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Women in STEM: self-efficacy and its contributors in women in engineering within community college

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Women in STEM: self-efficacy and its contributors in women in engineering within community college

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Content Running head: WOMEN IN STEM

Women in STEM: Self-Efficacy and Its Contributors in Women in Engineering Within
Community College
by
Adrienne K. Kimm

A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Education in Educational Counseling
Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California

December 2018

WOMEN IN STEM ii

Acknowledgements
During this year-long journey writing my thesis, I would like to thank the following
people for their unending support:
To Dr. Patricia Tobey for agreeing to be my chair and for being my mentor through this
entire process. Thank you for always making yourself available when I needed help, whether it
was late at night or in the early morning before the sunrise. I would not have been able to come
this far without your countless encouragements and your endless patience. Even after I complete
the program, I will always come to consider you as one of my greatest mentors and one day,
hopefully, a colleague.
To Dr. Janice Schafrik and Dr. John Slaughter for agreeing to be a part of my committee
and providing guidance and a list of edits that I was not able to catch. Thank you for providing
ideas and different ways to approach certain issues that greatly helped make the study run
smoother. I will always appreciate the smiles and encouragements you have given, and I will
miss having both of you as not only committee members but also as wonderful professors.
To Dr. Kristan Venegas for checking in with me regarding my progress and assisting me
through the process. Thank you for discussing with me my ideas during the planning stages and
for your input.
To friends and colleagues in the Class of 2018 cohort, thank you for the laughs and for
the unending support and encouragements when I needed it in between classes. Thank you for
being a constant source of uplifting support and helping to keep my motivations up.
To my family, thank you for supporting me in your own way. To my parents who work
ten hours a day, seven days a week and yet come home and take the time to cook a meal for me
WOMEN IN STEM iii

on those days when I forgot to eat and check up on how I was doing. To my little brother who
came to my room at random times to make me laugh when I needed it.
To Steven, my biggest supporter and biggest source of encouragement since day one of
this program. Thank you for always giving words of encouragement when I needed them,
throwing new ideas my way, helping me make sense of things that were stuck in my head,
knowing when and how to make me laugh, and knowing when I just simply needed a hug. But
most of all, thank you for understanding how important this was to me. This journey would not
have been as smooth as it has been without you backing me up the whole time.
To my friends who have constantly encouraged me to keep writing and asked once in a
while how my thesis was coming along. To Julie and Carmen, thank you for the late-night talks
and helping me push through those writer’s blocks. To Avian, thank you for being there to talk
when I needed it.
To my supervisors and colleagues at the research site, thank you for being so helpful in
making this study’s data collection go by as efficiently as it did. Thank you to the site’s STEM
Center for going the extra mile with the assistance with recruiting. And thank you to Jason for
your abundant amount of guidance throughout this journey and for always checking in about my
progress.
Lastly, to the wonderful ladies who participated in this study. Thank you for volunteering
your time to contribute your experiences to the study. It was my greatest pleasure getting to
know each one of you and hear your inspiring stories. Know that you will always have my
support, and I wish for the greatest success for every one of you.

WOMEN IN STEM iv

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... ii
List of Tables ................................................................................................................................ vii
Abstract ........................................................................................................................................ viii

Chapter 1: Overview of the Study ...................................................................................................1
Main Research Question...........................................................................................................2
Statement of the Problem .........................................................................................................3
Purpose and Significance .........................................................................................................3
Importance of the Study ...........................................................................................................5
Definition of Terms ..................................................................................................................5
Similar Studies Conducted Previously .....................................................................................6
Organization of the Study .........................................................................................................8

Chapter 2: Literature Review ...........................................................................................................9
Theoretical Diagram ...............................................................................................................10
Overview ................................................................................................................................10
Gender Identity Development: Personal ................................................................................11
Gender Identity Development: Behavioral .............................................................................13
Gender Identity Development: Environmental ......................................................................15

Chapter 3: Methodology ................................................................................................................21
Overview ................................................................................................................................21
Theoretical Framework Alignment Matrix ............................................................................22
Research Design .....................................................................................................................23
Table 1. Chronbach’s Alpha for the AWE Survey .................................................................25
Method ....................................................................................................................................26
Site Selection .....................................................................................................................26
Participant Selection ..........................................................................................................26
Type of Data Collection .....................................................................................................27
WOMEN IN STEM v

Trustworthiness of Data Collection ........................................................................................30
Researcher Bias ......................................................................................................................30
Limitations of the Study .........................................................................................................30

Chapter 4: Results ..........................................................................................................................32
Demographics .........................................................................................................................32
Table 2. Demographics of Participants ..................................................................................32
Q1: Levels of Self-Efficacy in Female Engineering Students................................................33
Q3: The Effect of Being in a Male-Dominated Field of Study ..............................................36
Q4: Factors that Influenced Female STEM Students to Pursue Their Major.........................42
Why Do So Few Women Pursue Engineering-Related Careers? What Should be Done
to Alter That? (Added Question) ......................................................................................45
Q2: Levels of Self-Efficacy within Female Engineering Students ........................................48
Engineering Career Success Expectations .........................................................................48
Table 3. Responses for Engineering Career Success Expectations ...................................49
Engineering Self-Efficacy I ...............................................................................................50
Table 4. Responses for Engineering Self-Efficacy I ..........................................................50
Table 5. Responses for Level of Importance for Engineering Self-Efficacy I ..................51
Engineering Self-Efficacy II ..............................................................................................52
Table 6. Responses for Engineering Self-Efficacy II ........................................................52
Feeling of Inclusion ...........................................................................................................53
Table 7. Responses for Feeling of Inclusion ......................................................................53
Table 8. Responses for Level of Importance for Feeling of Inclusion ..............................54
Coping Self-Efficacy .........................................................................................................54
Table 9. Responses for Coping Self-Efficacy ....................................................................55
Math Outcome Expectations ..............................................................................................56
Table 10. Responses for Math Outcome Expectations ......................................................56
Confidence Levels for the Future in Engineering ..............................................................56
Table 11. Responses for Confidence Levels for Future in Engineering ............................57
Summary .................................................................................................................................57

WOMEN IN STEM vi

Chapter 5: Discussion of Findings .................................................................................................62
Discussion of Findings ...........................................................................................................63
Table 12. Overview of Research Question Findings ..............................................................64
Limitations ..............................................................................................................................66
Implications for Practice.........................................................................................................67
Future Research ......................................................................................................................70
Conclusion ..............................................................................................................................71

Reference .......................................................................................................................................73

Appendices .....................................................................................................................................79
Appendix A: LAESE Survey ..................................................................................................79
Appendix B: LAESE Survey Subscale...................................................................................88
Appendix C: Interview Questions ..........................................................................................90
Appendix D: Information Sheet for Research ........................................................................91

WOMEN IN STEM vii

List of Tables
Table 1. Chronbach’s Alpha for the AWE Survey ........................................................................25
Table 2. Demographics of Participants ..........................................................................................32
Table 3. Responses for Engineering Career Success Expectations ...............................................49
Table 4. Responses for Engineering Self-Efficacy I ......................................................................50
Table 5. Responses for Level of Importance for Engineering Self-Efficacy I ..............................51
Table 6. Responses for Engineering Self-Efficacy II ....................................................................52
Table 7. Responses for Feeling of Inclusion ..................................................................................53
Table 8. Responses for Level of Importance for Feeling of Inclusion ..........................................54
Table 9. Responses for Coping Self-Efficacy ................................................................................55
Table 10. Responses for Math Outcome Expectations ..................................................................56
Table 11. Responses for Confidence Levels for Future in Engineering ........................................57
Table 12. Overview of Research Question Findings .....................................................................64

WOMEN IN STEM viii

Women in STEM
Abstract
This study applies Bussey and Bandura’s (1999) social cognitive theory of gender identity
development to understand why there is a lack of persistence in women to pursue engineering
and a lack of women in engineering (Patton, Renn, Guido, & Quaye, 2016). The purpose of this
study was to measure the levels of self-efficacy of women in engineering at the community
college level and what contributes to the low and/or high levels of self-efficacy within those
women. This study also sought to determine the effect of being a woman in a male-dominated
field of study. The study conducted took a mixed methods approach and was consisted of six
participants for the interviews and five participants for the survey of whom all were current
female engineering students at the community college. The Longitudinal Assessment of
Engineering Self-Efficacy (LAESE) survey used was from the Assessing Women and Men in
Engineering (AWE) and determined levels of self-efficacy from participants as a total using the
LAESE subscale. Findings from this study indicate that all participants reported having high
levels of self-efficacy from both the interviews and survey. However, they all showed differing
levels of self-efficacy when asked questions that dealt with being treated equally in the
workplace in the future from which can be explained as they all reported in the interview of
having at least one negative experience from being a woman in engineering. This study
highlights issues that affect other women and their levels of self-efficacy who are pursuing or are
considering to pursue engineering and paves a way for other studies that can create and
implement programs to intervene and promote higher levels of self-efficacy to women who are in
or are considering going into engineering.
Key Terms: STEM, Self-Efficacy, Women, Engineering
WOMEN IN STEM 1

Chapter 1: Overview of the Study
In society today, through media and by word of mouth, society correlates the idea of
STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) related careers with figures such as: Steve
Jobs, Bill Gates, Einstein, Elon Musk, and Bill Nye. These figures are highly skilled in their area
of expertise and are deserving of the recognition that they hold to this day. If people heard of the
names of Ada Lovelace or Grace Hopper from the earlier parts of the twentieth century, would
anyone recognize their names or know who these prominent figures were (Sydell, 2014)? Would
anyone have known that these two women were the first pioneers who contributed greatly to
creating the first computer (Sydell, 2014)? In our modern-day society where women are
beginning to take leadership of multiple industries, would anyone know of Reshma Shetty, the
co-founder of Ginkgo Bioworks—a “cutting-edge biotech startup that designs synthetic DNA”—
who has her “Ph.D. in biological engineering from MIT” (Bort & Sandler, 2018)? Or even
Gwynne Shotwell, the “president and COO of SpaceX” (Bort & Sandler, 2018)? The answer is
most likely not, and this is attributed to and has an effect on the dwindling numbers of female
students pursuing engineering as will be seen below.
The National Science Foundation reported the following statistics from 2014: 18,626
women received bachelor’s degrees in engineering. On the other hand, in the same year 75,324
men received bachelor’s degrees in engineering (National Science Foundation, 2014). It was
even found that of all the freshmen entering college in the United States, female freshman “still
have significantly lower rates of interest in majoring in ECS [engineering and computer science]
than male freshman, with only 8 percent of female freshmen intending to major in engineering,
math, statistics, or computer science compared to 27 percent of male freshmen” (Rincon, 2017,
p. 10).
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Blickenstaff (2005) states that according to a pipeline model in undergraduate education
pathways, more women than men tend to leak out of the STEM pipeline. The gender differences
that affect college major choices play a significant part in the persistent lack of women in the
computer science field (Becerra-Fernandez, Elam, & Clemmons, 2010). It is assumed that the
number of women pursuing computer science and engineering majors and careers should have
increased and, therefore, reduced the gap between the number of men and women in these career
fields. However, Morell (1996) reported that the number of women in computer science who
manage to persist and graduate with a degree has gotten worse since 1988. Some reasons for this
negative finding can be found in women and men’s early years. Girls have noticed that in regards
to what they describe as a scientist, the media portrays scientists as men; in textbooks,
magazines, and even on television, men are used as scientist figures and intellectuals
(Blickenstaff, 2005). Even earlier, girls have been constantly told that math and science were for
boys; it does not help the fact that, in relation to computer science fields, video games were
catered more towards boys because of the misogynistic, violent, and sports-related contents
(Morell, 1996).
Main Research Question
With this observation, the main purpose of this thesis is to find an answer to the
following question: why is there a lack of women in STEM majors—specifically engineering—
within two-year community colleges as compared to their male counterparts?
I will also be conducting research to discover answers for the following questions to
further understand the reason(s) for the lack of women in the engineering programs at the
community college level:
WOMEN IN STEM 3

1. What factors contribute to the low and/or high levels of self-efficacy in female students in
STEM at the community college level?
2. What are the levels of confidence in female STEM students in their abilities to persevere
in their selected STEM program?
3. How does being in a typically male-dominated field of study affect the female STEM
students’ attitudes towards their own confidence and abilities before and entering STEM?
4. What factors influenced female STEM students to pursue a STEM field of study prior to
entering community college?
Statement of the Problem
In the STEM programs, it is common fact that it is a majority of male students found in
those buildings and classes. Although in recent years more women have taken an interest in
studying one of the STEM fields, only a handful of these interested women transfer to a four-
year institution and make it to graduation for their Bachelor of Science degree in these subjects.
There are plenty of women in other fields such as humanities and liberal arts, yet it is this one
category that has a definitive lack of a balanced mix of genders.
Purpose and Significance
I went into my first year of college as an undergraduate as a computer science major with
the intent to enter the computer science engineering (CSE) program because of my strong
interest in learning how technology works by mere codes. On the first day of lecture for the
fundamental course of the program, I immediately noticed that in a lecture hall of four hundred
students, ninety percent of the room were male students. That alone did not deter me from my
interest in computer science. When it came time to split into groups to work on the first of five
WOMEN IN STEM 4

mandatory coding projects for the quarter, I ended up in a group with four other male students. I
did not understand the material that had been taught as well as my group members did at the
time, yet when I had asked for help after being unable to find answers in the textbook, the male
students merely told me to search the answer on Google and could not be bothered to help me
understand the coding process. Eventually, due to my poor scores on the five projects and exams,
I ended up failing the course and dropping out of the major. When I had tried a second time in
computer science in community college after having received my bachelor’s degree, I was met
with the exact same environment and was not able to persist in moving forward in the field of
study.
At the time, it was infuriating and humiliating, not to mention disheartening, for being
dropped from the program because my peers had refused to go the extra step and help when I had
asked for it. However now, there are more and more instances of other women who end up
dropping their majors in the STEM programs for same and other reasons as well, as these are the
reasons that I am going to explore as well as develop potential solutions for.
For both personal and professional reasons, this study will delve into reasons for the lack
of women in STEM programs—focusing on computer science and engineering—and bring to
light the underlying contributors for the lack of persistence of women in such majors at a
community college. Why is there a lack of persistence for women in computer science and
engineering: is the system designed to let women fail in these areas of study? Does the amount of
exposure of these type of professions affect the decision for women to pursue a career in those
fields? Are there biases and a social divide within the STEM program itself through peers and
faculty members?
WOMEN IN STEM 5

For the purpose of this research, I will be using Patton et. al’s (2016) rendition of Bussey
and Bandura’s social-cognitive theory on gender identity development.
Importance of the Study
This study will contribute to shedding light on a dormant and overlooked issue in higher
education. As a society that continuously thrives and adapts to advancing technology and
medicine for current and future generations, it is only reasonable that women are as great of a
contributor as the men in fields where there is a lack of women. And because of the dwindling
female population in such areas, there is the continuous needs for more professionals in STEM-
related career fields.
This study will also contribute to providing a way for educators to develop new or
enhance already-existing resources that will better assist the female students in STEM-related
courses without being inhibited by potential bias nor prejudice.
Definition of Terms
STEM: “refers to teaching and learning in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics” (Gonzalez & Kuenzi, 2012, p. 1)
Self-efficacy: self-efficacy is defined as a student’s persistence and confidence in herself in
order to achieve or accomplish goals or challenges (Bandura, 1997)
Stereotype Threat: stereotype threat is defined as “being at risk of confirming, as self-
characteristic, a negative stereotype about one’s group” (Shapiro & Williams, 2012, p. 175;
Steele & Aronson, 1995, p. 797)
WOMEN IN STEM 6

