Engineering Selves

Abstract

This article used the concept of discursive positioning to explore the narrative construction of professional identities among women engineers. The analysis of interviews with 15 women in a variety of engineering specialties suggested that they adopt a variety of distinct and sometimes contradictory positionings to present themselves as qualified professionals. In general, participants were reluctant to acknowledge gender relations as consequential for their careers and were also ambivalent about the implied focus of this research on female engineers as a “marginalized group.” A case is made for including and examining female engineers’ selfdetermined identities to arrive at more adequately complex descriptions of their work realities.

Encountering the Arugula Leaf: The Failure of the Imaginary and its Implications for Research on Identity in Organizations

“…This points to the coconstruction of identity discourse and may implicate researchers/authors in processes of control and resistance. That is, engagements with research participants may not only be construed as acts of control or resistance, as in the study of women engineers cited earlier (Jorgenson, 2002), but, importantly, may contribute to making identity discourse available for control or resistance.…”

“…Second, identity may fragment in the very act of unsettling dominant discourses (Sveningsson and Alevesson, 2003) and the varying positions that may be constructed by drawing on different aspects of the dominant discourses and doing so differently in different situations (Thomas and Davies, 2005). Third, researchers seem to play a part in all of this as they co-construct the identities of research subjects (Jorgenson, 2002) and may in turn subject research participants to their own dominant identity discourses (Ward and Winstanley, 2003), share participants' identity discourses (Down and Reveley, 2004) or subvert and/or normalize the discourses that can dominate identity work in particular contexts (Alvesson, 1998;Merilainen et al, 2004;Thomas and Davies, 2005). I would now like to examine why this set-piece seems to exist and what underlying dynamics and new avenues for research may be missed by reiterating it.…”

“…Such reflection was undertaken somewhat more explicitly in a discursive study of the professional identity of women engineers (Jorgenson, 2002). Particularly, the author aims at uncovering the challenges faced by women in a male-dominated profession but quickly finds that the coherence she may have attributed to her respondents is highly contested in practice.…”

The Development of a Measure of Engineering Identity

“…Engineering identity has been shown as a significant indicator of educational and professional persistence in multiple quantitative and qualitative studies [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] . These prior investigations of engineering identity have focused on whether students consider or see themselves as an engineer as well as the qualities that students cite are needed to be an engineer.…”

The Influence of Out-of-school High School Experiences on Engineering Identities and Career Choice

“…Traditionally, the engineering field holds a professional ideology that puts emphasis on mathematical ability and technical expertise. This environment along with the masculine stereotype of engineering contributes to creating a condition that is particularly unwelcoming to women 45 . This perceived incompatibility between women's gender and STEM identity is one reason researchers cite for the lack of representation of women in STEM fields 46,47 .…”