Images of the Future: Gender and Portrayals of Faculty and Industry Members in Canadian Engineering School Recruitment Materials

Abstract

Engineering remains a male-dominated profession, despite efforts toward change. It is possible that the images used in undergraduate recruitment materials could influence how an individual might perceive their “fit” within engineering. We considered both the representation and context of individuals shown in images and videos collected from 18 Canadian English-language engineering schools, using content analysis. In this paper, we focus on individuals coded as either faculty or industry members, as they illustrate the future possibilities of a career in engineering in this material. We found an overrepresentation of women faculty and women industry members compared to their population percentages at the schools (faculty) and in the profession (industry). We also found that women professionals of both types were under-represented among those professionals wearing business attire, and women industry members were over-represented among those industry members whose names and credentials were given, in both the images and videos. We encountered a similar overall over-representation of women among student imagery, and suspect that it is the result of intentionally highlighting women within the schools and the field of engineering. However, we believethat context, as well as presence, matters. The underrepresentation of women in some cases is worth examining for the message it may send about the future prospects of a student considering engineering.