance. This applied to both female and male respondents.

Table 3. Statistical difference (Mann–Whitney U test) and effect size (Hedge’s g) of the difference between the responses of female and male respondents.

Factors and items	Importance		Development in studies		Development at work
	M–W sig.	Hedge's g	M–W sig.	Hedge's g	M–W sig.	Hedge's g
Analytical Skills	0.00	0.2	0.37	0.0	0.56	0.0
Self-knowledge	0.00	0.2	0.39	0.0	0.00	0.1
Self-confidence	0.00	0.2	0.19	−0.1	0.23	0.0
Creativity	0.00	−0.1	0.00	−0.2	0.00	−0.1
Critical thinking skills	0.00	0.1	0.45	0.0	0.58	0.0
Analytical thinking skills	0.20	0.1	0.43	0.0	0.87	0.0
Ethicality	0.00	0.3	0.03	0.1	0.06	0.1
Business and management skills	0.01	0.1	0.44	0.0	0.28	0.0
Knowledge in sustainable development	0.00	0.3	0.00	0.2	0.02	0.1
Knowledge of the basics of business operations	0.88	0.1	0.12	0.1	0.54	0.0
Entrepreneurial capacities	0.65	−0.1	0.00	−0.1	0.00	−0.2
Communication skills	0.00	0.3	0.27	0.0	0.05	0.1
Written communication skills	0.00	0.3	0.16	0.0	0.00	0.2
Oral communication skills	0.00	0.3	0.10	0.1	0.16	0.1
Visual communication skills	0.00	0.2	0.37	0.0	0.01	0.1
Skills in digitalisation and utilisation of data	0.94	0.1	0.48	0.0	0.23	0.0
Expertise And Substance Knowledge	0.00	0.1	0.65	0.0	0.39	0.1
Know-how related to my own field of studies	0.00	0.1	0.74	0.0	0.76	0.0
Skills in practical application of theories	0.00	0.2	0.40	0.0	0.00	0.1
Mathematical and natural science skills	0.00	0.0	0.42	−0.1	0.17	0.1
Knowledge of the research in my own field of studies	0.00	0.1	0.00	0.1	0.01	0.1
Knowledge of the history and development of my own field	0.00	0.0	0.05	−0.1	0.11	−0.1
Social skills	0.00	0.2	0.00	0.2	0.08	0.1
Leadership skills	0.03	0.1	0.00	0.1	0.91	0.0
Team working skills	0.00	0.1	0.00	0.1	0.23	0.1
Social skills	0.00	0.2	0.00	0.1	0.00	0.1
Working life skills	0.00	0.2	0.00	0.2	0.00	0.2
Abilities to work independently	0.00	0.2	0.00	0.2	0.00	0.2
Problem-solving skills	0.07	0.1	0.12	0.0	0.54	0.0
Information retrieval skills	0.00	0.1	0.00	0.1	0.00	0.1
Skills related to international work environment	0.00	0.2	0.00	0.1	0.01	0.1
Project management skills	0.00	0.2	0.00	0.3	0.00	0.2
Skills in time management and prioritising tasks	0.00	0.2	0.00	0.2	0.00	0.2
Attitude toward developing one’s skills in working life	0.00	0.1	0.19	0.0	0.01	0.1
Career management capacities	0.00	0.2	0.02	−0.1	0.46	0.0

Note: Statistically significant differences and effect sizes equal to or greater than 0.2 are given in bold. The effect sizes equal to or greater than 0.3 are also italicised.

Our analysis revealed that the difference between male and female respondents is most significantly related to the importance of the 29 items. The statistically significant differences between female and male respondents are indicated in bold in Table 3. The factor analysis (PCA) of the importance scores identified six factors as explained in the Methods section. The combined means of the identified factors are presented in Table 4.

Table 4. Results of factor analysis: Combined means (scale: 1–6).

	Importance		Development during studies		Development at work
	Male	Female	Male	Female	Male	Female
Communication skills	5.10	5.28	4.49	4.52	4.33	4.44
Social skills	5.39	5.50	4.51	4.65	4.60	4.68
Business and management	4.63	4.72	3.98	4.02	3.87	3.83
Expertise and substance knowledge	4.79	4.87	4.79	4.78	4.27	4.32
Working life skills	5.50	5.61	4.78	4.90	4.88	5.01
Analytical skills	5.23	5.35	4.60	4.57	4.58	4.62

Note: Statistically significant differences (according to the Mann–Whitney U tests) are given in bold.

