Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-1-2009
Abstract
Women remain dramatically underrepresented in the engineering profession – and far fewer women than men persist in the field. In the first study of women who stay (vs. stray) from corporate engineering careers, we interviewed 21 long tenured female engineers and a control group of ten women who opted out of the profession after an average decade of employment to generate a grounded theory about their personal and professional “lived lives.” Women constitute only 11% of the U.S. corporate engineering workforce and remain as engineers for shorter periods of time than men. Several studies have described why women leave engineering careers, but the literature is silent about those that stay. We addressed that gap by focusing uniquely on women with two decades or more of corporate engineering tenure. Our findings should be of interest to universities and government agencies hoping to entice more women into the profession and to corporations in search of women engineers with long tenure potential.
Keywords
women engineers, retention, engineering career, STEM women, ideal self, intentional change theory, engagement
Rights
© The Author(s). Kelvin Smith Library provides access for non-commercial, personal, or research use only. All other use, including but not limited to commercial or scholarly reproductions, redistribution, publication or transmission, whether by electronic means or otherwise, without prior written permission is strictly prohibited.
Department/Center
Design & Innovation
Recommended Citation
Buse, Kathleen R., "Why They Stay: The Ideal Selves of Persistent Women Engineers" (2009). Student Scholarship. 537.
https://commons.case.edu/studentworks/537