Mixed Methods: “collection of both qualitative (open-ended) and quantitative (closed-ended)
data in response to research questions or hypotheses” (Creswell, 2014, p. 217)
Similar Studies Conducted Previously
In an ever-growing interest regarding the lack of women in STEM-related majors, there
have already been recent studies done on multiple reasons as to what is causing women to deter
from or not persist in STEM programs at the higher education level.
Varma (2010) delved into researching the cause in differences between “female and male
students from different ethnic groups in CS[computer science]/computer engineering (CE)
programs” by conducting the study at seven institutions with such programs with 150 students
“divided into groups of 30 (15 females and 15 males) belonging to one of the following major
ethnic group: White, Afro-American, Hispanic, Asian American, and Native American” (p. 304).
The results of the study revealed the severity of gender stereotyping that students, both male and
female, have been instilled with by society that women in general do not belong in the computer
science or computer engineering field (Varma, 2010). It also revealed that the lack of assistance
and encouragement to transition and enter the computer science or computer engineering field of
study from women’s K-12 educators and administrators played a key part in why most women
are not particularly interested in computers or technical-related fields of study (Varma, 2010).
Wao, Lee, and Borman (2010) utilized a “mixed methods approach to understand the
aspects of climate in the engineering departments or programs that enhance student retention to
graduation for women and underrepresented minorities” (p. 298). They conducted their
quantitative-based research with 881 engineering students of whom were 25% female in which a
majority were in their junior or senior year of college and their qualitative-based research with
WOMEN IN STEM 7

44 student interviews of whom were 36% female and with six student focus groups made up of
29 students of whom 21% were female (Wao, Lee, & Borman, 2010). The results of the study
stated that the lack of retention rates for women and underrepresented minorities was due to the
lack of support from the institution itself as they were “marked as different…and their behavior
is susceptible to scrutiny” (Wao, Lee, & Borman, 2010, p. 313).
Rosenthal, London, Levi, and Marci (2011) researched on the effect of having a “single-
sex WISE [Women In Science and Engineering] program at a co-education, midsized state
university” on women’s sense of belonging in STEM programs by having 65 first-year women
enrolled in WISE (p. 729). Despite losing 30 women of the initial 96 participants a year after the
first survey had been conducted, Rosenthal et al. (2011) found that having single-sex STEM
programs and having more women in WISE programs at higher education institutions would
positively affect the “identity compatibility and social support to increase engagement of college
women in STEM majors” moreso than the support from family and friends alone (p. 733).
Tellhed, Bäckström, and Björklund (2017) researched on testing for “gender differences
in high-school students’ self-efficacy and social belongingness expectation in relation to
STEM…and then test if this mediates gender differences in interest in [STEM]” (p. 89). They
had 1,327 Swedish “senior high-school students in university preparatory programs” as their
participants where 650 were male and 677 were female (Tellhed, et al., 2017, p. 89). The
outcome of this study found that the lack of self-efficacy and interest in female students
regarding STEM programs was due to the fact that there was a lack of social belongingness
caused by the programs being male-dominant; as a result, a majority of the female students
would unconsciously be drawn to the programs where there were more female students so that
there would be that social belongingness (Tellhed, et al., 2017).
WOMEN IN STEM 8

Diekman, Brown, Johnston, and Clark (2017) researched whether “communal-goal
affordances are perceived to differ between STEM and other careers, and…whether communal-
goal endorsements inhibits STEM interest, given consensual beliefs about the goals these careers
afford,” where communal was defined as working with or helping other people (p. 1052). They
used a side-by-side comparison study between “333 introductory psychology students (193
women, 140 men)…and 27 paid participants (14 women, 13 men) from STEM classes”
(Diekman et al., 2017, p. 1052). The study found that the higher the communal goals, the less
interested individuals are in pursuing STEM as “STEM careers are perceived as inhibiting
communal goals” (Diekman et al., 2017, p. 1056).
Organization of the Study
For this research, the study will be organized by first describing what Patton and
associates (2016) describe as the “social-cognitive theory of gender identity development” to
give further background information on the influences that surround one’s ability to persevere in
a certain field. It will then transition into the method of research this study will use to gather data
to provide responses for the research questions as stated above. Finally, the data gathered from
the study will be analyzed and related to this research as a whole with concluding details.

WOMEN IN STEM 9

Chapter 2: Literature Review
In this chapter, I will be introducing issues that surround and potentially contribute to the
lack of persistence in women to complete their STEM-related course plan in order to transfer as a
STEM major. The major topics that will be discussed are: preconceived notions of gender roles,
identity crises for women, academic climate within STEM programs, and the amount of and the
differences in social status between men and women in STEM-related majors and professions.
These topics are all related to Bandura’s social cognitive theory, and this chapter will be
sectioned off into the three parts of the theory that contribute to self-efficacy and gender identity
development: personal, behavioral, and environmental. Figure 1, below, represents Bandura’s
social cognitive theory in diagram form as a visual guide to how personal, behavioral, and
environmental beliefs and factors relate to one another and affect the individual’s level of self-
efficacy by creating a balance.

WOMEN IN STEM 10

Theoretical Diagram

Figure 1. Theoretical diagram of Bandura’s social cognitive self-efficacy theory (Zimmerman,
1990, p. 191)
Overview
Although the number of women majoring in STEM programs at the community college
level has encouragingly increased since previous decades, the gap between the success and
completion of women and those of their male counterparts still has yet to see a bridge being
formed (Hill, Corbett, & St. Rose, 2010). Researchers have taken notice of this odd and
continuing trend and have opted to delve into their own studies on why there is the lack of
persistence in women in STEM when compared to the high persistence rates in men in STEM.
To structure a reason for the lack of persistence, this chapter has been set up around
Bussey and Bandura’s (1999) social-cognitive theory of gender identity development (Patton,
WOMEN IN STEM 11

Renn, Guido, & Quaye, 2016). This theory takes into account three parts that make up gender
identity and ultimately give reasoning to the lack of tenacity in women in STEM: personal,
behavioral, and environmental (Patton et al., 2016).
Gender Identity Development: Personal
According to Patton and associates (2016), the personal factor of gender identity is
comprised of components that include factors such as: biological characteristics, self-concept,
self-perception, and regulation. How a woman sees herself as she is gives way to developing a
conscience that influences her own decision-making factors and thus her ability and, more
importantly, her willingness to persist and succeed. In STEM fields—more specifically in the
technology and engineering components—where, universally, the number of men dominate the
number of women, a majority of the women undergo an identity conflict, whether it be
subconsciously or consciously; Tate and Linn (2005) have found that students’ images of
themselves in their future careers are influenced by multiple factors including role models, and
social environment and experiences.
It has become a traditionally accepted matter that men were to take on occupations and
careers related to power and leadership whereas women were to take on occupations and careers
that revolved around being caregivers; because of this, gender roles related “men with agency
and women with communion” (Stout, Grunberg, & Ito, 2016, p. 491). Because of these gender
roles, women end up feeling more at ease when they select a career path that matches to what is
expected of them (Stout et al., 2016). It is this feeling of complacency when choosing to settle
for a career that is expected of women that women are acting as their own barrier and holding
themselves back from their own potential to strive and succeed towards an occupation that can
offer more benefits in all aspects (DiDonato & Strough, 2013). Through their research and
WOMEN IN STEM 12

findings, Hill and associates (2010) discovered that self-assessment—“how we view our own
abilities”—is one of the critical areas that affect girls by limiting their “interest in mathematics
and mathematically challenging careers,” and they have found that although the girls had the
same achievements in math as the boys, they assessed their mathematical abilities lower than the
boys’ (p. xv). From the findings that are discussed above, it can be inferred that while women
have as much potential as men to succeed and have a career through technology and engineering,
a majority of them have the self-perception to rather excel in a major that is geared toward
women because they assess their achievements in technology and engineering-related fields as
lower than they really are.
For the women who do choose to break the barriers and enter the STEM program in
technology or engineering, they face the inner clash of their identity because the “threat of being
judged or treated stereotypically adds pressure and may lead students to underperform
academically” (Tate & Linn, 2005, p. 484). The learning and workforce climates in the STEM
fields make it inevitable for the women in these programs to enter these pathways with a
negative regard to themselves that is caused by the clash in their two types of identities: identity
as a women and identity as a programmer, engineer and such (Settles, O’Connor, & Yap, 2016).
Women in STEM are indeed able to develop their identities as both women and STEM
practitioner, but lack the psychological ability to combine or mesh the two identities together
(Settles et al., 2016). Settles and associates (2016) introduce the gender regard concept to explain
the disparity of the identity crisis that women undergo in two parts: the Gender Private Regard
and the Gender Public Regard. The Gender Private Regard is a woman’s methodological
thinking and self-concept of what it means to be a woman, and the Gender Public Regard is how
a woman believes other people view women in a positive light (Settles et al., 2016). It is because
WOMEN IN STEM 13

of this that women have difficulty meshing the two separate identities into one. They tend to be
more concerned with how they are supposed to act and be rather than with how they want to be
without inhibitions. Instead, most women have accepted that only certain people should
participate in STEM programs, which has inadvertently impacted their undergraduate years in a
negative manner (Varma, 2010).
Gender Identity Development: Behavioral
The second component to the social-cognitive theory of gender identity development
deals with behavioral factors which are simply gender-related activity patterns (Patton et al.,
2016).
By segregating what is constituted as proper for men and proper for women, a divide is
formed in which both parties refuse or are hesitant to cross onto the other side for fear of
breaking normality. DiDonato and Strough (2013) explain that the gap between the number of
women and men in differing career fields is caused by having those occupations labeled as
“women’s jobs” or “men’s jobs.” In doing so provides a reason for why women have shied away
from or left the STEM programs all together. Stout et al.’s (2016) research indicates that women
tend to “dis-identify with, avoid, or drop out of” (p. 491) STEM programs in which the number
of male students exceed the number of female students. Settles et al. (2016) found that STEM-
related traits such as “being objective, rational, and single-minded” (p. 489) are seen to be more
revolved around the traits of men than women, and so women who lack these kind of traits will
find it challenging to blend into a male-dominated field of study. A majority of women have
come to find being in a most-male dominant field of study to be intimidating to persist in, and as
such have created the widening gap in between the number of women and men who move on to
obtain careers in the male-dominated field.
WOMEN IN STEM 14

The effects of the gender-related behaviors can be seen as starting from even before
students reach the undergraduate level which negatively impacts the female students’ decisions
on selecting a field of study. From as far back as middle school, it has been reported that female
students do not score as well as their male classmates in science and mathematics, thus causing
female students to report having less confidence and aspiration to approach those fields of study
(Dasgupta & Stout, 2014). However, even though there has been evidence of female students
scoring just as well or even higher than their male classmates on courses and exams related to
STEM, they still avoid entering the STEM field mainly because of a lack of interest where
otherwise their talents could have them being the next generation of “scientists, engineers, and
creators of technology” (Dasgupta & Stout, 2014, p. 22). To explain this phenomena, DiDonato
and Strough (2013) discovered that a majority of students’ decisions to study and enter their
preferred major and career path has been based on how their career choice closely matches what
is expected of them as either male or female. Given that it is clear that female students show that
they have the aptitude to succeed in STEM-related fields, what hinders and deters them away
from these fields is the fear and the understanding of what they, as females, should major in and
find careers in. Because of how female and male students believe to be the role of their
respective genders and how they see what it is to act as female or male, the potential to excel in
the more rigorous and challenging STEM programs will always remain a dormant trait in these
bright young women.
In discovering and deciding what majors to study in college, students tend to see career
paths by the career’s values; as students grow older and progress in grade levels, both male and
female students begin to realize what they value more when in search of a career path to select,
and during this process is when both genders’ priority of values begin to show and separate into
WOMEN IN STEM 15

either gender: males value “money, power achievement, challenge and risk taking” where
females “emphasize altruism, interpersonal orientation, family time, and knowledge
development” (Dasgupta & Stout, 2014, p. 23). Marra, Rodgers, Shen, and Bogue (2009)
discovered that through multiple interviews with both male and female students about what
contributes to their persistence, the male students valued mastery experience and the female
students value “verbal persuasion and vicarious experiences” (p. 29). It is unclear why or how
their values came to be for each gender, but here it is clearly depicted that not only have careers
been segregated into male-oriented and female-oriented, but the values that have been instilled
within both male and female students have also taken on a male-centered and female-centered
factor as well.
Gender Identity Development: Environmental
The third and most important component in gender identity development through social-
cognition is the environment components which, other than families and peers, includes:
educational settings, media, and digital contexts (Patton et al., 2016).
Although there has been an increasing trend of more women and men entering STEM
programs in their undergraduate careers, the professional pathways are still regarded to be gender
segregated and still hold gender stereotypes (DiDonato & Strough, 2013). Programmers,
engineers, and scientists, to list a few, are still widely held to be men’s careers whereas
educators, nurses, and anything remotely resembling giving care with human interactions are
considered and seen to be women’s careers. And as a result of these gender-specific majors,
engineering is viewed as more of a men’s major and liberal arts is viewed as more of a women’s
major (DiDonato & Strough, 2013). Partially to blame for segregating different occupations by
gender is the media and the lack of gender diversity in school faculty regarding the STEM
WOMEN IN STEM 16

majors (Stout, Grunberg & Ito, 2016). As there are conventionally and overwhelming large
amounts of male professors and faculty members than there are of female within STEM majors
at the university levels, this discrepancy sends a subtle and yet physical message to all students
that STEM is a male-oriented field of study. And because of this, female students will
unconsciously be inclined to become intimated and be ambiguous in deciding whether or not to
pursue a career that is STEM-related.
It also does not help that STEM environments present male-attributed qualities like
having an aggressive and competitive nature; as a result of being compliant to what is held as
male-attributed qualities, women have been consequently excluded and isolated and have been
on the receiving end of negative treatment by their male peers (Settles et al., 2016).
Subsequently, having women in STEM majors studying in this kind of cold and negative
environment negatively affects them psychologically by causing them to think that they are not
performing as well as their other peers are performing (Settles et al., 2016). The academic
climate and environment of STEM majors that cater more towards and are dominated by mostly
male students who carry the competitive aggression values make it extremely difficult for
women to blend in and excel in STEM fields. It also acts to deter women from entering STEM
fields as well which well explains the detrimental difference in numbers between men and
women in professional fields. Women’s hesitation to go into STEM majors comes from the
influences they received from their schooling.
Because teachers and parents are who girls and young women are influenced by growing
up, it is inevitable that the values that these teachers and parents grew up with and have not
altered from previous generations will be transferred to the girls and women of the newer
generation. In terms of how STEM majors and careers are viewed, the teachers’ and parents’
WOMEN IN STEM 17

gender-stereotype on who fits those majors transfers to girls and play a critical role in shaping
the girls’ attitudes and interests in regards to those majors (Shapiro & Williams, 2012). Shapiro
and Williams (2012) also found that teachers who hold the gender stereotypes towards STEM
fields and majors treat their students in accordance to those stereotypes which can negatively
impact a female student’s confidence in her own abilities within those STEM subjects. By
creating this invisible divide amongst peers of both sexes, parents and teachers are forcing their
daughters and female students to believe that they themselves are meant to pursue a less logical
field such as liberal arts and cages them into forcing them on any path that is not STEM, even
when these daughters and female students perform at the same level if not above their male
peers.
So what exactly happens in girls’ K-12 educational environment that has been affecting
their decisions into deterring away from STEM majors upon entering a university? Stout,
Dasgupta, Hunsinger, and McManus (2011) discovered that differing expectations have already
been placed into effect for girls and boys separately starting as early as their elementary school
years and each had different methods of defining success; girls were expected to find success
through much effort and hard work whereas boys were expected to succeed through their natural
talent. Already here we are seeing that boys are naturally presumed to develop or have started to
hone in on talents regarding the STEM fields, and yet girls are merely expected to just work hard
and give studying their best. This disparity in expectations imposed at such a young age is the
start of diminishing girls’ self-confidence in their ability to do well in STEM-related fields. It
makes girls already presume that they do not have the same talents that boys do. Dasgupta and
Stout (2014) asserted that parents play a critical role in the stereotype threat towards females in
regards to STEM; by encouraging sons more than daughters to engage in activities regarding the
WOMEN IN STEM 18

