Abstract
Motivated by ongoing gender disparities in engineering, the authors qualitatively examine how collegiate STEM student organizations serve as affirming spaces for women’s engineering identity development, countering their exclusionary classroom environments. Drawing from interviews and written data with 24 undergraduate women, findings demonstrate how student organizations promote engineering identity through women recognizing themselves as engineers, viewing peers as possibility models, and being recognized by others as engineers. We conclude with practical implications for fostering inclusive engineering environments.
Acknowledgments
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2022 American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting and as a workshop with the American Association for the Advancement of Science—Improving Undergraduate STEM Education Initiative (AAAS-IUSE).
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 We use “dominant” instead of more common nomenclature about representation to reflect the inequitable power structures that govern opportunities based on social identities.