Although experts increasingly call for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education to begin in middle and elementary schools, a 3-year intervention beginning with high-achieving female high school sophomores demonstrated that young women can develop a serious interest in engineering in high school. However, subsequent post-high school study of the participants showed that interest in engineering was not enough for lower-income minority women to pursue engineering in college. It should be noted that their decision against pursuing engineering in college was not due to their lack of academic preparation or interest in the field, but to a lack of financial resources and social support for engineering, as well as fears of failure. Career counselors and college recruiters have an important role to play in the recruitment and retention of girls of color in engineering and other STEM college majors, including facilitating support and access to appropriate programs and resources at pivotal times.
Research on women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) has focused scant attention on how young women engage with the gendered construction of engineering as they decide whether or not to enter the field. Drawing on data from a study of more than a hundred diverse girls who participated in a National Science Foundation intervention and research project titled Female Recruits Explore Engineering (FREE), the article shows that their involvement with engineering is strongly gendered. The study participants were aware that engineering is maledominated and not particularly open to women. They, especially the white and economically privileged girls, were also skeptical regarding the gendered messages they were receiving via programs designed to attract them to engineering. However, once the participants began to engage with engineering-through the selection of possible fields of study and by executing engineering projects-they did so in stereotypically gendered ways. The article's findings indicate that the girls' perceptions and choices are influenced by the presentation of engineering on websites, at career fairs, and through other venues designed to attract young women to engineering.Keywords: career exploration / engineering / gender / girls' studies / recruitment programs / STEM fields / women and girls in STEM A great deal of recent scholarship on women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) focuses on the slow entry of women into these male-dominated fields and the persisting barriers to women's full participation (Bystydzienski and Bird 2006;Etzkowitz, Kemelgor, and Uzzi 2000;Valian 1998Valian , 2006. Little attention has been paid, however, to girls' engagements
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