STEM pathways, it is inevitable that more men than women will be more inclined to go the
STEM-route. So when these students enter middle and high school where they are introduced to
different types of subjects such as robotics and computer programming or computer science,
students—especially the female students—find that there is a lack of recognition of female
STEM professionals within the given curriculum textbooks for the STEM courses which only
serves as yet another reminder that STEM is indeed a male-dominated field; and because of this,
women become less interested in going into STEM fields (Stout et al., 2011; Shapiro &
Williams, 2012). To combine this discovery with middle and high school teachers imposing their
gender stereotypical beliefs regarding STEM onto female students puts female students at risk
for self-as-source stereotype threats; for the purpose of this research, stereotype threat is defined
as “being at risk of confirming, as self-characteristic, a negative stereotype about one’s group”
(Shapiro & Williams, 2012; Steele & Aronson, 1995). In the educational environment, the source
of negative influence on female students comes from every corner turned. It is not limited to
solely just the educators but extends to all aspects of education. Having people within the
education field who are closed-minded about differing opinions of who does and does not belong
or fit into STEM programs simply hurts not only the female students who have the potential to
excel in STEM but also to STEM professionals and researchers who are looking for answers and
ways to reduce the large gap between the number of men and women in those professions. And
these constant negative influences on female students that cause them to deter from STEM fields
only succeeds in diminishing their self-efficacy; in this research, self-efficacy is defined as a
student’s persistence and confidence in herself in order to achieve or accomplish goals or
challenges (Bandura, 1997).
WOMEN IN STEM 19

It is because of these negative influences in female students’ K-12 education that the lack
of women in STEM fields becomes inevitable. Tellhed, Bäckström, and Björklund (2017) have
found that self-efficacy greatly affects female students’ interest in STEM fields and careers, and
because of the negative influences and gender stereotypes that these students have faced in their
K-12 education, their level of self-efficacy has significantly dropped which has led these students
to have become less interested in going into STEM fields than male students. Along with gender
stereotypes, students in their adolescent years become increasingly concerned with belonging in
the social group and plays a part in making important career choices; so the fact that STEM
climates have been notorious for being male-dominated and aggressive, female students will
have an increasingly difficult time finding a way to connect or fit in with their male peers
(Tellhed et al., 2017). By creating environments that make it extremely difficult for entering
female college students to feel as if they belong with their peers, their levels of self-efficacy will
dwindle and eventually many if not most will end up unable to continue within the STEM
programs.
What needs to be researched in the present is what methods are available to potentially
make STEM fields of study more welcoming for interested female students. Stout, et al. (2011)
have found that exposing female students to more successful female figures within the STEM
professions may help to increase female students’ self-efficacy and self-identification with
STEM and bring about positive attitudes that can help motivate them to pursue a career in the
STEM fields. Shapiro and Williams (2012) have discovered that women experiencing stereotype
threat through television commercials and other forms of advertisement where men were seen as
successful STEM professionals were less likely to be interested in pursuing “quantitative majors
and career paths” in STEM and more interested in career paths that have plenty of women
WOMEN IN STEM 20

figures such as journalism, television anchor, and even writer. A solution that would be viable to
increase female students’ interest and inclination to study in the STEM programs would be to
provide as many female role models who already work in the STEM profession industry through
different vices such as: media, textbooks, and guest lectures to name a few. The point is that
female students need to be as exposed to female STEM figures as much as male students are
exposed to male STEM figures in order to create that drive and sense of belonging that women
do indeed fit in the STEM field, that it is not just an industry for males only. This includes
increasing the gender diversity of STEM faculty members as well; by showing students more
female professors in STEM majors, especially in the technology and engineering field, more
female students will be able to build up their self-efficacy and have someone to relate to gender-
wise because they physically see that STEM is not completely male-dominated and it does not
have to be.

WOMEN IN STEM 21

Chapter 3: Methodology
Overview
The purpose of conducting the survey and several interviews with female STEM students
was to determine their levels of self-efficacy as well as their level of confidence on whether or
not they believe they will end up transferring and graduating with a degree in STEM and moving
onto a STEM-related profession. Another purpose for conducting research in this manner was to
analyze the academic environment and climate that these women are studying in; because STEM
is a male-dominated field, I wanted to research into how these women were being treated by
their male peers and faculty members that may or may not inadvertently lead them to develop
doubt on their own abilities to succeed within STEM.
I also came to understand the social, environmental, and personal pressures these women
are under. In doing so, I was able to corroborate a connection between the three types of
influences and pressures and the self-efficacy levels of these women in STEM. If they felt like
they could transfer and graduate with a degree in STEM, I wanted to find out why. If they felt
like they wanted to switch out of STEM to a more gender-appropriate major, I wanted to find out
what was contributing to this negative mentality.
This research will follow the following matrix:

WOMEN IN STEM 22

Theoretical Framework Alignment Matrix
Research Questions Theoretical
Framework
Data Instrument
Question
Q1. What factors contribute to the
low and/or high levels of self-
efficacy in female students in
STEM?
Social-Cognitive
Theory of Gender
Identity Development
(Bussey & Bandura,
1999)
Interview Questions:
3-7
(see Appendix C)

Q2. What are the levels of
confidence in female STEM
students in their abilities to
persevere in their selected STEM
program?
Social-Cognitive
Theory of Gender
Identity Development
(Bussey & Bandura,
1999)
Interview Questions:
6-6.c.
(see Appendix C)
Survey Questions: 15-
48
(see Appendix A)
Q3. How does being in a typically
male-dominated field of study affect
the female STEM students’ attitudes
towards their own confidence and
abilities before and entering STEM?
Social-Cognitive
Theory of Gender
Identity Development
(Bussey & Bandura,
1999)
Interview Questions:
5-6, 8
Survey Questions:
28,34
Q4. What factors influenced female
STEM students to pursue a STEM
field of study prior to entering
community college?
Social-Cognitive
Theory of Gender
Identity Development
(Bussey & Bandura,
1999)
Interview Questions:
3-4
Demographic Questions Interview Questions: 1
Survey Questions:
Demographic Page

For Q1, the interview questions used from Appendix C revolve around understanding the
outside influences of the participant and how it affected her, whether it did or not, in a positive or
negative manner. The questions ask how the participant came to pursue engineering in the first
place and the types of responses they have received from others (such as friends, family, and
teachers) and from society and their culture in general. The questions also touch upon how the
participant currently feels—both in terms of confidence and emotion—about being a current
engineering student (Appendix C).
WOMEN IN STEM 23

For Q2, the interview questions used determine the participant’s current emotions and
beliefs about pursuing engineering. In the survey portion that correlates heavily to this research
question, each of the statements used fall into one of six categories that determine levels of self-
efficacy and confidence in engineering: engineering career success expectations, engineering
self-efficacy I&II, feeling of inclusion, coping self-efficacy, and math outcome expectations
(Appendix A).
For Q3, the interview questions give participants a chance to share their experiences of
how others see them in a male-dominant field of study and how they see themselves in this field
as well based on the opinions of others and their opinions of themselves (Appendix C). In the
survey, there are two questions that ask how confident the participants are about collaborating in
the engineering industry career with their male coworkers (Appendix A).
Lastly, for Q4, the interview questions used allow the participants to share the different
experiences that led up to them deciding to pursue engineering in higher education (Appendix
C).
Research Design
Heyne and his associates (1998) created for their research a questionnaire that would help
them determine the levels of self-efficacy in the academic environment by separating self-
efficacy into two separate stress categories: academic and social stress, and separation and
discipline stress. Sherer and his associates (1982) also created a similar questionnaire regarding
self-efficacy but focused on the traits of the taker in general. Similarly, yet on the qualitative
side, Hutchison-Green, Follman, and Bodner (2008) had used for their own research to determine
the personal levels of self-efficacy of women in the technology and engineering programs. Marra
WOMEN IN STEM 24

and Bogue (2006) designed their research using a questionnaire that uses questions to determine
the taker’s level of self-efficacy to determine the levels of self-efficacy within female
engineering students over a specified time period. For the survey portion, I will be using AWE’s
(Assessing Women and men in Engineering) Longitudinal Assessment of Engineering Self-
Efficacy (LAESE) that Marra and Bogue (2006) had used in their research in order to determine
the levels of self-efficacy within female STEM students in the engineering field at the
community college level.
With the data obtained from the questionnaire, I was able to have a better understanding
of the low and/or high levels of persistence and self-efficacy among current technology and
engineering women students. The data that assisted in answering the research questions as stated
earlier was the ranking each student had given in response to the survey questions that had asked
them about their self-efficacy and persistence levels as well as the influences and support they
currently receive from both the academic and familial setting. Regarding the survey, each of the
subscale—or different categories for self-efficacy in engineering—as found in Appendix B has a
Chronbach’s alpha (the value or reliability of the subscale) as follows:

WOMEN IN STEM 25

Table 1
Chronbach’s Alpha for the AWE Survey
Subscales Number of
Items
Chronbach’s
Alpha
Engineering Career Success Expectations 7 .84
Engineering Self-Efficacy I 5 .82
Engineering Self-Efficacy II 6 .82
Feeling of Inclusion 4 .73
Coping Self-Efficacy 6 .78
Math Outcome Expectations 3 .84

As stated in their research, Marra and Bogue (2006) were limited in their studies by the
lack of qualitative assessments and data. In order to provide a stronger foundation to their
research, I conducted interviews with students in STEM based on the questionnaire that Zeldin,
Britner, and Parajes (2008) had used for their research on the self-efficacy levels of successful
men and women in STEM as found in Appendix C. The qualitative instrument used contains
nine questions with three sub-questions, all of which are open-ended except for the first
demographic question. With this qualitative assessment, I was able to learn the different
contributors for the high or low levels of self-efficacy within women, how they came to be
engineering students in the beginning, and what it was or currently is like to be a woman in a
typically male-dominated field of study by listening to their experiences from both inside and
outside of the classroom as female engineering students at the community college level.

WOMEN IN STEM 26

Method
Site Selection
For the purpose of this research, the research was conducted at the College of Western
Lakewood (pseudonym in place of the actual research site), a two-year community college
within the Los Angeles County in California. Because the research was focused on female
students in STEM at the two-year community college level, emphasizing towards engineering, I
believed the strong STEM program at the College of Western Lakewood had the academic
climate and population that I was aiming to work with.
The research site has 53.1% female students and 44.7% male students total. Within the
total population, 3.46% identify as African-American, 0.16% identify as American Indian and
Alaskan, 18.64% identify as Asian, 54.73% identify as Latino, 2.54% identify as Multi-Ethnic,
3.62% identify as Pacific Islander/Filipino, 10.86% identify as White Non-Hispanic, and 6.00%
identify as Unknown.
Participant Selection
The main participants for this research were female students in the engineering programs
at the College of Western Lakewood. More specifically, I was looking to work with and survey
female engineering students in all years and of all backgrounds and ethnicity. This is because I
wanted to observe the difference in self-efficacy and personal motivational factors and beliefs
among all levels of female engineering students. For example, the motivational factors and self-
efficacy levels may be different for a fourth-year student compared to a second-year student. I
also wanted to observe how females from various backgrounds were affected or influenced by
their culture in their decisions to pursue engineering.
WOMEN IN STEM 27

In selecting participants to conduct the research, I used a random sample approach so that
all female engineering students who were from different backgrounds had the same amount of
chances of being selected to participate in the study (Creswell, 2014). Any female engineering
student who was willing to participate in the study was accepted. Female engineering students
could be suggested or recommended by an advisor at the campus to participate in the study in
which case I contacted them to invite them to participate. This was to ensure that the validity and
consistency of having only female engineering students participate in the study that had been
designed to determine levels of self-efficacy in female engineering students.
This study was conducted during the summer semester at the research site. The
participants who volunteered their time to do both the interview and survey were recommended
to me by the site’s STEM counselor.
Type of Data Collection
For this research, I used a mixed methods approach. For the purpose of this research, the
mixed methods approach is defined as the “collection of both qualitative (open-ended) and
quantitative (closed-ended) data in response to research questions or hypotheses” (Creswell,
2014, p. 217). By agreeing to participate as stated in Appendix D under “Participant
Involvement,” students agreed that they were at least eighteen years-old at the time the interview
and survey were conducted. I gave the questionnaire to and conducted interviews with female
students from all the different types of engineering programs regardless of level. Each female
student who participated completed both the survey and the interview. Each student who
volunteered for the study sat in a one-on-one interview with me in private, and for each student
who participated, I emailed her the survey that was to be completed at home and sent back to me
upon completion.
WOMEN IN STEM 28

On the quantitative side of the research, I implemented a questionnaire that numerically
measured the taker’s self-efficacy. The survey that was used is from the Assessing Women and
Men in Engineering (AWE) in partnership with the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) and was
developed by both the Pennsylvania State University and the University of Missouri. The survey
determined the levels of self-efficacy through six subcategories: the engineering career success
expectations, engineering self-efficacy I & II, feeling of inclusion, coping self-efficacy, and math
outcome expectations (Appendix B).
The purpose of the survey was primarily to create inferences with solid evidence about
the attitude and behavior of the female population in STEM regarding the disparities in gender
differences within the engineering field. Because this research was aimed to discover some of the
core reasons for the persistence rates in women of STEM with an emphasis on the engineering
programs, the survey approach for the quantitative-based research was ideal in that there was a
physical score or numerical results that directly revealed the results of the survey questionnaire
and provided concrete conclusions that was comprehensively analyze.
I used the data collection in the form of a survey questionnaire. It was straight-forward
for the participants and critical to a quantitative data analysis and also timely efficient. The
survey was also the most cost-efficient method of conducting the study as the study consisted of
emailing the survey to the participants for them to fill out at home in private before emailing the
completed survey back to me. The only real flaw with going with the survey questionnaire
approach was that there was no room for students to input their opinions or suggestions
regarding the different issues regarding the research. While it may have been helpful to have
their opinions and suggestions, this was ultimately a strict numerical data-based research. It was
also less time-consuming for the students to participate in the research.
WOMEN IN STEM 29

The survey was given in a cross-sectional manner, in that the data was “collected at one
point in time” (Creswell, 2014, p. 157). Because of the amount of time that was given for the
submission of this research, I was not be able to conduct the survey over an extended period of
time to analyze the results from the beginning to the end of the spring term of the college.
Therefore, it was only possible to conduct the survey over a period of three to four weeks at the
college. In this case, it proved to be beneficial and meet the needs of the research as the purpose
of the study was to gather information on the reasons for and behind the persistence rates of
women in the technology and engineering programs.
In regards to the qualitative side of the data, I used the interview questions that Zeldin,
Britner, and Parajes (2008) had used in their research regarding the comparison of self-efficacy
levels and beliefs between men and women in STEM; the wording for some questions were
modified to focus specifically on engineering. The intention for interviewing students as the
qualitative form of data was to conduct “face-to-face interviews with participants…[that] involve
unstructured and generally open-ended questions that are few in number and intended to elicit
views and opinions from the participants” (Creswell, 2014, p. 190). With this approach, the
female students who participated in this study were able to provide their own narrative and
opinions about the climate and influences surrounding the women’s level of self-efficacy within
the STEM programs that could not be determined from the survey alone. As stated by Creswell
(2014), the purpose for using the qualitative approach is to not “generalize findings to
individuals, sites, or places outside of those under study” but to garner detailed data and analysis
based on the levels of self-efficacy of the participants and their responses (p. 203).