The effect sizes indicate that the greatest gender differences (Hedge’s g 0.3) lie in the perception of the importance of ethicality, knowledge in sustainable development, and the written and oral communication skills. All of these are perceived more important by females than males. To a slightly lesser extent (Hedge’s g 0.2) we can see gender differences in the importance of self-knowledge and self-confidence, visual communication skills, skills in the practical application of theories, social skills, abilities to work independently, international skills, time management and prioritising, and career management capacities. All of these were perceived as more important by women than men. Women graduates perceive their project and time management skills, knowledge in sustainable development, and independent working abilities to have developed better during the studies than men do, whereas men see that the studies have developed their creativity more often than women do. Working life seems to support the development of men’s entrepreneurial capacities and women’s writing skills as well as women’s ability to work independently and manage projects and time.

The factorised results presented in Table 4 show that all the combined importance scores of women are higher than those of men and that these differences are statistically significant. The highest combined importance score for females is Working life skills (5.61), followed by Social skills (5.50). These are also the highest importance scores for males, although their scores are lower (5.50 and 5.39). Based on previous studies, we anticipated even a more significant difference between men and women pertaining to the importance of Social Skills. Although the difference is significant (0.11 units), it is similar to the difference between other scores, which mostly range between 0.9 and 0.12 units. Nonetheless, our analysis reveals that the difference between women and men in the importance score of Communication skills (women 5.28 and men 5.10), though moderate (Hedges g value = 0.3), is still higher than for any other factor.

The combined scores for development of skills during studies differ less than the importance scores. While for most factors the scores for men and women are very close, the scores for Social Skills and Working Life Skills show a clear difference between men and women, which is also statistically significant. On the other hand, the combined scores for the development of skills at work reveal that women experience more strongly than men that their Working Life Skills have developed while working (women 5.01, men 4.88). The scores for females are clearly higher also for Communications skills (women 4.44, men 4.33) and Social skills (women 4.69, men 4.60), indicating that women more often consider that these skills have developed while working.

To examine the effect of the field of engineering/education on the observed gender differences, we analysed the combined mean scores for the importance of Communication Skills by cross-tabulating them by field of education. This analysis revealed that the results of those graduating from Industrial Management differ most from the others. Therefore, we further cross-tabulated these results by gender and selected the field with most females (Process and Materials Engineering) for comparison purposes. Our aim is to shed light on whether gender or field of education impacts the importance scores of Communication Skills more.

The cross-tabulation of the combined mean scores for the importance of Communication Skills by field of education and gender reveals interesting differences, as shown in Figure 2. Women who have graduated from Industrial Management consider Communications Skills clearly more important than men in the same field or women graduating from Process and Materials Engineering, and far more important than men graduating from Process and Materials Engineering. This difference is particularly stark for importance scores between 4.75 and 5.25 but evens out when reaching the highest scores (5.75 and 6.00).

Figure 2. Combined mean scores (cumulative) for importance of Communication Skills by gender and field of education (Process & Materials Engineering and Industrial Management).

Discussion

Although the gender differences, in general, were smaller than we anticipated, the noted differences fit quite well the observations and explanations in international literature suggesting that the challenges related to the professional identity development of female engineers in Finland are rather similar to experiences of female engineers elsewhere in the world. However, the actual gender differences in the data as well as the effect sizes of the statistically significant differences were relatively small, and therefore, caution is required in drawing conclusions from this analysis.

The major difference is found in perceived importance related to communication skills, which women more than men felt to be important in engineering. Gender differences in perception of the role of written communication in engineering work have been suggested to contribute to the attrition of women from engineering careers (Mallette 2017). Moreover, if engineering work is framed through a technical/social dualism, communication is often considered a management issue and thus not relevant or central for ‘real’ engineering (Trevelyan 2010) as the more heterogeneous and networked engineering identity is overpowered by the highly technical view of the profession (Faulkner 2007; Faulkner 2009). At the end of their studies, women perceive the value of social and altruistic aspects, such as ethicality and sustainability, higher than men. These aspects, however, are not considered that important by academics (Pyrhönen, Niiranen, and Pajarre 2019), which may result in a culture of disengagement (Cech 2014). All of this is likely to weaken female students’ development of career-fit confidence (Cech et al. 2011) during their studies.

