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Carter, Ruth and Kirkup, Gill
(1990).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/1395403
Abstract
For more than a decade we have been engaged, as educationalists, in trying to improve the opportunities for women in engineering, technology and related, nontraditional fields. We reached a point where we felt we could not continue without knowing more about what it is like to be a woman working as a professional engineer. Excellent research had been done on the working lives of blue-collar women (Cockburn, 1985; Coyle, 1984; Walshok, 1981) and on the lives of women in other professions (Kanter, 1977; Marshall, 1984), but there was nothing specifically on professional engineers. Within that profession, particular questions needed to be addressed. How is gender manifest in the engineering profession, how is that gendering perpetuated, and, most importantly, how does this affect the life experience of women engineers both inside and outside their work? In 1986 we carried out a small research project based on interviewing thirty-seven women engineers in the United States of America and the United Kingdom, to find out why they had chosen engineering as a profession and what, for them, were the rewards and penalties. Engineering is still a predominantly white profession but our sample did include some women of colour.
Plain Language Summary
The paper describes a sample of 37 female engineers in the USA and UK that were interviewed during 1986. The study explores why the females had chosen engineering as a profession, and discussed their rewards and penalties.
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