WOMEN IN STEM 30

Trustworthiness of Data Collection
In order to ensure the validity of the data that I collected, I, with approval, had the female
students participate in the recorded interview that I transcribed. The students who participated in
the interview also participated in the survey.
Researcher Bias
There was the chance that I unconsciously included my bias regarding the questionnaire
and interview questions and in the analysis after gathering these data. My bias included a strong
empathy and support towards the women in the STEM program. I also found it very
disappointing that male students tend to isolate the female students in these programs, and as a
consequence my data analysis may be skewed to portray my emotions. In order to avoid this
from happening and to avoid potentially discrediting the data I gathered, I consulted with my
chair and requested for her to look over the questions in the questionnaire and interview prior to
my starting the data collection; I also requested for her to look over my analysis as a third-party
perspective to see if there was any evidence or traces of bias within the results and discussions.
Limitations of the Study
One of the limitations of this research was being confined to conducting research at one
community college. There were no other institutions to compare the results to, nor were there
any other STEM programs—specifically engineering—to compare and contrast self-efficacy
levels within the female student population.
Another limitation was the inability to provide a second questionnaire and interview after
a four-year period to create a before-and-after data analysis due to the time constraint and
deadline of this research. Being able to have a second set of data after four years have passed
WOMEN IN STEM 31

would have been able to provide information on how many female students would have either
persisted in STEM or dropped out of the program all together, and I would have been able to find
the students who fit the latter criteria to gather information on what factors had contributed to or
influenced them to stay or leave the STEM program. I would also not be able to follow the
students to their respective institutions that they would be transferring to for the purpose of
monitoring their progress in STEM.

WOMEN IN STEM 32

Chapter 4: Results
Demographics
During the qualitative portion of this study, the participants were asked a series of
questions regarding their experiences, ideas, and thoughts about being a woman in an
engineering major at the community college level.
Six women volunteered to participate in a one-on-one interview. These women were all
within the 20-27 year age range. All six women identified as being of Latina/Hispanic
background.
Table 2
Demographics of Participants
Name* Ethnicity Age Major Grade Level
Jessica Latina/Hispanic 27 Bioengineer Second-Year
Kristin Latina/Hispanic 20 Aerospace Engineer Third-Year
Amelia Latina Dreamer 21 Mechanical Engineer Third-Year
Serena Latina/Hispanic 22 Mechanical Engineer First-Year
Madeline Latina/Hispanic 22 Chemical Engineer N/A**
Arabelle Latina/Hispanic 24 Aerospace Engineer Second-Year
*Names have been changed for confidentiality purposes
**Did not receive survey

WOMEN IN STEM 33

Q1: Levels of Self-Efficacy in Female Engineering Students
Engineering in general is known to be one of the difficult majors to persist in. Some
students are able to motivate themselves purely by interest while others tend to rely on external
factors to remind themselves to continue to work hard to complete their studies. In Jessica’s
experience, she was part of a club for engineering students who were of Hispanic background;
and because they knew her to also be an engineer, they would also know if she were to ever
leave the engineering field to major in something else. She went on to state that,
“[a]ccountability is helpful, and knowing that other people are doing it, too. This person survived
that class, so I can do it, too.” She also emphasized that she had to remind herself that she was
smart enough to be an engineer once a week during term. When asked about her beliefs about
being an engineer, she responded:
People just can’t deny when you have a product that does something good and efficiently
that it’s just better objectively…I think that biomedical engineering also appeals to my
interests in biology and the human body, and how to manipulate those things that we
know in the human body and the things that can work within humans. This idea that
we’re going to manipulate our understanding of the world and the human body and what
is feasible, and we’re gonna work on technology that can help these people have a better
quality of life. That’s what makes me feel like I want to be a part of that, so I think my
beliefs about my major and how invested I am in it help propel me forward when I feel
really dumb.
In the conversation with Kristin, she mentioned that when she began her internship, she
had felt “more confident because there was a lot more girls there and [she] felt like [she] had
more people to relate to.” She also added: “It was more motivational than I thought it would be
WOMEN IN STEM 34

because the engineers there would share their stories and you realize that you’re not alone and
you’re exactly like them and you realize you’re on the right path, so it was comforting.” Being in
the engineering major itself, she said that “[i]t motivates you but then it also scares you, like
‘what if I mess up or what if I can’t make it, what if I can’t be equal to everyone else?’” She
admitted that when was starting out as a new engineering student that she was a bit scared
because she “didn’t know if [she] could do it.” But even though she did have that intimidation
factor, she was “also really motivated to learn more and build more, to see what [she] can do,
like pushing yourself to the next level kind of thing.”
In Amelia’s case, when the rest of her classmates seem to understand the topics that are
being taught but are the topics that she was struggling with, “it [had put her] down and [made
her] think that [she was] not meant to do [engineering].” To counter this negativity, she said:
“But I tell myself I have to struggle to get somewhere, if I’m not struggling, I’m not doing
something right.” When asked about her beliefs of engineering, she offered: “My beliefs is that
there are a lot of bright people, so it’s kind of intimidating. But hearing their stories about their
struggles with the material initially made me feel like I can do this.” She has found that “learning
not to overwhelm [herself] all at once with classes” has been helping her with her confidence of
her being in engineering.
Similarly, Serena had insecurities about herself when she had started her engineering
major, saying, “I was always intimidated saying I was an engineer student and it was hard to tell
people, so I used to just say I was in a science major. I felt that what if I didn’t make it as an
engineer, I didn’t want to say I was an engineer and then switch out of the major.” When asked
about how she felt about being an engineer, she answered:
WOMEN IN STEM 35

It made me feel really good because I like the challenge. I like to learn, so every semester
even though I would fail things, I would still learn. Pursuing engineering gave me a lot of
life lessons and encouragement. Being surrounded by people who would constantly
remind you that made me feel empowered At this moment, I feel so empowered that I can
help people who are going through the same struggles that I had faced. I’m a really
passionate person, so when something makes me happy, I really go hard on it. Recently,
since I gained a lot of confidence, I just make myself more happy. There’s still some
doubt, but as of now I’m content with where I am. It just excites me when I understand
the [engineering] language. It feels nice to speak the different languages of engineering.
When I had asked Madeline about how she felt going into engineering, she replied:
Honestly, I thought I was depressed. When you’re going to school every day, it’s
draining and tiring. But you have friends who help you out and make you feel better. And
remind yourself why you’re doing this and your goals for yourself. In the beginning it
made me question myself whether or not I can do this. It was tough, but I overlooked it
and endured it. It made me feel more prideful of myself that I’m doing a hard major that
not a lot of people can commit to. It makes me feel more accomplished that I could reach
heights that not many others can reach.
Arabelle was positively influenced by her professors. One of her biggest influences was
her former professor who had said that “there’s no rabbits or turtles, it’s just you and your study
habits,” that “everyone can be an engineer, it just takes guts and a lot more effort than a lot of
things.” Arabelle said during the interview that she used the things she had learned in her math,
physics, and engineering classes in real-life, including building her own skateboard currently.
During this conversation, she mentioned that, “Pursuing engineering is hard at first and difficult
WOMEN IN STEM 36

to keep motivated, but at the same time it’s so rewarding. It’s a rewarding feeling when you learn
something and use it in real-life, like when I was wiring things for my car.” One of the things
that helped her persist in engineering was hanging out “with other people who were in the same
field” and sharing the same interests in learning how random, everyday objects are created and
work.
A common theme that was present during the individual interviews with each of these
women was finding the confidence and motivation to persevere in their respective engineering
fields of study through the support of their peers. All six of these women started out in
engineering feeling very similar to each other: intimidated, scared, unsure, doubtful. Through
finding and being part of a community on campus that incorporated all areas of engineering and
promoted a healthy camaraderie and high levels of support and encouragement, these women’s
self-efficacy were raised high enough that now they were confident and sure about identifying
themselves as future engineers.
Q3: The Effect of Being in a Male-Dominated Field of Study
As mentioned previously in chapter two, STEM is highly known for having
predominantly more male students than female; that goes especially for the technology and
engineering fields. As was found in the interviews with each woman, they all expressed the
intimidation factor as being the effect of having been in classes—engineering ones,
specifically—where they were the only woman, if not one of two or three, in a classroom of
roughly fifteen to twenty-five students. However, this was only one of the effects of being in a
male-dominated field of study.
WOMEN IN STEM 37

In Jessica’s experience, there were “only ever three other women in [her] engineering
classes, and that was intimidating” especially in a class of an average of twenty-five to thirty
students, thirteen to fourteen students in the harder classes. She also said that “when you think of
engineer, you think of introverted, very left-brained, generally male,” and that she did not have
the traditional personality nor traits of what she perceived as the typical engineering student. She
also mentioned that one of the challenges that women faced, in general, was putting their ideas
out there. She provided an example by sharing one of her experiences in such a challenge with
me:
I remember this lab I was doing in this group [for an engineering class], and I was paired
with two guys. I was reading the lab instruction and said that we should set it up x-y-z
way, and one of my lab partners disagreed and said that we should do it another way. Our
third lab partner agreed with him, and so we set it up his way, and it turned out that I was
right and that we should have set it up my way. I remember thinking, ‘Of course we
didn’t set it up my way. Of course we’re favoring the way he’s saying how we should set
it up because I am probably wrong.’ And then I asked myself: ‘Why did I think I was
wrong? Why didn’t I advocate more forcefully? Why didn’t I be more vigilant about my
idea and advocate more strongly about my position? Because I was doubting myself
within that team.’ And I thought, ‘That’s dumb.’ I was doubting myself because I thought
he was probably right. I think that a lot of our behaviors [as women] are rooted in what
society tells us about ourselves and what we tell ourselves. I was subconsciously
doubting my right to be in that class with all those people, doubting if I was as smart as
them.
WOMEN IN STEM 38

With Kristin, she found that one of the things that always shocked her “when [she] went
into anything STEM-related was when [she saw] more females,” because in most of her
engineering-based courses, she would “be probably like three or four girls or maybe the only girl
there.” When she mentioned to anyone that she was an aerospace engineering student, people
would respond: “It’s a hard field, it’s a difficult field. Are you sure you want to do it because it’s
hard, it takes a lot of work, it’s something that a lot of girls don’t do.” I asked Kristin what her
feelings were about being an engineering student, and she responded:
I felt like I had to be really smart and really good at building things, being a hardcore
person. Do I have to be really smart or be a really hard worker? An image is created in
their head like, they expected more of a tomboy and more tough, and more strict, and
their idea of what they expect of a boss-lady. Sometimes I feel like I shouldn’t be in
aerospace engineering, especially if I’m around a lot of male peers, especially when we
have group projects. When I took my first physics class, it was hard to get people to listen
to you when you’re the only girl there. The guys are working on how to solve problems,
and you’re trying to give your input, and they’ll scratch it off unless you prove yourself.
Like, if they get it wrong and you get it right, they’ll think: ‘Oh, she knows what she’s
doing.’ They’ll be polite, and you can feel that they’re shoving you to the side a little, and
you have to push yourself to put your word and your input in there. And most of the time
we’re able to, but the other girls I’ve talked to, they don’t want to be pushing because
they don’t want to be seen as bossy or controlling. But as women, we have to be a little
bit harder to be heard a little more. It’s good that you tell people you do engineering,
they’re supportive. But it’s also, they don’t expect you to be there in that field, like it’s
WOMEN IN STEM 39

mostly for the men because it’s tool-related and theory-related, and it’s hard to get
yourself heard in there.
It was because of this experience that Kristin said, “I feel like I have to build an image for
myself, especially with my peers that are in the field. I have to be on the same level or on the
same plane as them so they don’t see me as something less.” When she ended up being the only
girl in her class, she had the pressure to be twice as good as her male peers for the fear of being
left behind, and if she became left behind, then she felt like it “took away [her] credibility in a
way.”
Amelia was also in many of her classes the only female student among her male
classmates. When she was taking her robotics course, her professor “would put the female
students to work on posters while the male students were assigned to work on the robots; even if
[professors do not] mean it, they bring you down because they assume that women can’t do it.”
She even had an encounter with a male classmate who explained to her about the glass-ceiling
theory for women and even told her that “it’s a good thing that there’s the glass ceiling because
women don’t need to strive that far because they need to have families that they need to provide
for.” His words had the opposite effect on Amelia, as she became even more motivated to do
well as an engineer because she wanted to prove him wrong.
One of the first things Serena had said was that she was once told by a professor that she
would be better off as a social worker when she had failed his physics class. Even when she told
other people that she was a mechanical engineering student, she would often get negative or
doubtful vibes from them. Some people would even try and “test [her] knowledge because they
doubted [her].” She said, “They would ask me about certain topics and theories in physics and
math, and I was just starting out in the major, so I didn’t know much, and it was really weird. It
WOMEN IN STEM 40