Women also perceive the management skills, such as project management and time management skills, and self-management skills, such as self-knowledge and self-confidence, more important than men do and report more frequently than men that both the studies and the work experience have developed their management skills. Cech (2015, 69) discovered that engineers whose ‘professional identities emphasize managerial/communication skills are more likely to intend to seek out different professional paths’. Cardador (2017) explains this phenomenon with the inverted role hierarchy in engineering, which makes female engineers in managerial roles question their status as engineers. This could mean that the risk of exiting the engineering career path is greater for women than for men also in Finland. Parallel to the managerial skills, female graduates also rate the importance and development of independent working abilities higher than male graduates. This suggests that also in Finland the women’s role in team and project work during the studies may often end up being more administrative than technical, and women’s response to the situation is not to attempt to change the situation or the dynamics but to develop their own skills and strategies accordingly (Seron et al. 2016). However, the emphasis put on abilities to work independently may also signal devaluation of teamwork and thus diminish the valuation of management and social skills in the professional image of engineering. This can affect both the expertise confidence and career-fit confidence of female graduates.

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, women also perceive the skills in practical application of theories more important than men. In previous literature, tinkering experiences and interests have been noted to be closely connected to boys and their motives to enter engineering (see, e.g. Du 2006), whereas girls’ lack of practical experiences has been identified as one of the great challenges of women studying engineering (Godfrey 2007). It is plausible that the lack of tinkering skills and experiences prior to engineering studies, and the difficulties resulting from it, cause the women to appreciate and emphasise these skills more than men. At the same time, there is no difference in the perception of the development of these skills. Hence, the gap between the perceived importance and development is larger for females than males, which may result in weaker career-fit confidence.

The gender differences regarding the development of different skills are even smaller than the differences in perceived importance, and most of the differences are statistically not significant or have a very small effect size. Nevertheless, some differences arise. In addition to the previously noted development of independent working abilities and management skills, women also perceived the development of their social skills during the studies, knowledge in sustainable development, and the development of their written communication skills at work to be better than men did. Men, on the other hand, felt more than women that the studies had enhanced their creativity and that the work experience improved their entrepreneurial capacities. In the light of Trevelyan and Williams (2019) observation about technological innovations being seen as the principle site of value creation in engineering and Trevelyan’s (2010) explication of social aspects considered peripheral by engineers, it seems that the studies and working life help men to develop better the skills considered central for engineering, whereas the skills women develop more may not be seen professionally so important. This again illustrates potential challenges facing female engineers in terms of career-fit confidence.

A closer look at the communication skills shows that there are differences in the perceived importance between different fields of engineering. However, comparing women and men within the same field reveals that the gender differences remain similar and women perceive the communication skills more important than men. This indicates that even if some of the difference could be explained by the field of engineering, it does not explain the whole difference. Nonetheless, our data and methods did not yield sufficient proof of interactions between gender, field of engineering, and aspects of professional identity, and the issue needs to be studied further.

Conclusions

We conclude that small gender differences exist related to the perceived importance and development of professional skills between early-career women and men engineers in Finland. The observed differences are greater with respect to perceived importance than perceived skill development. Early-career women perceive the importance of social and altruistic aspects, such as communication, ethics, and sustainability, as greater than men do. Yet, earlier studies suggest that even in Finland the engineering education emphasises the technical aspects and downplays the human interface of engineering work. This can be suspected to pose a challenge especially to the development of female engineering students’ career-fit confidence.

Our results suggest that the professional identity of female early-career engineers emphasises the heterogeneous and networked engineering practice more than does the professional identity of men, which relies more on the technical view of engineering. As men perceive the development of their skills related to technical innovations, such as creativity and entrepreneurial capacities, to be better than women do, and women perceive both the importance and development of their managerial skills to be higher than men do, the career paths are more likely to take men into more technical and women to more managerial roles. Hence, in the current engineering working culture, women have a greater risk of being devalued as engineers during their career if they choose to follow their personal interests.

Although the field of engineering may have some effect on the perception of needed and acquired skills, our research indicates that the observed gender differences cannot be fully explained by the different gender distribution in various fields of engineering. All this together implies that female Finnish early-career engineers may be under a greater risk of dropping out of the engineering career than their male counterparts. This is an alarming possibility, which warrants further investigation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Johanna Naukkarinen

Johanna Naukkarinen received her MSc. degree in chemical engineering from Helsinki University of Technology in 2001, her DSc. (Tech) degree in knowledge management from the Tampere University of Technology in 2015, and her professional teacher qualification from Tampere University of Applied sciences in 2013. She is currently working as a post-doctoral researcher and project manager with the School of Energy Systems at Lappeenranta University of Technology with main research interests related to technology and society, gender diversity and engineering education.

