Selling policy short? Faculty perspectives on the role of policy in addressing women’s underrepresentation in engineering education

ABSTRACT

Despite a nearly 40-year history of research initiatives and interventions to recruit and retain women engineering students, women remain significantly underrepresented in engineering. Given the lack of progress, it seems clear that new lenses on the problem of underrepresentation warrant further attention. Higher education policies are one area that has received comparatively scant attention from researchers and administrators in regard to underrepresentation in undergraduate engineering programs. This interview-based research article explores how policy featured in engineering professors’ discussions about gender and underrepresentation in engineering. It shows that, while there is widespread awareness of workplace policies related to the careers of female engineers and engineering professors, policies related to underrepresentation in undergraduate engineering education programs are marginalized. The article concludes with seven examples of student-related policies that warrant further exploration in regard to women’s participation in engineering programs.

KEYWORDS:

• Engineering education
• underrepresentation
• women
• policy
• retention
• admissions

Acknowledgements

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. I am very grateful to those professors who gave their time and thoughts to make this project possible, and to those colleagues who helped me to arrange the interviews. I also thank Ryan Campbell for his input on this analysis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This material is based upon the work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant EEC [#1564571].