made me doubt myself, like am I expected to know that much already?” She also mentioned that
the ones who were asking her these kinds of questions were men who were both in and outside
the engineering field. Even in her family, she encountered another struggle. She stated, “I have
an uncle who’s an engineer, but he never offered to help me. They don’t mean to be rude. They
think that’s not a place for a girl to be because it’s a guy’s place.” Her experience highlighted a
key issue with society playing a critical role in determining what careers suit one gender over the
other.
Madeline shared with me one of her friend’s experience at a conference:
My friends said at the conference there were a lot of old, white, male, dominant people.
My friend at the national conference was interviewing for a position at the civil
engineering company and said that the guy who was interviewing her said to her, ‘Are
you ever going to have a family or children? Because I don’t think this internship or job
is for you.’ Even though she wasn’t planning on starting a family any time soon, he said,
‘Well, we’ll see.’ And she didn’t get the position.
Madeline also learned that not a lot of female Latinas pursue STEM as careers. Her father was
not very supportive or did not know how to support her in her career path as a chemical engineer
because it was not typical for a woman of her background to be in STEM.
Arabelle offered: “I feel like I see fewer women because one, the classes are very
challenging, and two, the classes are taught by a male.” She mentioned that she had attended a
conference where there was a discussion about the intimidation of being one of very few women
in a male-dominated field, and one of the things that was talked about was that the men in the
engineering field “don’t tell you when they have questions. They may be failing a test, but they
WOMEN IN STEM 41

like to brag. Nobody ever talks about their struggles. Ever.” On a related note, Arabelle shared
her experience with me of her involvement in the school’s Rocket Club when she had first
joined:
There were only two girls (including myself) in the club. Even then, you have to make
sure that the people you’re working with get the message that you’re there for reals.
You’re not there to joke around. I’m there to learn, I’m there to make this club
successful. I had to show and prove myself when a lot of guys don’t get questioned if
they’re smart or if they know how to use the tools. The guys were good, but I could tell it
was different in the air. It wasn’t said, it was understood that I didn’t know much back
then. You could tell that was a message that was untold, like ‘are you sure you want to do
this, are you sure you want to get your hands dirty building this from scratch?’ I had to
prove that I was capable of doing the same stuff as they were. Obviously, when a new
girl comes in and she has pink earmuffs and no tools, they would be questioning her
skills. In the beginning, there were a lot of mansplaining about the little things that I
already and knew and done previous, but I mostly just listened and paid attention to what
they had to say. All the guys were nice, but sometimes they were too nice to the point
where they would handle most of the things. It wasn’t until much later that they realized
that I could contribute to the club and knew my capabilities when they started assigning
me things to do…I was a little uncomfortable at first, but most of them took me under
their wings and taught me everything they knew when I asked. We just became a giant
family and they don’t see me as a girl; they just see me as Arabelle.
After speaking with each of these women, a common theme that arose from all their
narratives and experiences that they had shared with me was that they all had to prove their
WOMEN IN STEM 42

worth or their right to be and be called an engineering student. These women have all
demonstrated that they had the capabilities to strive and to succeed in their respective branches
of engineering, and yet to get to where they were as of current, they felt that they had to work
twice as hard to be acknowledged and to have their voices heard, even in small group projects
where collaboration and sharing ideas are key to understanding and progressing.
Q4: Factors that Influenced Female STEM Students to Pursue Their Major
Unlike the rest of the students where they had started college after high school, Jessica
had explored another career option before deciding to come back to college to pursue
engineering. When I had asked her about why she made the career change and the choice to
pursue engineering, she answered: “I would be lying if I said practicality wasn’t a big factor
because I am an older student. As you get older, you realize what things are important in a job
environment [and so] when I think about what I want out of a job, what I perceive to be true
about engineering, it can provide a lot of those things for me: intellectual satisfaction, security,
predictability.” She also stated that her general physics class and professor were what had
opened her path to engineering. She said, “It gave me confidence having that first introductory
class rolling into the engineering-physics class.” While the class itself was quite easier than the
next series of engineering-physics courses and did not adequately prepare her for the rigor of the
harder physics courses, Jessica emphasized: “Sometimes you need those introductory classes to
be a little more accessible to give you confidence. I wasn’t as prepared as my other classmates
who had the hard professors for introductory physics, but I did feel a level of preparation in that I
had the confidence to come in and tackle these hard topics.”
Kristin, on the other hand, was always interested in seeing things fly from a young age.
She shared with me her story:
WOMEN IN STEM 43

I was twelve years-old. My parents took me to an Air Show that was consisted of people
flying old WWII planes, so you see all these pilots, these people in the military, veterans.
I got the experience to walk into [a plane] and see how huge these things were and how
they were flying so efficiently. Something called out to me and I really wanted to do it. I
just remember going up to the front and leaving my parents behind, and I really wanted to
fly this, and when they would fly it, that was amazing. And if I could fly it and if I could
build it, then that would be ten times more amazing. Seeing them fly, seeing them half-
built, half-developed, being refurbished, seeing the pilots and hearing them talk about
their experience made me really passionate about wanting to know more about them and
so I started getting deeper and deeper into the field and learned more about space and
shuttles, and I really wanted to do it. That was the moment I realized I wanted to do
aerospace engineering.
She also shared with me that her dad played a key role at an early age in influencing her to
pursue engineering by spending time together with him, whether it was working on his truck or
watching shows that explain how things are made. Because he liked math and originally wanted
to pursue engineering himself, Kristin felt like engineering was “something that [she] can share
with [her] dad, too.”
In Amelia’s case, she decided to pursue engineering because some of her family members
in Mexico were engineers. She shared with me: “My dad used to follow a career in civil
engineering but had to give it up because I was born; he couldn’t go to school, work, and take
care of a child. So, I felt I had to follow my dad’s path to go into civil engineering. My cousins
were studying to be engineers, so I got to see what engineering was and I wanted to do it. When
they tell me their experiences as engineers, it makes me want to do what they’re doing.” She
WOMEN IN STEM 44

made the decision to pursue engineering in high school because she “wanted to do something
that was difficult that [she] can overcome because [everyone] only lived once. [She] wanted
something different, more exciting.”
When Serena said that she came to the United States in her high school years, she
explained: “my first boyfriend was going into engineering, and I thought that the word
engineering sounded cool and I did it research on it. It sounded really interesting.” She started
out in college as a business major, but when she thought about engineering while switching
majors, she told me: “I thought it sounded cool and I thought the objective of create and innovate
was what I wanted to do.”
Similarly, Madeline said that she was influenced by friends who she met in a program for
first-generation students on campus. Her friend encouraged her to do engineering, and “it was the
first time [she] had ever heard of engineering.” She did say confidently: “The friends I made here
really encouraged me to be an engineer. If I didn’t meet them, I would have remained as a
biochemistry major.”
Arabelle was introduced to engineering through her mother. When I asked how she came
to be an engineering student, she said that she had taken a career aptitude test back in high
school. “I always got placed as a teacher or lawyer or something weird, but I’ve never been
interested in any of those things,” she said in our interview with a laugh, “Then my mom
mentioned that engineering was one of the top grossing [careers]. She said I was good at science.
[Eventually] I really wanted to do it…for the love of science they have because you have to be
able to master physics, chemistry, and math all together in this broad subject that is engineering.”
WOMEN IN STEM 45

As I spoke with each of these women, a majority of them had only ever heard of the
engineering field by word of mouth when they had just started college. It is fortunate for women
similar to Kristin and Amelia who had been surrounded by the aspects of engineering at such a
young age and had been influenced and encouraged by their families to pursue such a rigorous
course of study. It is important to point out that during each of these interviews, none of these
women mentioned being exposed to the engineering field nor being introduced nor encouraged
to pursue such a field of study by any of their teachers in their K-12 years.
Why Do So Few Women Pursue Engineering-Related Careers? What Should be Done to
Alter That? (Added Question)
Jessica looked very serious and pensive as she answered this question. “I think this is one
of the hardest questions,” she began, then continued, “Women, because of being historically
underrepresented in the field, need more encouragement that they can do it…[because] we are, as
people, very susceptible and influenced by the way people see us and the way they believe in
us.” She also mentioned having more female figures in the field. “My engineering-physics
professor, even seeing her, one of the best professors I’ve ever had, I was like, ‘That’s what a
physicist looks like.’ Having more models and role models and mentorship, I think that’s what
people think. Seeing other people who look like you do well makes you think that you can also
do well.”
Kristin’s suggestions result from her experience earlier on. “In my school, we didn’t have
any engineering programs in high school. Especially growing up, all the schools I’ve gone to,
there wasn’t much exposure, no workshops or classes…So I feel like, growing up, we’re not
really exposed to it very much, at least I wasn’t until I got into college when I started looking
into engineering. That’s one thing that doesn’t motivate women to go into engineering because
WOMEN IN STEM 46

they aren’t exposed to it in the first place. It’s that lack of exposure in the early stages that
doesn’t call out to girls to be engineers,” she explained. When I asked her what she thought
should be done to change that negativity and the low numbers of women in the field, she shared:
I would say schools offering more classes like [engineering] and pushing girls to try
engineering. Even family members, like if they see their daughter being a little different
from the rest of the girls, like if she doesn’t want to play with dolls but she really likes to
build things together or figure things out, to push them to engineering to see if they like it
or give them a book to read about it, or even hands-on mother-daughter or father-
daughter…build something together to see if they like it, or even schools offering more
engineering workshops because you don’t see that a lot nowadays. Learning about tools
and how things work, it would be nice to see schools offer things like that and motivate
girls to do it. When I see girls get into it, they’re really good at it. Motivating them to do
different things.
Similarly, Amelia said, “Bringing more women programs in high and middle schools.” She then
began giving her own perspective from her personal experience. “I did not know about
engineering at all. In my high school, we didn’t have any engineering programs. We need more
of those programs in the poor communities, because it could encourage women to join the field.”
Amelia, who had been smiling the whole time, looked very critical as she said, “Women need to
be told that they can do engineering, that it is not a man’s field. Stop putting gender in a field.”
Serena answered in a similar sense to Jessica. “I feel like because there’s not a lot of
mentors,” she answered when I had asked her this question. “You don’t see a lot of women in
STEM, and the women who are in STEM are really busy. Usually professors tell women to do
something other than engineering because we don’t have a lot of exposure, so it’s a chain
WOMEN IN STEM 47

reaction for women who haven’t had a lot of exposure, so it’s a chain reaction for women who
haven’t had a lot of exposure and don’t know what engineering is.” From her personal
experience she shared with me: “Nobody in my life told me I would be good at science. People
told me I would be good as a doctor or in business…if you don’t have [a] representative to
promote STEM, people won’t know.” So when I had asked her what else could be done to better
those situations, one of the things she said to me was, “Helping families understand.” I followed-
up with another question asking her to clarify what she meant. “In the Mexican culture, it’s not
typical for someone to go outside of the comfort zone. It’s very hard for somebody to understand
why I’m at school for so late or staying up until four in the morning studying for exams,” she
answered, then added, “It does take more time and resources to go into the engineering field. For
family-oriented people, it’s a huge thing.”
Madeline answered the question by saying, “I think just because [women] don’t want to
struggle as much and don’t see the end rewards and are unaware of the opportunities out there.
For me, I had a lack of knowledge in high school, I didn’t know anything about college. Things
like that, it hinders women to really get involved more academically in the sciences.” When
asked what should be done, she offered, “Have college students talk about science fields, women
students especially.” She shared an experience of introducing a relative to engineering:
I was introducing my relative to what I was doing and said that I was doing engineering.
Initially she said she wanted to do animal science. A few months later, my mom told me
[my relative] suddenly wanted to do biological engineer after hearing me talk about
engineering. It was eye-opening to see how many women don’t know what engineering
is. I didn’t even know until I came to college. If more people knew what engineering was,
a lot of females would be applying themselves more into it.
WOMEN IN STEM 48

Arabelle, on the other hand, answered that, “It’s not up to us [students], but to the school and the
dean.” When I asked her to elaborate, she replied, “I would like the school to have more tutoring
sessions where they include engineering students as a whole. They have very few physics faculty
who teach, very few tutors out there for engineering majors. There’s not a lot of help for us
engineering students. Unless you seek out a professor, there’s no mentoring around for
engineering students.” Curious, I asked her if she was speaking about women engineers
specifically, and she denied it. She explained, “You broaden down from the whole school to
engineers; that’s already little. From engineers to women in engineering, that’s such a small
percentage that I feel like we should tackle the bigger bowl before we tackle the smaller one.
Because I think every student struggles with finding their path in engineering.”
Q2: Levels of Self-Efficacy within Female Engineering Students
The women who participated in the interview were also asked to complete a 48-question
survey to better determine their levels of self-efficacy in their engineering fields, both inside and
outside of the classroom.
Engineering Career Success Expectations
The questions used in the section that determine levels of self-efficacy of the participant in
regards to their expectations for their futures as engineers were taken from the AWE survey:

WOMEN IN STEM 49

Table 3
Responses for Engineering Career Success Expectations

For question 17, there was a subsection that asked how important the statement was to the
participant. All five of them answered that the statement of “Someone like me can succeed in an
engineering career” was very important to them.
Overall, most participants believed themselves to be successful in their career path
expectations as they scored high on the statements that related to their confidence in their
abilities to enter the engineering career field. However, the statements where the numbers were

Strongly
Disagree
Disagree Slightly
Disagree
Neither
Disagree
nor Agree
Slightly
Agree
Agree Strongly
Agree
Don’t
know
17. Someone like me can
succeed in an engineering
career
0 0 0 0 0 2 3 0
26. A degree in engineering
will allow me to obtain a well-
paying job
1 0 0 0 0 1 3 0
28. I will be treated fairly on
the job. That is, I expect to be
given the same opportunities
for pay raises and promotions
as my fellow workers if I enter
engineering
0 0 2 0 1 1 1 0
31. A degree in engineering
will allow me to obtain a job
that I like
0 0 0 0 1 1 3 0
34. I will feel “part of the
group” on my job if I enter
engineering
0 0 1 1 2 0 1 0
38. A degree in engineering
will allow me to get a job
where I can use my talents
and creativity
0 0 0 0 0 3 2 0
43. A degree in engineering
will allow me to obtain a job
that I like
0 0 0 0 0 4 1 0
WOMEN IN STEM 50

more spread out were the ones that dealt with how the participants expected to be treated in the
workplace or in their career in general. Only one or two women were very confident that they
were going to be treated fairly and well-integrated within their future career team. The rest
showed a lack of confidence when it came to expectations of how well they were going to be
treated in such an environment.
Engineering Self-Efficacy I
The questions used in the section were taken from the AWE survey:
Table 4
Responses for Engineering Self-Efficacy I

Strongly
Disagree
Disagree Slightly
Disagree
Neither
Disagree
nor
Agree
Slightly
Agree
Agree Strongly
Agree
Don’t
know
15. I can succeed in an
engineering curriculum
0 0 0 0 0 3 2 0
19. I can succeed in an
engineering curriculum while
not having to give up
participation in my outside
interests (e.g. extracurricular
activities, family, sports)
0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0
*21. I will succeed (earn an A
or B) in my physics courses
0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
*22. I will succeed (earn an A
or B) in my math courses
0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
*23. I will succeed (earn an A
or B) in my engineering
courses
0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0

*These questions only apply to first or second-year students. Some participants are third-year
students or above.

WOMEN IN STEM 51

For the questions above, there was a subsection that asked how important each statement was to
the participant. The results were as follows:
Table 5
Responses for Level of Importance for Engineering Self-Efficacy I
*These questions only apply to first or second-year students. Some participants are third-year
students or above.