Susanna Bairoh

Susanna Bairoh received her MSc. degree in Social Policy from Helsinki University in 1998 and is completing her doctoral studies at Hanken School of Economics in Management and Organization. Her doctoral research focuses on understanding the gender gap in technology and how the situation could be improved. She is currently working as Research Manager at Academic Engineers & Architects in Finland TEK.

Notes

1 Note that graduates majoring in Architecture were excluded from this study although they participate in the Graduate Survey.

Appendix

Table A1. Factor analysis results: Factors, included items and full factor loadings.

	Name of factor (eigenvalue, % of variance, Cronbach’s alpha)
	Working Life Skills (8.75, 30.17, 0.84)	Business and Management (2.11, 7.29, 0.65)	Expertise and Substance Knowledge (1.65, 5.69, 0.69)	Analytical Skills (1.32, 4.56, 0.80)	Communication Skills (1.07, 3.67, 0.70)	Social Skills (0.98, 3.38, 0.73)
1.8 Problem-solving skills	0.765	−0.089	0.110	−0.005	−0.010	0.007
1.13 Skills in time management and of prioritising tasks	0.631	0.055	0.027	−0.024	0.098	0.140
1.9 Information retrieval skills	0.618	−0.002	0.076	−0.137	0.030	−0.115
1.4b Abilities to work independently	0.612	−0.071	0.143	0.013	−0.006	−0.001
1.14 Attitude towards developing own skills in working life	0.586	0.078	−0.015	−0.188	−0.019	0.088
1.12 Project management skills	0.552	0.235	0.003	0.075	0.054	0.209
1.11 Skills related to international work environment (including language skills)	0.454	0.205	−0.077	−0.069	0.182	−0.049
1.15 Career management capacities	0.448	0.147	−0.001	−0.136	0.057	0.201
1.5 Knowledge in sustainable development	−0.009	0.645	0.166	−0.212	−0.078	−0.008
1.7 Entrepreneurial capacities	0.126	0.637	−0.090	0.100	0.220	0.025
1.6 Knowledge of the basics of business operations	0.352	0.587	−0.129	0.116	0.003	0.245
1.2b Knowledge of the history and development of my own field	−0.121	0.449	0.445	−0.125	0.019	−0.106
1.1 Know-how related to my own field of studies	0.104	−0.067	0.743	0.057	−0.022	0.182
1.4 Skills in practical application of theories	0.266	−0.106	0.695	0.069	−0.017	0.068
1.2 Knowledge of the research in my own field of studies	−0.180	0.221	0.538	−0.160	0.203	−0.137
1.3 Mathematical and natural science skills	0.103	0.126	0.447	−0.092	0.137	−0.280
1.24 Critical thinking skills	0.103	−0.078	0.043	−0.723	0.058	−0.013
1.25 Analytical thinking skills	0.291	−0.192	−0.024	−0.633	0.143	−0.147
1.21 Self-knowledge	0.066	0.125	−0.014	−0.628	−0.055	0.278
1.23 Creativity	−0.079	0.068	−0.011	−0.575	0.257	0.034
1.26 Ethicality	−0.048	0.355	0.057	−0.529	0.014	0.035
1.22 Self-confidence	0.104	0.017	0.054	−0.520	−0.032	0.418
1.16b Visual communication skills	−0.070	−0.048	0.045	−0.083	0.748	0.159
1.16 Written communication skills	−0.046	0.029	0.125	−0.088	0.637	0.044
1.16c Skills in digitalisation and utilisation of data	0.213	0.057	−0.098	−0.001	0.634	−0.181
1.17 Oral communication skills	0.062	−0.073	0.086	−0.005	0.559	0.449
1.20 Social skills	0.118	0.050	0.005	−0.192	0.060	0.659
1.19 Team working skills	0.237	−0.076	0.101	−0.130	0.099	0.555
1.18 Leadership skills	−0.006	0.274	0.011	−0.003	0.247	0.544

Note: Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Rotation Method: Oblimin with Kaiser Normalization.