Planning a Career in Engineering: Parental Effects on Sons and Daughters

Abstract

This paper examines the extent to which prospective engineers follow in their parents' footsteps. Specifically, we investigate the connection between fathers' and mothers' employment in the engineering profession and the career plans of sons and daughters. We develop a number of reasons to expect an occupation-specific intergenerational association in this field, as well as hypotheses regarding gender-specific role-modeling. Data are drawn from the UCLA HERI Freshman Survey data spanning 1971 to 2011. The results point to clear and substantial effects on sons and daughters' plans to pursue engineering, connections that cannot be explained by typical pathways such as social background, education and values. The evidence points to a pattern of increasing salience of mothers with respect to the career plans of their children, especially their daughters. The implications of these findings for the under-representation of women in engineering and for gender-specific family dynamics are discussed in the conclusion.

Intergenerational and Sibling Peer Effects in High School Majors

“…Since so few daughters choose Engineering to begin with (6.9%), this is a substantial 159% increase relative to the mean. This quasi-experimental evidence lines up with the correlational evidence found by Jacobs et al (2017), which documents that mothers with engineering careers strongly influence the chances their children, and especially their daughters, plan to pursue Engineering.…”

Segregation, Stereotypes, and STEM

“…These gender labels are naturalized as people identify aspects of the work process (e.g., physical, analytical, or emotional demands) that support cultural stories about the occupation's intrinsic masculinity, often remembering evidence that is consistent with their preexisting beliefs and discounting evidence that undermines them (Bourdieu 1975;Milkman 1987;Fiske 1998;Tolley 2003;Charles and Grusky 2004). Greater exposure to women scientists and proximity to same-gender role-models appear to weaken these stereotype effects, however (Miller et al 2018;Jacobs et al 2017;Misra et al 2017).…”

18. Women’s Experience of Role Models in IT: Landmark women, substitutes and supporters

“…The low proportion of women in IT education and professions creates the low visibility of women and few female role models in IT. This has been identified as a challenge for recruiting women to STEM fields (Jacobs et al, 2017) and as one reason for the continuous strength of stereotypes associating IT with men (Varma, 2010). Our analysis of women in IT work in Norway suggests that this is the case also here, reflected in the women's narratives about missing women in the field of IT.…”