Most women in all grade levels were relatively confident in their abilities to succeed in
their engineering coursework. There was a spread-out variation in the level of confidence to
succeed in the engineering coursework while not having to sacrifice any outside activities. Each
woman had different priorities in regards to themselves, and so it was easily seen here just how
Very
Unimportant
Unimportant Neither
Important nor
Unimportant
Important Very
Important
15. I can succeed in
an engineering
curriculum
0 0 0 0 5
19. I can succeed in
an engineering
curriculum while not
having to give up
participation in my
outside interests
(e.g. extracurricular
activities, family,
sports)
0 0 1 1 3
*21. I will succeed
(earn an A or B) in
my physics courses
0 0 0 0 2
*22. I will succeed
(earn an A or B) in
my math courses
0 0 0 0 2
*23. I will succeed
(earn an A or B) in
my engineering
courses
0 0 0 0 2
WOMEN IN STEM 52

difficult it was to balance both coursework and outside obligations, especially for some more
than others.

Engineering Self-Efficacy II
The questions used in the section were taken from the AWE survey and were as follows:
Table 6
Responses for Engineering Self-Efficacy II

Most of the participants reported being at least fairly confident in their ability to persist in
their respective fields of study within engineering as a whole. The only statement where there
was a large gap in between responses was the confidence to complete any engineering degree at
the institution where these women currently attend. Because the research site was a two-year
community college, the two who responded as “strongly disagree” for question 29 in Table 5 had

Strongly
Disagree
Disagree Slightly
Disagree
Neither
Disagree
nor Agree
Slightly
Agree
Agree Strongly
Agree
Don’t
know
24. I can complete the math
requirements for most
engineering majors
0 0 0 0 0 1 4 0
27. I can do well in an
engineering major during the
current academic year
0 0 0 0 2 1 2 0
29. I can complete any
engineering degree at this
institution
2 0 0 0 0 2 1 0
35. I can complete the physics
requirements for most
engineering majors
0 0 0 1 1 2 1 0
40. I can persist in engineering
during the current academic
year
0 0 0 0 0 3 2 0
44. I can complete the
chemistry requirements for
most engineering majors
0 0 1 0 0 1 3 0
WOMEN IN STEM 53

mentioned in their interviews that they had already intended to transfer to a four-year university
within a year or two.
Feeling of Inclusion
The questions used in this section that revolve around the participant’s interactions with her
peers were taken from the AWE survey and were as follows:
Table 7
Responses for Feeling of Inclusion

For the questions above, there was a subsection that asked how important each statement was to
the participant. The results are as follows:

Strongly
Disagree
Disagree Slightly
Disagree
Neither
Disagree
nor Agree
Slightly
Agree
Agree Strongly
Agree
Don’t
know
14. I can relate to the people
around me in my classes
0 0 0 0 0 5 0 0
16. I have a lot in common with
the other students in my
classes
0 0 1 1 3 0 0 0
18. The other students in my
classes share my personal
interests
0 1 1 2 1 0 0 0
20. I can relate to the people
around me in my
extracurricular activities
0 0 0 1 0 2 2 0
WOMEN IN STEM 54

Table 8
Responses for Level of Importance for Feeling of Inclusion

Almost all of the participants reported that they could confidently relate to their peers in
both inside and outside the classroom and deemed this aspect to be important to all of them as
women engineering students. The participants felt differently about their peers sharing the same
personal interests as them, but most did not feel that this statement was very important to them.
Coping Self-Efficacy
The questions used in this section that determine levels of self-efficacy in regards to coping with
certain situations (for example: exam scores, disapproval from peers, etc.) were taken from the
AWE survey and were as follows:

Very
Unimportant
Unimportant Neither
Important nor
Unimportant
Important Very
Important
14. I can relate to the people
around me in my classes
0 0 1 3 1
16. I have a lot in common
with the other students in my
classes
0 0 2 3 0
18. The other students in my
classes share my personal
interests
1 1 2 1 0
20. I can relate to the people
around me in my
extracurricular activities
0 0 2 1 2
WOMEN IN STEM 55

Table 9
Responses for Coping Self-Efficacy

The participants’ levels of coping self-efficacy were relatively confident in that they had
established a way for them to seek help when they were struggling in their studies or not
performing as well as they believed they should have been. However, not all were confident in
being able to cope with their friends’ disapproval of their current major coursework; as most had
mentioned in their individual interviews, a core theme that surrounded these women’s responses
revolved around a strong peer connection.

Strongly
Disagree
Disagree Slightly
Disagree
Neither
Disagree
nor Agree
Slightly
Agree
Agree Strongly
Agree
Don’t
know
30. I can cope with doing
poorly (or not as good as I
had hoped) on a test in
one of my engineering
classes
0 0 0 1 1 2 1 0
32. I can make friends with
people from different
backgrounds and/or values
0 0 0 0 1 1 3 0
37. I can cope with friends’
disapproval of my chosen
major
1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0
39. I can cope with being
the only person of my
race/ethnicity in a class
0 0 0 0 0 2 2 0
41. I can approach a
faculty or staff member to
get assistance with
academic problems
0 0 0 0 1 2 2 0
42. I can adjust to a new
campus environment
0 0 0 0 0 3 2 0
WOMEN IN STEM 56

Math Outcome Expectations
The questions used in this section that determine levels of self-efficacy regarding the
participant’s math courses were taken from the AWE survey:
Table 10
Responses for Math Outcome Expectations

Nearly all participants knew the importance of doing well in their rigorous math courses
not only for their coursework but also for their future as engineers in industry.
Confidence Levels for the Future in Engineering
On the AWE survey (2007), there were four questions that ask regarding each
participant’s level of confidence regarding their future in engineering:

Strongly
Disagree
Disagree Slightly
Disagree
Neither
Disagree
nor Agree
Slightly
Agree
Agree Strongly
Agree
Don’t
know
25. Doing well at math will
enhance my career/job
opportunities
0 0 0 1 1 1 2 0
33. Doing well at math will
increase my sense of self-worth
0 1 0 1 1 1 1 0
36. Taking math course will help
me to keep my career options
open
0 0 0 0 2 2 1 0
WOMEN IN STEM 57

Table 11
Responses for Confidence Levels for Future in Engineering

According to Table 11, a majority of the participants reported to be at least fairly
confident to be progressing in their engineering coursework for the following academic year
until graduation.
For question 48, two students who chose to answer as “not at all confident” in Table 11
were students who were already ready to transfer to a four-year institution.
Summary
The results from both the interviews and surveys gave light to both negative and positive
aspects of being a woman in engineering at the community college level.
These women have demonstrated that as engineering students, they had confidence and
high levels of self-efficacy in their abilities to do well beyond higher education and into the
workforce as they begin to find careers relating to their respective engineering fields. When
asked about what made her want to pursue engineering, as stated previously, Jessica—who had
had a career in another area prior to deciding to have a career in bioengineering—knew exactly

Not at all
confident
Not
confident
50%
chance
I’m fairly
confident
I’m very
confident
45. At the present time, how confident are you
that you will be enrolled in any major in the college
or school of engineering in the next academic
year?
0 0 0 3 2
46. At the present time, how confident are you
that you will graduate with your current
engineering major?
0 0 0 3 2
47. At the present time, how confident are you
that you will complete any engineering degree (any
engineering major)?
0 0 0 2 3
48. At the present time, how confident are you
that you will complete any degree (any major at
this institution)?
2 0 0 1 2
WOMEN IN STEM 58

what she wanted in a career and engineering had everything she was looking for: intellectual
satisfaction, security, predictability. Kristin, Arabelle, and Amelia both came from families
where there were already engineers or had family members who influenced them critically to
pursue their career path while Serena and Madeline were introduced and influenced by friends. If
these women already had the confidence and knew that they want to pursue such a difficult
career path, then why were the numbers still low regarding the number of women in the
engineering field? In the survey where it asked for the level of confidence on statements
regarding being expected to be treated fairly and work well in teams in the workplace, the
responses were low. Looking into how these women shared their experiences working with their
peers—both men and women—in group projects both inside and outside the classroom, the
difference in treatment between themselves and their male peers were uncannily substantial. For
Amelia, it was her professor assigning the female students to work on the posters and the male
students to work on the robots, and the encounter she had had with a male classmate who was
explaining why having a glass-ceiling for women was a good thing. Jessica’s correct idea for
setting up a project was ignored in favor of her male lab partner’s incorrect idea to set up the
project, and even caused her to doubt her validity in her idea. In her physics class, Kristin’s
inputs were ignored by her male peers until they got an answer wrong and she got the answer
right. Madeline’s female friend was stereotypically stigmatized during an interview because of
her gender for a position she was not able to get in the end. Even though Arabelle currently has a
very good relationship with the male students in her rocket-building club on campus, in the
beginning she had to prove that she was capable and competent to be part of the team. With these
different experiences that share a common theme of not being taken seriously, it made it
WOMEN IN STEM 59

comprehensible about why they were not quite as confident about being treated equally as their
male counterparts in the workplace.
In regards to their confidence and ability to persist in their competency to complete the
coursework for their respective engineering majors, they reported almost complete confidence
and high levels of self-efficacy in themselves to succeed academically. All the participants had
even said in the interviews with me that they enjoyed the challenge, loved learning new things
that could be used in real-world situations, that could be used in the future when developing
different devices or technology adherent to their beliefs about their field. But the one aspect that
they had different responses for was the confidence and the ability to persist to succeed in
engineering without having to give up an activity, or obligation to friends or family. Some of the
participants mentioned to me during our individual interviews that their family did not
understand why they stayed at school until late night or stayed up until dawn studying for exams.
These women were highly intelligent, but they knew the price of being in such a time-consuming
major, that it took away time from everything else. They all mentioned attending conferences
and competitions that took place for days at a time. While they were committed to the work and
the study that they do, they understood that it required much time and focus to be connected in a
network of professionals, time and focus that, unfortunately, cannot be distributed elsewhere
currently. For example, Madeline already had family far from campus and an internship that was
even further from home.
As of now, these women have reported in the survey that they were confident when it
came to feeling included amongst their peers. Arabelle stated in her interview that there was a
community for engineers on campus to be a part of that helped with getting to know each other.
In the survey, there were differing levels of confidence when it came to others sharing the same
WOMEN IN STEM 60

personal interest as them, but most reported finding this aspect as indifferent or not important at
all. For these women, they have had to work nearly twice as hard as their male peers to be
acknowledged as being competent enough to contribute in projects and discussions in their
engineering-related courses. The reason behind being indifferent to the statement of being
confident in others sharing the same personal interests as them was due to the fact that these
women were passionate about the work that they do and their dreams and aspirations in their
future careers that one of the important things to them was that they learn and understand the
materials being taught that would help them further their knowledge.
In terms of handling situations where they did not perform as well on an exam as they
had believed, all the participants reported high levels of confidence in being able to cope well
and being confident to seek out help from a professor to understand what they had gotten wrong.
The numbers differed slightly when asked how confident they were about their friends
disapproving of their chosen major. Part of the reason for the lack of confidence in this statement
was due to the fact that all six participants in their interviews stated that they had gotten negative
responses from those whom they had told that they were engineering students. It was because of
this experience that Serena did not even want to tell others that she was an engineering major at
first. Having a lack of support from others, especially from those who they deemed friends, in
regards to being an engineering major can directly impact women’s confidence in themselves as
engineers that can take time and effort to break out of. After going through more coursework and
understanding more about her field of study and enjoying it, Serena said that now she was not
scared or nervous to tell people that she was an engineering student. Imagine how high the
confidence and persistence levels could be if these women were supported from the very
beginning of their engineering path.
WOMEN IN STEM 61

Overall, in their levels of confidence and persistence in regards to their future in
engineering and their beliefs in their abilities to persist in their respective engineering fields, all
who participated in the survey have shown to be at least fairly confident that they would continue
to be in engineering to the point of completion or successfully transferring to another institution
in the future.

WOMEN IN STEM 62

Chapter 5: Discussion of Findings
The purpose of this research was to determine why there is a lack of women in STEM
majors within two-year community colleges. The study that was conducted in relation to the
research was to examine the levels of self-efficacy in women in engineering majors have
currently and to learn of their experiences as women engineering students in a male-dominated
field of study, including what had contributed to their low or high levels of self-efficacy, and
what had influenced them to pursue engineering.
The idea for this study was formed because as a former computer science major, my first
attempt in a four-year university and my second attempt in a two-year community college, I had
experienced prejudice against me by my male peers because I was not seen as competent as they
were regarding the programming. Being in a group with four male students, any attempt to ask
them for help during group projects was always met with them telling me to refer to the internet
or the textbook for help while they discussed the project responsibilities amongst themselves.
When I sought out help or clarification, even the professor was exasperated and gave me a look
that clearly said: “You should know this and more by now.” And it was my very first
introductory programming class that I had come into without any previous programming nor
coding experience. Because of these factors alone, my confidence in my abilities to pursue this
career field plummeted and I retreated to a major that I had thought was more fitting for someone
like me.
The research questions this study aimed to answer are:
1. What factors contribute to the low and/or high levels of self-efficacy in female students in
STEM?
WOMEN IN STEM 63

2. What are the levels of confidence in female STEM students in their abilities to persevere
in their selected STEM program?
3. How does being in a typically male-dominated field of study affect the female STEM
students’ attitudes towards their own confidence and abilities before and entering STEM?
4. What factors influenced female STEM students to pursue a STEM field of study prior to
entering community college?
Discussion of Findings
The following table highlights the findings of the study in relation to the research
questions that have been stated above.

WOMEN IN STEM 64

Table 12
Overview of Research Question Findings
Research Questions Common Themes in
Interview
Survey Responses
Q1. What factors contribute
to the low and/or high levels
of self-efficacy in female
students in STEM?
Belief in what students want
to do as engineers,
community, family
background and support
Participants reported high
levels of confidence to excel
in both academics and career
Q2. What are the levels of
confidence in female STEM
students in their abilities to
persevere in their selected
STEM program?

Initially started low but
grew, high levels in those
from engineer background,
high levels in those who
enjoy the challenge of
learning
Participants reported high
levels of engineering self-
efficacy in their major
coursework (i.e.
engineering, math, physics)
Q3. How does being in a
typically male-dominated
field of study affect the
female STEM students’
attitudes towards their own
confidence and abilities
before and entering STEM?
More pressure to be better or
speak out, treated differently
from male peers, feeling
intimidated or incompetent
Participants reported lower
levels of confidence
regarding being treated
fairly in the future in the
workforce
Q4. What factors influenced
female STEM students to
pursue a STEM field of
study prior to entering
community college?
Family, friends, knowing
what to want in a career, the
challenge
N/A

Going into the study, I had expected the participants to be lacking confidence in their
abilities to persist in their field of study not only because it was one of the more rigorous majors
available, but also because the STEM field—especially in engineering where male students make
up most of the population—was known to be a cold environment. I was also curious to see how
their experiences would align to my own.
WOMEN IN STEM 65

Some aspects of the study fell within my expectations of how I perceived them to answer,
but in other parts—especially the survey response—the participants had shown a large amount of
confidence in their abilities that went beyond my expectations, which was refreshing to see.
What I had expected and lent support to be true were the participants’ confidence and self-
efficacy levels in their expectations to be treated fairly in the workforce and to work equally as
well with others in project teams in their careers. On the survey, they reported lower levels of
confidence than the levels of confidence they had in regards to their abilities to succeed in their
coursework and obtain a career in their respective engineering fields. In the individual
interviews, I was able to get a better understanding of why they responded to that particular
category of survey questions in the way that they did. All of the responses I had received
revolved around the same theme of having at least one negative experience of being excluded
from being part of a project or discussion in a group of all, if not mostly, male classmates. The
experiences they had in those situations, be it a few years ago, have already started to transition
and take root in their minds about what they should expect and how they should expect to be
treated when they day comes where they would start their careers as engineering professionals
and would be forced to work in a co-ed environment that they know would be composed of
mostly male employees. The women had high levels of confidence within themselves to succeed
in their chosen career paths and to start their careers in the near future upon receiving their
degrees, but most had reported also having low levels of confidence after having been exposed to
the negative side of being in such a male-dominated field of study whose effect had transpired to
now affect their expectations on how they were to be treated once they enter the actual
engineering career itself.

WOMEN IN STEM 66

Limitations
A crucial limitation that I had faced while conducting this study was that I was
conducting the study during the summer semester at the research site. Because of the accelerated
time-frame and coursework of the courses, as the usual 16-week semester had been shortened
down to a 6-week semester, the number of engineering and physics courses were highly limited,
and thus it was difficult finding participants to partake in the study. The fact that engineering
also has such a small female population made the journey twice as difficult. The women who
volunteered to participate in this study were found by word of mouth and through one of the
research site’s counselors who works with STEM students.
Initially, my plan was to conduct the study with both engineering and computer science
students because both have been known to have a small female population both in higher
education and in the workforce. However, again because of the timing of conducting the study in
the summer semester rather than the normal 16-week semester which unfortunately offered no
computer science-related courses, it was extremely difficult to track down female computer
science students. And thus, I decided to only have female engineering students be the focus of
my study.
All of the women who volunteered to participate all identified as being of Latina
background. This factored in as a limitation in that I was limited to seeing and learning of the
cultural effects of just one type of background rather than having other cultural and ethnical
experiences to compare and contrast to.

WOMEN IN STEM 67

Implications for Practice
This study informs the practice of professionals in both higher education and the
engineering industry workforce because it dives into the contributors of why there are so few
women in this particular field when there are many women who have shown potential to excel in
engineering during their time as K-12 grade students by performing well in science and math. So
the question remains: if so many women show potential at such a young age to excel in
engineering, why are there so few of them in both the higher education and the workforce
population?
Traditionally, men have always been encouraged to pursue a career in areas that deal with
logic and problem-solving whereas women have been encouraged to pursue the liberal arts or the
healthcare profession as caregivers or nurses. Murphy, Steele, and Gross (2007) stated that
“people often see themselves in terms of their social identity that is most stigmatized in the
current setting” (p. 879). In the interviews that I have conducted, Amelia shared her personal
experience and Madeline shared her friend’s experience of being sexually and culturally
stigmatized by men and women of both current and previous generations. When Amelia told
people that she was an engineering major, most of the responses that she would receive were:
you need to plan to have children soon, have a family soon. Even Madeline’s friend was asked
such a stigmatizing question during an interview where the male interviewer assumed the
internship at the civil engineering company would not be a good fit for her because he assumed
that she would be having children and starting up a family soon. Amelia even said that even at
her age of 21 years-old and identifying as a Latina, people were expecting her to have children
very soon even though she was still in the beginning years of her engineering coursework. It was
encouraging to hear that this did not deter either woman from persisting in their engineering
WOMEN IN STEM 68

majors, but it was also disheartening to know that being faced with this kind of stigmatization or
expectations that are placed on women who are still young and aspiring to have a professional
career is still happening in this day and age where society has progressed. However, from the
interviews alone, it can be seen that although society has evolved and come a long way in the
past several decades, it still holds its traditional gender stereotypes in a generation where women
have the knowledge and the curiosity to pursue the same difficult career path a man chooses, yet
to this day still discourages many potential women from chasing after a future where they may
have ideas that can change technology to improve society and humanity as a whole.
Specifically in higher education, women are continuously being treated as incompetent
when compared to their male peers. At the research site where I conducted the study, all of the
participants in their individual interviews had at least one experience where they were treated as
if their intelligence and knowledge were below those of their male classmates. This kind of
negative atmosphere in the classroom only adds to the pressure of having to be better and to be
smarter than everyone else. Kristin, who had stated that she was already hard on herself, had
shared with me her thoughts of herself having to be better and having to have twice as much
knowledge as her male classmates in order to avoid losing her credibility to contribute and to
have her inputs heard and be taken seriously as a peer. If female students are having to undergo
this type of treatment to the point where they are putting unnecessary added pressure on
themselves to having to show and prove that they have every right to be a part of the engineering
field and the group projects, imagine the kind of pressure they will face when they enter the
engineering workforce itself. Serena, as I had mentioned before, was always scared or reluctant
to tell people she was an engineering major when she first started the beginning coursework
because whenever she told people, the male students who were both engineering and non-
WOMEN IN STEM 69

engineering majors would ask her difficult theory questions in physics, engineering, and math to
see if she was competent, and it made her question her knowledge of how much she had to have
known or learned at that early point in her coursework because she felt like she was always being
tested by others. Why are female students being subjected to this type of treatment where they
have to show that they are smart enough to be in engineering while the male students do not
receive treatment that is remotely as critical and degrading? Will they have to endure this kind of
treatment throughout their entire careers simply because they are of a particular gender or
background that makes them seem incompetent to society as a whole to be in a rigorous field of
study?
One method that both higher education professors and workforce professionals can adapt
in order to combat this issue is to accept that the student or worker is a woman and is of a
particular background but not judge her intelligence nor her knowledge because of those. One of
the key issues and themes that arose from the interviews was crucial amounts of gender bias
from male professors, peers, and professionals alike. While it is realistically impossible to
eradicate gender bias all together, professors, peers, and professionals can take steps and begin
by simply accepting the student or employee as a woman and acknowledging the fact that she
has every right to be there as any man does because gender has no effect on knowledge nor
intelligence. As Amelia had said: “Stop putting gender in a field.”
In terms of education, a majority of the participants had stated that they wanted to see
more engineering programs being offered in both middle and high schools that encourage
women to join. All it takes is having a teacher or a parent tell a girl that she should be an
engineer to open that career path for her. As is seen in the interview results, most of these women
had no knowledge of what an engineer is or how to be an engineer until they reached college;
WOMEN IN STEM 70

they had no exposure to engineering in their K-12 years. Having members of higher education
send an outreach team to local middle and high schools and encouraging and motivating both
boys and girls to study engineering and explain what it means to be and work as an engineer, and
even showing some female role models in engineering as well, can have the female students
begin to think and even be motivated to pursuing engineering. A little encouragement can go a
long way, and in this case, have potential to increase the number of women in engineering.
Future Research
While this study has given more insight into what female students in engineering
experience and why there is a lack of women in engineering in general, more needs to be done to
create a radical change within the STEM community as a whole.
Some of the research that is needed as a result of the findings in this study are studies on
existing STEM summer or academic-year programs that include women and its effect on
women’s confidence levels before and after or creating a prototype STEM program that
encourages women to be an engineer or any STEM major. The programs should include more
exposure to women who are already figures in the STEM field and hands-on experience in an
actual engineering company site. The research that can also be done is to implement different
protocols for professors who teach classes that only have a small percentage of women that
should include encouraging them to participate in more discussions. To add to this, there should
be a longitudinal study on the effect of learning in women who learn from a female engineering
professor versus women who learn from a male engineering professor.
This study only highlights the prominent issues in the engineering field at the community
college level. Hence, the kind of future research that is needed to take this study forward is one
WOMEN IN STEM 71

that needs to incorporate a program where actions are being taken to encourage and improve
women’s confidence in pursuing a career in engineering, whether it be from elementary school
or college.
Conclusion
Murphy et al. (2007) in discussing their research “propose that, in addition, threatening
features of a setting—such as poor numerical representation—may cause even highly confident,
highly domain-identified women to avoid or leave MSE [math, science, and engineering] fields”
(p. 880). In their study where they measured levels of confidence in a woman who was shown a
gender-breaking advertisement video of MSE that had the ratio of three men to one woman and
another woman who was shown a gender-balanced advertisement video of MSE that had the
ratio of one man to one woman; the results discovered that the woman who watched the gender-
breaking video reported a “lower sense of belonging in the conference and reported less desire to
participate in it than after watching the [gender-]balanced video” (Murphy et al., 2007, pp. 883-
884). In another study by Foor, Walden, Shehab, and Trytten (2013) where they determined
levels of confidence of two women who were put into two different engineering teams—one
showing support and encouragement and being welcoming, the other not encouraging “her
involvement and therefore did not recognize [her] skills—they discovered that the woman who
went into the supportive and welcoming team “could ignore or forgive a fraternity-like
atmosphere and communicated ideologies of appropriate gender before” whereas the woman
who went into the other team ended up retreating and had no “support of her interest and skills.”
Both studies above examined women’s level of confidence in their respective fields by
introducing two women to two different environments; one was more friendly and welcoming,
the other was more nonchalant. Both studies revealed that the woman who went into the friendly
WOMEN IN STEM 72

and welcoming environment came out with more confidence than the woman who went into the
nonchalant one. This already implies the change that needs to be implemented throughout the
engineering field, from K-12 all the way to the workforce. These brave, strong, intellectual
women who have volunteered to be interviewed have shared their struggles to get to where they
are at in their engineering education. They have faced scrutiny, stigmatization over gender and
culture, and been severely underestimated and underserved in the engineering field. They each
had to work twice as hard to prove their worth to male students who would never doubt each
other the way they had doubted these women’s knowledge. It is this struggle and this pressure
that tends to deter potential female engineers from stepping foot in the engineering major.
Imagine what it would be like for these women to have started out in their engineering
coursework being welcomed and accepted as simply an engineering student as every other male
student is. Imagine the amount of collaboration that could have been done earlier on in their
studies had the women’s knowledge not been constantly called into question nor had their inputs
and voices ignored. Now take that into a larger scale. Imagine how much could have already
been done and created or will be created in the world if women who showed potential to be
outstanding engineers were simply encouraged and welcomed into pursuing that career path.

WOMEN IN STEM 73

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WOMEN IN STEM 79

Appendices
Appendix A: LAESE Survey
Engineering or Technology Student Annual Survey

Name: ________________________________________________________
(Please PRINT your first and last name.)

Student Number: ________________________________________

Email Address: ________________________________________________

School: _______________________________________________________ (e.g. Penn State)

Your major or intended major as of today (Check one):


Aerospace

Engineering Science

Agricultural

Environmental

Architectural

Industrial

Bioengineering

Materials

Chemical

Mechanical

Civil

Nuclear

Computer Engineering

Petroleum

Computer Science

Undecided

Electrical

Other___________________________

Gender:
 Male
 Female

Ethnicity / Citizenship: (Check a maximum of two)


1. African/Black American

5. White American

2. American Indian/Alaskan Native

6. Foreign National on student visa

3. Asian & Pacific American

7. Foreign National/U.S. Resident (green card)

4. Latino/Hispanic American

8. Other: ______________________________

As of today, I am a: (Choose one)


First-year Student

Fourth-year Student

Second-year Student

Fifth-year Student and above

Third-year Student

Where were you immediately before starting at this institution? (Check one).


High School

2-year college

WOMEN IN STEM 80


4-year college

Military

Vocational/technical school

Working a full-time job

Other:____________________

Engineering Student Annual Survey
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---

Today’s Date __________________________________

1. ANSWER ONLY IF FIRST YEAR STUDENT: My experience of the work required in high
school classes was: (Check one)
 It was very easy for me to get the grade I wanted in all my classes
 With a few exceptions, it was easy for me to get the grade I wanted in my classes
 I had to work some, but not all that hard to get the grade I wanted in my classes
 I had to work hard to get the grade I wanted in my classes

2. ANSWER ONLY IF FIRST YEAR STUDENT: In college, I expect: (Check one)
 I will have to work less than I did in high school to get the grades I want
 I will have to work the same amount as I did in high school to get the grades I want
 I will have to work harder than I did in high school to get the grades I want

3. What was your cumulative college GPA at the end of the most recent academic
semester/term?

IF FIRST YEAR STUDENT SKIP THIS QUESTION, CONTINUE TO QUESTION 4

4. At the present time, how satisfied are you with your decision about your specific engineering
major? (Circle a number from the scale below)

Very dissatisfied Dissatisfied Neither satisfied
nor dissatisfied
Satisfied Very satisfied
0 1 2 3 4

5. At the present time, how confident are you that you will keep your chosen engineering major
through college? (Check one from the items below)
 Not at all confident; I am already planning to change my major
 Not very confident; it is highly likely that I will change my major
 There's about a 50% chance that I'll change my major
 I'm fairly confident that I will keep my current choice as my major
 I'm very confident that I will keep my current choice as my major

WOMEN IN STEM 81

6. At the present, are you exploring other possible majors for your university degree?  Yes 
No
If so, what are the other majors? (Please list)

WOMEN IN STEM 82

7. What sources of information from universities or colleges did you use to make your decision
about which engineering major to pursue? (Check all that apply)

8. What other sources of information did you use when considering which engineering major to
pursue?
(Check all that apply)

 Employers  Other family members
 High School Teachers  Parents
 High School Counselors  Did not consult with any sources
 Other (please specify) _________________________

9. The following is a list of academic and/or academic preparation activities. Check all the
activities that you have participated in at least once during the past year:


An engineering society (such as American Society of Mechanical Engineers)

A social sorority or fraternity

Activities sponsored by your department or major

An intramural or university sports team

WEPO (Women in Engineering Program Orientation)
 As a participant  As a mentor


SWE (Society of Women Engineers)

NSBE (National Society of Black Engineers)

SHPE (Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers)

PREF (Pre-First Year in Science & Engineering) Program
 As a participant  As a mentor


ASE (Academic Summer Enhancement) Program
 As a participant  As a mentor


PMP (Peer Mentoring Program)

Academic Excellence Center

Facilitated Study Groups

MTM (Make the Machine) Engineering Camp for Girls
 As a participant  As a mentor


VIEW (Visit in Engineering Weekend)
 As a participant  As a mentor


Volunteer at Girl Scout Saturdays


College or university advisers

College or university classes

University "open houses" or campus visit days

Other activities sponsored by the college of engineering or technology

National rankings data on the college or university
 Other - please specify _________________________
WOMEN IN STEM 83

Directions: For the situations described in items 9 through 12, use the numbers 1, 2, and 3 (where 1 is
your first choice and 3 would be your last choice) to RANK NO MORE THAN 3 ACTIONS THAT BEST
describe how you would react to the situation.

10. If I were having difficulties with one of my professors, I would:
Rank No More Than Three items: (1-3)
_____ a. Talk to a friend about it
_____ b. Talk to the professor about it
_____ c. Talk to my adviser about it
_____ d. Try to switch sections
_____ e. Do nothing
_____ f. Other (please specify) ______________________________

11. If I were having difficulties deciding what classes to choose for next semester, I would:
Rank No More Than Three items: (1-3)
_____ a. Talk to peers/friends in my same year in college (e.g. other
sophomores)
_____ b. Talk to my adviser about it
_____ c. Talk to practicing professionals in the field
_____ d. Make the best decision on my own
_____ e. Other (please specify) _______________________________

12. If I were on a student team and having difficulties with one or more of my team members, I
would:
Rank No More Than Three items: (1-3)
_____ a. Gather the entire team and try to solve the problem
_____ b. Talk to classmates who aren’t in my team
_____ c. Try to switch into another team
_____ d. Talk to course professor or TA about rectifying the problem
_____ e. Drop the course
_____ f. Do the best I can to work effectively on the team
_____ g. Other (please specify) _________________________________

13. If I just found out that I had performed poorly on an exam in a class that is critical to my major
I would:
Rank No More Than Three items: (1-3)
_____ a. Talk to a friend about it
_____ b. Talk to the professor about it
_____ c. Talk to my adviser
_____ d. Drop the course
_____ e. Do nothing
_____ f. Other (please specify) _________________________________

WOMEN IN STEM 84

Directions: Below are statements about studying engineering. To the left of each statement indicate
whether you Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Slightly Disagree, Neither Disagree nor Agree, Slightly
Agree, Agree, Strongly Agree, or Don’t Know by circling the appropriate number. To the right of each
statement circle the appropriate number to indicate whether the statement is Very Unimportant,
Unimportant, Neither Important nor Unimportant, Important, or Very Important to you in terms of
completing your engineering degree.

To what extent do you AGREE? How IMPORTANT is this?
0 = Strongly Disagree 0 = Very Unimportant
1 = Disagree 1 = Unimportant
2 = Slightly Disagree 2 = Neither Important nor
Unimportant
3 = Neither disagree nor agree 3 = Important
4 = Slightly Agree 4 = Very Important
5 = Agree
6 = Strongly Agree
? = Don’t Know

14. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ? I can relate to the people around me in my classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 1 2 3 4
15. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ? I can succeed in an engineering curriculum . . . . . . . . 0 1 2 3 4
16. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ? I have a lot in common with the other students in my classes . . . . . . 0 1 2 3 4
17. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ? Someone like me can succeed in an engineering career . . . . . . . . . 0 1 2 3 4
18. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ? The other students in my classes share my personal interests . . . . . 0 1 2 3 4
19. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ? I can succeed in an engineering or technology curriculum while not
having to give up participation in my outside interests (e.g.
extracurricular activities, family, sports) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
0 1 2 3 4
20. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ? I can relate to the people around me in my extracurricular activities .
. . .
0 1 2 3 4
ANSWER ITEMS 21 – 23 ONLY IF YOU ARE A FIRST OR SECOND YEAR STUDENT. OTHERWISE
PROCEED TO ITEM 24.
21. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ? I will succeed (earn an A or B) in my physics courses . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . .
0 1 2 3 4
22. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ? I will succeed (earn an A or B) in my math courses . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . .
0 1 2 3 4
23. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ? I will succeed (earn an A or B) in my engineering courses . . . . . . . .
. . . .
0 1 2 3 4

WOMEN IN STEM 85

Directions: For each statement below indicate whether you Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Slightly
Disagree, Neither Disagree nor Agree, Slightly Agree, Agree, Strongly Agree, or Don’t Know by
circling the appropriate number or symbol.

I am confident that …
Strongly
Disagree

Disagree
Slightly
Agree
Neither
Disagree
nor
Agree
Slightly
Agree
Agree
Strongly
Agree
Don’t
Know

24. I can complete the math requirements
for most engineering majors . . . . . . . . . .
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ?
25. Doing well at math will enhance my
career/job opportunities . . . . . . . . . . . . .
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ?
26. A degree in engineering will allow me to
obtain a well paying job . . . . .. . . . . . . . .
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ?
27. I can do well in an engineering major
during the current academic year . . . . . .
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ?
28. I will be treated fairly on the job. That is,
I expect to be given the same
opportunities for pay raises and
promotions as my fellow workers if I
enter engineering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ?
29. I can complete any engineering degree
at this institution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ?
30. I can cope with doing poorly (or not as
good as I had hoped) on a test in one of
my engineering classes.
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ?
31. A degree in engineering will give me the
kind of lifestyle I want . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ?
32. I can make friends with people from
different backgrounds and/or values. . . .
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ?
33. Doing well at math will increase my
sense of self-worth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ?
34. I will feel “part of the group” on my job if I
enter engineering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ?
35. I can complete the physics requirements
for most engineering majors. . . . . . . . . .
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ?
36. Taking math courses will help me to
keep my career options open . . . . . . . . .
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ?
37. I can cope with friends’ disapproval of
my chosen major . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ?
38. A degree in engineering will allow me to
get a job where I can use my talents and
creativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ?
39. I can cope with being the only person of
my race/ethnicity in a class . . . . . . . . . .
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ?
WOMEN IN STEM 86

40. I can persist in engineering during the
current academic year . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ?

Directions: For each statement below indicate whether you Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Slightly
Disagree, Neither Disagree nor Agree, Slightly Agree, Agree, Strongly Agree, or Don’t Know by
circling the appropriate number or symbol.

I am confident that …
Strongly
Disagree

Disagree
Slightly
Agree
Neither
Disagree
nor
Agree
Slightly
Agree
Agree
Strongly
Agree
Don’t
Know

41. I can approach a faculty or staff
member to get assistance with
academic problems
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ?
42. I can adjust to a new campus
environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . .
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ?
43. A degree in engineering will
allow me to obtain a job that I
like . . . . .. . . . . .
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ?
44. I can complete the chemistry
requirements for most
engineering majors . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ?

45. At the present time, how confident are you that you will be enrolled in any major in the college or
school of engineering in the next academic year? (Check one)
 Not at all confident; I am already planning to change out of engineering.
 Not confident; it is likely that I will not be in engineering then.
 There's about a 50% chance that I'll still be in engineering.
 I'm fairly confident that I will still be in engineering then.
 I'm very confident that I will still be in engineering then.

46. At the present time, how confident are you that you will graduate with your current engineering major?
(Check one)
 Not at all confident; I am already planning to change my major.
 Not confident; it is highly likely that I will change my major.
 There's about a 50% chance that I'll change my major.
 I'm fairly confident that I will keep my current choice as my major.
 I'm very confident that I will keep my current choice as my major.

47. At the present time, how confident are you that you will complete any engineering degree (any
engineering major)? (Check one)
 Not at all confident; I am already planning to change out of engineering.
 Not confident; it is highly likely I will not complete an engineering degree.
 There's about a 50% chance that I'll complete an engineering degree.
 I'm fairly confident that I will complete an engineering degree.
 I'm very confident that I will complete an engineering degree.

WOMEN IN STEM 87

48. At the present time, how confident are you that you will complete any degree (any major) at this
institution? (Check one)
 Not at all confident; I am already planning to transfer to another institution or drop out of
college.
 Not confident; it is highly likely I will not complete any college degree.
 There's about a 50% chance that I'll complete a degree at this institution.
 I'm fairly confident that I will complete a degree at this institution.
 I'm very confident that I will complete a degree at this institution.

WOMEN IN STEM 88

Appendix B: LAESE Survey Subscale

LAESE Subscales – LAESE v3.0

Numbers in parentheses correspond to item numbers from the LAESE survey (v 3.0).
The following item subscales are for a total of 31 items (from items 16 – 46 in the LAESE
survey).

Items 1 – 12 are items that gather background data, and data about how students have
chosen their majors. Items 12 – 15 are “scenario” items that examine how students would
choose to act in typical barrier situations.

1) Engineering career success expectations – 7 items, alpha = .84
1) Someone like me can succeed in an engineering career (16)
2) A degree in engineering will allow me to obtain a well paying job (25)
3) I expect to be treated fairly on the job. That is, I expect to be given the same
opportunities for pay raises and promotions as my fellow workers if I enter
engineering (27)
4) A degree in engineering will give me the kind of lifestyle I want (30)
5) I expect to feel “part of the group” on my job if I enter engineering (33)
6) A degree in engineering will allow me to get a job where I can use my talents
and creativity
(37)
7) A degree in engineering will allow me to obtain a job that I like (42)

2) Engineering self-efficacy I – 5 items, alpha = .82
1) I can succeed in an engineering curriculum (14)
2) I can succeed in an engineering curriculum while not having to give up
participation in my outside interests (e.g. extra curricular activities, family,
sports) (18)
3) I will succeed (earn an A or B) in my physics courses (20)
4) I will succeed (earn an A or B) in my math courses (21)
5) I will succeed (earn an A or B) in my engineering courses (22)

3) Engineering self-efficacy II – 6 items, alpha = .82
1) I can complete the math requirements for most engineering majors (23)
2) I can excel in an engineering major during the current academic year (26)
WOMEN IN STEM 89

3) I can complete any engineering degree at this institution (28)
4) I can complete the physics requirements for most engineering majors (34)
5) I can persist in an engineering major during the next year (39)
6) I can complete the chemistry requirements for most engineering majors (43)

4) Feeling of inclusion – 4 items, alpha = .73
1) I can relate to the people around me in my class (13)
2) I have a lot in common with the other students in my classes (15)
3) The other students in my classes share my personal interests (17)
4) I can relate to the people around me in my extra-curricular activities (19)

5) Coping self-efficacy – 6 items, alpha = .78
1) I can cope with not doing well on a test (29)
2) I can make friends with people from different backgrounds and/or values (31)
3) I can cope with friends’ disapproval of chosen major (36)
4) I can cope with being the only person of my race/ethnicity in my class (38)
5) I can approach a faculty or staff member to get assistance (40)
6) I can adjust to a new campus environment (41)

6) Math outcome expectations – 3 items, alpha = .84
1) Doing well at math will enhance my career/job opportunities (24)
2) Doing well at math will increase my sense of self worth (32)
3) Taking math courses will help me to keep my career options open (35)
LAESE Subscales Revised – LAESE v3.0 AWE Copyright © 2006 Page 1 of 1
A Product of AWE-Assessing Women in Engineering (www.aweonline.org), NSF Grant #0120642

The numbers in reference to the survey are mislabeled.

WOMEN IN STEM 90

Appendix C: Interview Questions
1. Background information—Age, Schools Attended, Family, current and previous majors
and how many years in the current major?
2. Could you please describe your current and past internships/job experience?
3. What experiences contributed to your decision to pursue your major?
4. How were you influenced by others?
5. What did people say to you as you were pursuing an engineering/technology career?
(Family/Teachers/Peers/Culture) What sort of sociocultural messages did you get?
6. How would you describe your feelings and beliefs about engineering/technology as you
were pursuing it?
a. How did pursuing engineering/technology make you feel?
b. What are your beliefs about what you do, or the area for which you were
preparing yourself to have a career?
c. What are your emotional responses about your area of interest?
7. Tell me one memorable story that would really help me understand how you came to do
what you do.
8. Why do you think that so few women pursue engineering/technology-related careers?
What could be or should be done to alter that?
9. Considering your academic and career history, if you could have done anything
differently, what would that be?
Reworded certain questions to fit this research; questionnaire based from Zeldin, Britner, and
Parajes (2008)

WOMEN IN STEM 91

Appendix D: Information Sheet for Research
University of Southern California
Information Sheet for Research

Women in STEM

You are invited to participate in a research study conducted by Adrienne Kimm at the
University of Southern California. Please read through this form and ask any questions you
might have before deciding whether or not you want to participate.

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
This research study aims to understand the levels of self-efficacy or persistence in women who
are in engineering majors.

PARTICIPANT INVOLVEMENT
By participating, you agree that you are at least 18 years of age. If you agree to take part in this
study, you will be asked to either complete a survey or participate in a short interview. You do
not have to answer any questions you don’t want to.

PAYMENT/COMPENSATION FOR PARTICIPATION
You will receive a $5 Starbucks gift card upon completion of the survey or interview to thank
you for your time.

CONFIDENTIALITY
If data are anonymous:
There will be no identifiable information obtained in connection with this study. At the
completion of the study, the anonymous data may be used for future research studies. If you do
not want your data used in future studies, you should not participate.

If data are coded or identifiable:
Any identifiable information obtained in connection with this study will remain confidential. At
the completion of the study, direct identifiers will be destroyed and the de-identified data may be
used for future research studies. If you do not want your data used in future studies, you should
not participate.

Required language for either condition:
The members of the research team and the University of Southern California’s Human Subjects
Protection Program (HSPP) may access the data. The HSPP reviews and monitors research
studies to protect the rights and welfare of research subjects.

INVESTIGATOR CONTACT INFORMATION
If you have any questions or concerns about the research, please feel free to contact Adrienne
Kimm at adrienkk@usc.edu.

IRB CONTACT INFORMATION
WOMEN IN STEM 92

If you have questions, concerns, or complaints about your rights as a research participant or the
research in general and are unable to contact the research team, or if you want to talk to someone
independent of the research team, please contact the University Park Institutional Review Board
(UPIRB), 3720 South Flower Street #301, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0702, (213) 821-5272 or
upirb@usc.edu.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This study applies Bussey and Bandura’s (1999) social cognitive theory of gender identity development to understand why there is a lack of persistence in women to pursue engineering and a lack of women in engineering (Patton, Renn, Guido, & Quaye, 2016). The purpose of this study was to measure the levels of self-efficacy of women in engineering at the community college level and what contributes to the low and/or high levels of self-efficacy within those women. This study also sought to determine the effect of being a woman in a male-dominated field of study. The study conducted took a mixed methods approach and was consisted of six participants for the interviews and five participants for the survey of whom all were current female engineering students at the community college. The Longitudinal Assessment of Engineering Self-Efficacy (LAESE) survey used was from the Assessing Women and Men in Engineering (AWE) and determined levels of self-efficacy from participants as a total using the LAESE subscale. Findings from this study indicate that all participants reported having high levels of self-efficacy from both the interviews and survey. However, they all showed differing levels of self-efficacy when asked questions that dealt with being treated equally in the workplace in the future from which can be explained as they all reported in the interview of having at least one negative experience from being a woman in engineering. This study highlights issues that affect other women and their levels of self-efficacy who are pursuing or are considering to pursue engineering and paves a way for other studies that can create and implement programs to intervene and promote higher levels of self-efficacy to women who are in or are considering going into engineering.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Kimm, Adrienne Kyung-Won (author)

Core Title Women in STEM: self-efficacy and its contributors in women in engineering within community college

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Master of Education

Degree Program Educational Counseling

Publication Date 10/18/2018

Defense Date 08/27/2018

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Engineering,OAI-PMH Harvest,self-efficacy,STEM,Women

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Tobey, Patricia (committee chair), Schafrik, Janice (committee member), Slaughter, John (committee member)

Creator Email adrienkk@usc.edu,akimm.92@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-84023

Unique identifier UC11675711

Identifier etd-KimmAdrien-6884.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-84023 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-KimmAdrien-6884.pdf

Dmrecord 84023

Document Type Thesis

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Kimm, Adrienne Kyung-Won

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA