Making Merit Work at the Entrance to the Engineering Workforce: Examining Women’s Experiences and Variations by Race/Ethnicity

Abstract

This study utilizes interviews from 22 young female engineers from diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds as they first entered the White and male-dominated engineering labor force with the goal of examining: (1) how these women endorsed a gender-blind frame that characterizes their workplaces as fundamentally meritocratic, and alternatively, (2) how they named gender as relevant or salient to experiences and interactions at work. Drawing on the insights of intersectional scholars to answer the previous questions, the study calls attention to how the invocation of these frames differed for women of color compared to their majority White female peers. Results revealed that most respondents strongly endorsed the idea that engineering workplaces are meritocratic and that their gender is not relevant. However, there is also evidence of racial divergence in the themes expressed. For example, some White women expressed a narrative contradictory to meritocracy, discussing their workplaces as like family, while in contrast, women of color often expressed uncomfortable experiences of standing out. Overall, the results suggest that female engineers’ tendency to disavow, either explicitly or implicitly, that discrimination and bias occurs in their workplaces, likely contributes to continued gender and racial inequality; subsequently, programs and interventions to facilitate awareness of inequality are critically needed.

In recent decades, concerns over women’s underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields have prompted gender equality and diversity initiatives across the globe, including in North America and Western Europe, where despite higher levels of educational attainment relative to men, women remain much less likely to study and work in these lucrative fields (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2019; Stoet & Geary, 2018). Women’s lower relative presence in STEM fields contributes to the maintenance of their lower social and economic status in contemporary society; this is particularly the case for the field of engineering given its comparatively high salaries and prestige (Noonan, 2017). In the United States, women comprise only 15% of the engineering labor force, and earn 20% of baccalaureate engineering degrees; the exclusion of women of color is even more pronounced, at 5% and 7% respectively (National Science Foundation, 2018). While overall, women persist through engineering majors at the same rate as men, and transition into related occupations at comparable rates following graduation (Lord et al., 2009; Ohland et al., 2008; Sassler et al., 2017), female engineers are more likely to exit the engineering workforce during their initial years of employment compared to their male peers (Glass et al., 2013; Tao & McNeely, 2019).

Clearly then, engineering occupations are heavily dominated numerically by White men; but beyond counting gendered bodies, researchers have documented how the culture of engineering occupations is both hegemonically masculine and hegemonically White (Dryburgh, 1999; McGee, 2020; Powell et al., 2009; Yoder, 1991). Prior research documents the bias and discrimination that female engineers habitually experience in engineering workplaces, with patterns even more pronounced for women of color (Williams et al., 2016). Specifically, engineering workplaces are often gender-segregated, with limited advancement opportunities for women, and are characterized by daily interactions that diminish their agency and accomplishments (e.g., Faulkner, 2009; McIlwee & Robinson, 1992; Miller, 2004; Tonso, 2007), as gender bias shapes the expectations held and evaluations made by male engineering colleagues and supervisors (e.g., Hall et al., 2015, 2019; Williams et al., 2016).

Some recent empirical research, however, indicates that women in engineering may not perceive and acknowledge negative gendered behaviors and exclusionary norms as sexist or discriminatory. Instead, they often invoke the belief that engineering is highly meritocratic, thereby inadvertently contributing to the maintenance of their marginalization (Britton, 2017; Cech & Blair-Loy, 2010; Seron et al., 2018). System justification theory, a general theory of social inequality, points to why this might be the case, arguing that those in lower status positions are motivated to believe in a just world and therefore do not critique a system that disadvantages them (Jost et al., 2004). Feminist scholars of science also point to the salience of cultural narratives of meritocracy, such that female engineers are socialized to accept the notion that success in their field is based on objective indicators of performance, and therefore theoretically gender-blind, not to mention blind to other social categories (Haraway, 1988; Harding, 2008).

While informative, both theoretical and empirical research that outlines why and how female engineers might disavow gender inequality and bias is nevertheless limited in two ways that we seek to address in this study. First, empirical research on female engineers’ endorsement of their chosen field as a gender-blind meritocracy focuses on college students, such that we do not know whether such optimism continues to dominate women’s perspectives as they first transition to the labor force, or whether they become aware of how inequality is embedded in engineering spaces. Second, extant research on female engineers’ meritocratic beliefs utilizes predominantly White samples and does not consider the possibility that experiences and perspectives related to gender discrimination and bias may be quite different for women of color compared to their peers with White racial privilege.

Our study addresses these prior limitations and makes a new contribution to research on gender inequality in engineering by examining the experiences of a racially diverse group of young women as they transition to the labor force. We utilize an intersectional approach, building on the insights of scholars who point to gender and race as interlocking systems of inequality that simultaneously shape individuals’ perceptions, expectations, and experiences (Collins, 1998; Crenshaw, 1991; Ong et al., 2018). Specifically, informed by the extant research on minoritized women in STEM fields, we suggest that strong beliefs in meritocracy may be more prominent among those with racial privilege, and less so among women of color, who may possess a stronger relative consciousness of inequality due to their position as members of two low status groups (Davis & Greenstein, 2009; Kane & Kyyrö, 2001; McGee, 2020).

Therefore, we analyze interviews from 22 young women who recently earned engineering degrees at two different universities in the United States, just as they are completing their first year in the workforce, to address the following questions: How do these young women invoke a meritocratic, ‘gender-blind’, frame to make sense of their experiences and interactions at work? Alternatively, how do they invoke gender as a salient frame in their workplaces? Importantly, in answering both of these questions, we consider the ways in which the invocation of these frames varies amongst women from different racial/ethnic groups. Our sample of participants is well-suited to address these questions, as more than half of the women in our sample identify as Latinx, Black, or Asian. Results of our study will further the collective understanding of the obstacles that function to prevent women from consistently and explicitly recognizing the role of gender in the (re)construction of inequality in the elite and White male-dominated space of engineering.

Theoretical Perspectives on Inequality

Gender and Race as Interlocking Social Systems

We situate our study in theories of gender as a multi-level system of social practices that produces socially significant differences between men and women and organizes relations of inequality on the basis of these differences (Ridgeway & Smith-Lovin, 1999; Risman, 2004). The system is constructed and maintained by cultural beliefs and norms that reinforce the connections between levels and domains (Acker, 1990; Ridgeway, 2009). Yet it is problematic to assume that the experiences of women are homogeneous due to shared membership in a gender category. Intersectional theorists highlight how gender and race are interlocking and simultaneous socially constructed systems that come together to shape social institutions at the macro level, and expectations and interactions between individuals at the micro level. Intersectionality thus creates distinct social positions and experiences for those assigned to different race and gender groups (Collins, 1998, 2015; Ireland et al., 2018). Further, as hierarchical systems, race and gender converge to create the power, privilege, and elite status position for White men (Ong et al., 2011; Risman, 2004). We echo Shields (2008) in recognizing that “forms of intersectionality create unique situations of disadvantage and marginalization, yet gender may be a significant explanatory through-line” (p. 307). Thus, to better understand the experiences of women with different racial identities in the White male-dominated field of engineering, we begin by discussing theoretical approaches that either implicitly or explicitly assume that experiences and understandings of gender inequality always transcend or are independent of racial identities, and then turn to discuss critical approaches that underscore the importance of considering intersectionality.

System Justification Theory: Why Women May Deny Inequality

At first glance, the notion that women would deny the existence of inequality and bias in STEM fields seems improbable, yet there are strong theoretical foundations on which to base such arguments. Specifically, to exist—let alone thrive—in these fields, women contend with being in a minority, low-status position, and a common coping strategy in such situations is to view the status quo as legitimate and fair by denying the existence of bias and discrimination (Jost et al., 2004). System justification theory purports that when change seems highly difficult or unlikely, and particularly when there are interpersonal connections between low and high-status groups, those occupying lower status positions have a strong ideological motive to justify rather than critique the current system, and may consequently internalize their inferior position as legitimate (Brescoll et al., 2013; Jost et al., 2004). Relatedly, social psychologists argue that perceptions of discrimination may be more damaging to the psyche than perceptions of individual failure, and unless evidence of gender discrimination is completely unambiguous, women may avoid perceiving it as such (Schmitt et al., 2003). For low-status group members, acknowledgment of discrimination against their group implies that success lies outside of the control of the individual, creating a sense of vulnerability and contributing to low self-esteem; yet holding oneself accountable for failure preserves the possibility of future success via individual agency, and thus may be less psychologically deleterious (Major et al., 2007).

Cultural Narratives of Meritocracy: Why Women May Deny Bias in Engineering

Although such theoretical perspectives shed light on why women would be reluctant to generally call out male privilege, STEM fields like engineering are an elite context where sociocultural narratives of meritocracy are particularly heightened and function to ensure men’s continued position of privilege. While general notions of the U.S. as a fair society where success is possible through hard work and effort are ubiquitous, Merton (1957) described science as a prototypical meritocracy, an intellectual and objective enterprise that is pursued under a unique set of procedural rules and actions. As such, it is positioned as outside the influence of sociocultural factors; and success is theoretically possible for anyone, regardless of their background or position, as long they engage in scientific training, follow the rules, and work hard (Xie et al., 2015). Yet as feminist scholars point out, STEM fields are masculine-normed because these meritocratic logics are intertwined with gendered cultural beliefs about women’s lower math and science ability. That is, meritocratic frames, purportedly value-neutral, perversely foster epistemologies that marginalize women (Haraway, 1988; Harding, 2008). The continued salience of gender stereotypes biases the thoughts and behaviors of individuals and limits women by shaping not only their aspirations but also their self-efficacy in STEM, as they doubt their own skills, as do others assessing them (Barth et al., 2018; Ridgeway & Correll, 2004; Schmader et al., 2004; Shaffer et al., 2013; Stout et al., 2016). Thus, the gender system supports the cultural narrative that STEM fields utilize value-free and objective standards of achievement, and consequently, women entering these occupational fields may justify any negative treatment or exclusion they experience as legitimate and warranted (Britton, 2017; Francis et al., 2017).

Critiquing Meritocratic Narratives: An Intersectional Approach

In considering the theoretical lenses that help us to make sense of why women in engineering may not acknowledge gender bias and inequality, the insights of feminist scholars of color and critical race theorists are imperative to consider. These scholars vocally critique the dominant narrative of STEM as objective, neutral, and universal, pointing out that it is subjectively built around Western, Eurocentric values and epistemologies, as many other cultures embrace value systems and narratives that diverge from such Western ideals (Baber, 2015; O’Hara, 2020). Specifically, in addition to articulating how meritocratic and color-blind narratives perpetuate racism by obscuring how Whiteness dictates norms and values in STEM fields, scholars point to the lack of salience or even rejection of individualist and meritocratic narratives among many communities of color (Bonilla-Silva, 2006; Lee, 2001; McGee, 2020; Yosso, 2005). Put simply, arguments that women may often deny inequality because of cultural beliefs in science as a meritocracy most likely apply to those with a White and Western worldview, with less relevance to those with racially minoritized identities. Indeed, some theorists have argued that women of color have a particularly strong consciousness of social inequality as a likely consequence of their unique intersectional position (Collins, 1998), as a steady and pronounced accumulation of discriminatory and exclusionary experiences lead to a heightened awareness that society is neither just nor fair (Major et al., 2007). As such, women of color may be highly skeptical of cultural narratives that success or failure in engineering is due to individual effort or merit.

Review of Prior Empirical Research

In the sections below, we review empirical research consistent with the theoretical perspectives outlined above. We begin by discussing research on how female engineering college students invoke meritocratic frames. We subsequently turn to review a separate body of emerging research that explicitly examines the experiences of women of color in STEM, which hints that such frames may be less salient for minoritized women. Our study aims to bridge these distinct bodies of research to examine how young female engineers from diverse racial identity groups may make sense of inequality in their new workplaces in divergent ways.

The Invocation of Meritocratic Frames in STEM Fields

Studies examining the experiences of female STEM majors in college reveal a common pattern, such that these young women rarely acknowledge the presence of gender discrimination (Cech & Blair-Loy, 2010). For example, a study by Powell and colleagues (2009) found that female engineering majors defined the culture of engineering as gender-neutral or gender-blind, stating that professors’ assessments were influenced only by demonstration of skills and capabilities, and the gender of the student was insignificant. An earlier study by Dryburgh (1999) also found that female engineering students denied the existence of sexism in their program; for example, when referring to interactions with their male peers, one woman stated that “the guys are totally cool and they totally accept the girls and there’s no problem” (p. 674). Similarly, Seron and colleagues (2018) reported that their sample of female engineering majors unquestioningly presumed that engineering is meritocratic. While they were aware of their low numerical presence and perceived that male peers navigated the major more easily, they continued to endorse the narrative that success in engineering was a consequence of displaying objective abilities. Further, other studies have found that while female engineering majors possessed relatively lower self-efficacy in their skills due to the internalization of stereotypes and the gendered performance expectations to which they are often subconsciously held (Correll, 2004), they nevertheless expressed strong interest and affect for their chosen field (Jagacinski, 2013), and largely believed that the obstacles they faced in succeeding in engineering are very similar to those experienced by their male colleagues (Hartman & Hartman, 2008).

Yet importantly, across these studies of different college cohorts, women did share experiences that they recognized as blatantly sexist, but these were explained as exceptions to the rule of meritocracy because they happened outside the classroom. For example, in Dryburgh’s (1999) study, while her respondents denied the existence of sexism within their college major, they also expressed concern that they might be subject to discrimination later in their occupations when working with older male engineers. Relatedly, female engineering majors reported negative experiences of feeling isolated and devalued in internships, such as being given menial paperwork tasks where men were given ‘legitimate’ engineering tasks (Seron et al., 2016). Such findings could be precursors to larger cracks in the meritocratic frame that appear after women enter the engineering labor force full-time after college, which serves as the time frame of interest in our study.

The Limits of Meritocratic Frames for Women of Color

It is critical to note that the above research does not consider the intersection of race and gender. Indeed, such studies often do not mention the race/ethnicity of their respondents (e.g., Dryburgh, 1999; Hartman & Hartman, 2008; Powell et al., 2009; Seron et al., 2016, 2018), thereby implicitly suggesting homogeneity of race or treating White as the unmarked race. This practice belies the disadvantages of the intersectional race and gender position of racially minoritized women, who are subject to more stereotypes of lower ability and consequently experience exclusion and microaggressions more than their White female peers in STEM (McGee & Martin, 2011; Ong et al., 2018; Wilkins-Yel et al., 2019).

Indeed, rather than expecting that hard work and demonstrated ability would consistently be recognized, some research found that students of color are keenly aware that such factors are not necessarily sufficient to overcome biased expectations (Chinn, 1999; Levya, 2016; McGee & Martin, 2011). For example, in Carlone and Johnson’s (2007) highly cited study on the development of science identity among women of color in college, respondents discussed the low expectations they perceived from their faculty despite their high performance in class; for example, an American Indian female student commented that “science-wise, I’m not expected to know what I know” (p. 1202). Similarly, in a study by McGee (2020), a young Black female engineering major, aware of the uniqueness of her racialized and gendered identity, remarked that “I know I’m not crazy. And [I] see them looking at me and they are saying, ‘You don’t really belong here’” (p. 71). Thus, while limited, the extant research on women of color in STEM college majors finds that while they nevertheless express strong interest in pursuing STEM occupations (Hanson, 2004; O’Brien et al., 2015), they are cognizant of both gender and racial bias, articulating marked experiences of exclusion in fields that are purportedly equally accessible to those who demonstrate skills and ability.

The Current Study

Stepping back, there is some empirical evidence that as young women persist through engineering majors, they become professionally socialized into the beliefs and behaviors of engineering as a discipline; they do not question the cultural and structural underpinnings of gender inequality they experience, but instead endorse the notion that their chosen field is highly meritocratic (Seron et al., 2016, 2018). Yet the limited research on women of color in such fields raises the prospect that strong beliefs in meritocracy may be more prominent among those with racial privilege, and less so among women of color (McGee, 2020).

At the same time, extant research has not examined whether and how these findings related to female engineering students in college extend to early experiences in the labor force. Despite the fact that it is a critical time period where women develop and first enact coping career strategies, there is a lack of research examining young women’s experiences transitioning to the engineering labor force, particularly among women of color (Dickens & Chavez, 2018). Specifically, we do not know if many women retain their relatively optimistic view of engineering as meritocratic, learned and cultivated in the relatively isolated space of academic classrooms in college, or if they begin to critique the narrative of a gender-blind meritocracy.

Overall, our objective is not to determine whether young women, new to engineering workplaces, either accept or deny that gender matters. Rather, the issue is how they acknowledge the salience of gender on the job, or relatedly, how they disavow its salience. Further, we employ an intersectional lens and purposively examine the gendered experiences and understandings of young engineers who identify as women of color, with the aim of discovering the ways they may diverge from those of their White female peers, including whether they may be more skeptical of narratives of meritocracy. Specifically, our research questions are: a) how do young female engineers invoke a meritocratic, ‘gender-blind’, frame to make sense of their experiences and interactions at work, and b) alternatively, how do they invoke gender as a salient frame? In addressing both of these questions, we examine whether and how the invocation of these frames might differ between White women and women of color.

Method

Positionality

The first author identifies as White and genderqueer and the third author identifies as Latinx and a cis-gender woman, and both are doctoral candidates in STEM Education, with undergraduate and graduate degrees in STEM disciplines. The fourth author identifies as a Japanese American cis-gender woman and is a postdoctoral fellow who studies race and gender inequality in relationships at work and in families. The second and fifth author both identify as White cis-gender women and are sociologists and full professors who study gender and race inequality in STEM, as well as young adult transitions. The sixth author identifies as White and an international cis-gender woman, and is an associate vice provost at a higher education institution whose role focuses on the recruitment and retention of faculty from underrepresented groups. While the authors came to this study with their own subjectivities related to the research topic, they worked to keep their biases in check by engaging in reflection about their positionalities, conducting peer debriefing, using the theoretical frameworks to guide their analysis, and focusing on their main goal of reporting on participants’ voices and experiences.

Project Overview

This study is part of a larger collaborative research project conceived to examine transitions to the STEM workforce. In the spring of 2015 and 2016, the research team obtained the graduating class roster from chemistry and chemical engineering majors at one large, private northeastern university and one large, public southern university in the United States. Students were encouraged to participate in a quantitative survey via announcements in their courses and in emails from department administrators. Students who completed the 30-min baseline quantitative survey for the larger project received a code to redeem for $5 to use on Amazon. com. Those who completed the survey were also asked if they would be willing to participate in an interview; thus, the qualitative portion of the research project included interviews with a sub-sample of respondents. With the goal of conducting interviews with equal proportions of both genders and both majors (chemical engineers and chemistry majors) but maximum diversity by race/ethnicity, the research team invited about 150 students who completed the survey to participate in an interview; this included all Black and Latinx students who completed the survey as well as a random sample of White and Asian participants. In total, 91 young men and women agreed to be interviewed (about 60% of those contacted) for the larger research project. Interview respondents received $25 for a 1–2 h, in-depth, semi-structured interview. All recruitment and research procedures were approved by the Institutional Review Boards at both institutions, and all research participants provided informed consent.

Participants

For the purposes of this study, our analytic sample includes women who completed chemical engineering degrees, and who then transitioned to engineering jobs after graduation (n = 22). Respondents had just finished their undergraduate degrees, and one had earned a master’s degree in the same field. We restricted our analysis to this subset of interviewees because our research focus was on women’s early experiences in the workforce, and the majority of engineering majors were employed full-time in related industries, while most chemistry majors went on to graduate or professional school. Interviews were conducted during their first year of employment. Our respondents were between 22–24 years old (M = 22.5) and were all employed full-time, with starting yearly salaries ranging from approximately $75,000–$90,000. Summarized in Table 1 by their pseudonyms, all but one worked in the private sector, largely in industrial settings. To ensure respondents’ anonymity, occupations that were less common, such as a federal applied research facility, are categorized as ‘other’.

Table 1.

Participants’ Characteristics

Pseudonym	Race/Ethnicity	Industry	Location
Alexandra	Latinx	Chemical	Midwest
Daniela	Latinx	Oil	South
Maria	Latinx	Oil	South
Patricia	Latinx	Other	East
Sara	Latinx	Chemical	South
Grace	Latinx/Asian	Semiconductor	South
Alice	Asian	Pharmaceuticals	East
Amy	Asian	Pharmaceuticals	East
Carol	Asian	Chemical	South
Cindy	Asian	Consumer products	West
Jenny	Asian	Chemical	East
Kim	Asian	Pharmaceuticals	East
Nicole	Black	Consumer products	West
Beth	White	Chemical	South
Christine	White	Chemical	South
Jessica	White	Pharmaceuticals	East
Linda	White	Other	East
Martha	White	Oil	South
Melanie	White	Chemical	South
Natalie	White	Other	East
Stephanie	White	Semiconductor	South
Trisha	White	Consumer products	West

Our respondents were racially diverse. As shown in Table 1, women of color, including Latinx, Black and Asian, were more numerous than White women. While we are aware of literature on STEM inequality that posits that Asian women hold positions of racial advantage (e.g., Alfrey & Twine, 2017), we follow the lead of other research that includes Asian women in the category of women of color (e.g., Carlone & Johnson, 2007; Williams et al., 2016), as they are likely to experience racialized bias and exclusion. Further, while they are overrepresented in STEM degree attainment, Asian women are the lowest represented group with academic tenure and full professorships in STEM, and are outsiders at the upper levels of STEM industry, academia, and government (Ong et al., 2011). Relatedly, the experiences of Asian women in our sample more closely mirrored those of their Latinx and Black peers than those of White women.

Interviews

The interview protocol was semi-structured to address several lines of inquiry around the transition to and subsequent experiences within the labor force (please see the online appendix for complete protocol). Thus, interviewers asked respondents about their job searches, their work schedules and daily routines, and pay and benefits. Example questions were “walk me through a typical day”, and “who do you interact with?” Questions about their work culture probed the organizational structure and the diversity at their workplace. Relevant to this study, respondents were asked “do you think that you have been treated differently at this job because of your age, your race, or your gender?” and “do you think that your assignments differ because of your age, your race, or your gender?” Probes such as “tell me more” and “can you give an example” were used to encourage respondents to elaborate on brief initial responses. As described in detail in the coding section below, the entirety of each transcript was analyzed, because respondents discussed aspects of their work experiences related to our research questions throughout their interviews.

Interviews took place approximately ten months after respondents had graduated and were conducted via video or voice call by members of the research team; in a few cases the respondents lived in the same city as members of the research team and were interviewed in person. The team conducting the interviews was comprised of six graduate students in the social sciences (including the fourth author) who were trained by the principal investigators of the larger project (including the fifth and sixth authors). The graduate student interviewers––three identify as White, two identify as Asian, and one identifies as Black––had many commonalities with the respondents that facilitated rapport: they were all female, about the same age, and students at the same institutions from which the respondents had recently graduated. Most interviews lasted approximately 90 min and were conducted while the respondent was at home after work or on a weekend. After professional transcription of the audio, the transcript was cleaned for accuracy and to remove identifying information. This information was kept separate and secure in accordance with IRB requirements for ethical research.

Coding

Transcripts were uploaded in MAXQDA12, a qualitative data analysis software and data was analyzed via thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Inductive coding was conducted by the first, third, and fourth authors who first read each transcript for a general overview to familiarize themselves with the data and identify potential elements of interest in relation to the research questions. As initial semantic and latent codes were developed, coders wrote memos to capture early thoughts, compare ideas, identify connections, and further develop codes. These memos included a reflexive component where researchers documented their thinking and monitored their biases. Initial themes were developed as underlying patterns described in the codes were identified, based on codes’ frequency and the depth to which passages of the data illustrated aspects of the themes (Hesse-Biber, 2016). Themes were compared within and between interviews to check for similarities and differences, frequencies, and relationships. Ultimately, two main themes and seven subthemes were developed: meritocratic frame (sub-themes: proving ability, youth and inexperience, and contradicting the meritocracy), and naming gender (sub-themes: gender essentialism, exception to the rule, standing out, and mental gymnastics).

As themes and sub-themes were developed in the coding process, coders periodically met with other research group members for peer debriefing. To establish coding reliability, the first and fourth authors re-read transcripts with the related themes and subthemes. In the first round, the Cohen’s kappa for inter-coder agreement, calculated using a spreadsheet, was below 0.8 on two subthemes: gender essentialism and exception to the rule. To resolve these inter-rater differences, the first and fourth authors together discussed interpretations of the definitions of these subthemes until consensus was reached, and then re-coded the responses independently. After this, kappa values of greater than .8 were established for all subthemes, with an average kappa of .92. For remaining discrepancies, after discussion, there was consensus that the code assigned by the first author would be used. A summary of the themes and subthemes we developed, along with definitions, example quotes, subtheme frequency, and kappa values based on n = 22 transcripts, is given in Table 2.

Table 2.

Analytic Themes, Subthemes, Definitions, Sample Quotes, Frequencies, and Cohen’s Kappas

Theme Subtheme Frequency Cohen’s kappa	Definition	Sample quote
Meritocratic frame Proving ability 20/22 (90.9%) κ = 1.0	Respondents’ belief that working hard and long will prove they are capable and eventually earn them respect and rewards in the workplace	“After a couple of years, you have opportunities. You keep a record of your accomplishments and when your supervisors feel like you’ve been there long enough and you achieved enough you can get promoted” (Linda, White)
Meritocratic frame Youth and inexperience 17/22 (77.3%) κ = .86	When faced with differential treatment, respondents explain it as a due to their relative youth, which related to having less experience as an engineer	“Age definitely plays a big factor. A lot of times, people do question my decisions a lot more, which makes sense because I haven’t been there as long. But, sometimes it is annoying because it’s like, I promise you I did this right” (Grace, Latinx/Asian)
Meritocratic frame Contradicting the meritocracy 6/9 White women (66.7%) κ = 1.0	White women express kinship with supervisors and/or co-workers	“One of my coworkers loves guns and has taken me to the shooting range. It feels like a family more than it feels like coworkers” (Beth, White)
Naming gender Gender essentialism 11/2 (50%) κ = .91	Respondents explain gendered interactions or job assignments as something natural, assuming women and men have different strengths or skill	“Having good social skills sets you apart, because not everyone can portray themselves in a positive manner. I feel like that’s one of the things that really worked to my advantage, which I don’t know if that’s necessarily something you can prepare for or if it’s more natural” (Christine, White)
Naming gender Exception to the rule 15/22 (68.1%) κ = .88	Sexist treatment is anomalous and not part of regular patterns in the workplace; it is committed by non-engineers, is unintentional, or in the past	“I really needed an operator’s help, [and after he finished] I remember I literally said, Thanks, Carl, so much. You’re the best. When I said that, all the operators did … you know in middle school when the guys would be like … showing you had a crush? Something stupid. In my head, I was thinking, If I had been a guy, and said the same thing, they wouldn’t have done that […] but that isn’t the people I’m working with on a day-to-day basis. That’s the operators” (Alexandra, Latinx)
Naming gender Standing out 11/13 women of color (84.6%) κ = .91	Women of color reported feeling like they stand out in mainly white, male-dominated workplaces	“I was the only female out of the three plants I sat in […] then I started to notice that there’s more white, older men in the room, pretty much over the age of 40" (Carol, Asian)
Naming gender Mental gymnastics 10/13 women of color (76.9%) κ = .91	Women of color name sexist treatment, but second guess themselves	“It’s like the all-male environment, they say some vulgar things, or they’ll say things like, Oh, I can’t say something because Patricia, is here. But for the most part, I get treated pretty fairly” (Patricia, Latinx)

Results

Overview

We present our major results below, divided into two parts. In the first part, we present the results of our first research question, discussing the ways in which most of our respondents discussed their workplaces as gender-blind meritocracies. We also call attention to differences by race/ethnicity, discussing a racialized counter-example, specifically the sub-theme of contradicting the meritocracy, which captures how some White women viewed the workplace through a lens of kinship or family. In the second part, we address our second question, discussing how women make sense of those instances when gender is salient; in doing so, we again call attention to instances of racial divergence in our findings, as two sub-themes in our data (standing out and mental gymnastics) are unique to the experiences of women of color. Finally, by way of providing context to the discussion of results below, we note that when asked about the diversity of their workplace, respondents overall characterized it as predominantly or completely White, and generally noted the presence of a handful of other female employees and people of color. This is consistent with nationwide statistics on engineering occupations (National Science Foundation, 2018), and underlines the reality that our respondents gendered and racialized identities placed them in the minority.

Part 1. Meritocratic Frame

To the extent that gender is salient in our data, it operated mostly in the background, imperceptibly influencing interactions with others. Our respondents did not typically discuss gender as relevant in shaping their work experiences. Rather, participants viewed their workplaces as meritocracies and often expressed the need to demonstrate their worth in their engineering workplaces through hard work.

Proving Ability: Work Hard and Get Ahead

Respondents expressed the belief that motivation, knowledge, and a strong work ethic are characteristics that create success in engineering. Respect, trust, and status were regarded as attainable to everyone who exhibits these characteristics. Consequently, the condition of being disrespected or low status was explained as due to an individual lack of experience or knowledge. Respondents invoked the meritocratic frame in various ways, for example, pne respondent explained how work assignments are made due to differences in knowledge acquisition: “The longer you’ve been there, the more knowledge you have, so there’s not really any way you can compete and say, ‘Oh, well, I’m a better employee than her.’ No, you’ve been there longer and you know more” (Christine, White). Indeed, respondents recognized differential treatment existed in the engineering workplace, but explained the treatment as the result of work-related merit: “If anyone gets treated differently, it’s because of the quality of work they’ve done or how you perceive their work ethic” (Linda, White).

Furthermore, some described a shared engineering identity that comes from all engineers working hard to prove themselves. For example, after discussing how experience matters, Sara also explained how she views an engineering identity as something that is achieved through common values: “I think what everyone has in common, is that we’re engineers. There’s a certain mindset that goes with valuing just rationality and reasoning and how do I put this? Being excited about engineering. That transcends cultural boundaries” (Sara, Latinx). Sara’s perception that an engineering identity “transcends cultural boundaries” does not acknowledge how it is historically associated with the masculine-normed characteristics of rationality and reason. Yet her view aligns with the professional socialization found within engineering education, where gender and racial identities are subordinated to engineering identity (Dryburgh, 1999). In this way, many women in engineering likely learn to ignore gender and attribute success and failures to merit, or lack thereof.

Relatedly, a work ethic and collegiality generate workplace success, while gender discrimination may be explicitly disavowed:

You can be a female or a male and go in there with a bad attitude, and you’re gonna get a bad attitude back. I don’t feel like anybody’s ever pointed out a reason why somebody can’t do something because of race, gender, or anything like that. I just would say that if you’re willing to work and you work well with others, you have a lot more opportunities available to you. (Maria, Latinx)

Maria did not view gender and race as a basis for discrimination. These are disconnected from a willingness to work, particularly to “work well with others.” The above examples provide support for our claim that meritocratic explanations are foregrounded in respondents’ framing their work experiences. With gender thus relegated to the background, the explanation offered for differential treatment was experience, which is closely tied to age.

Youth and Inexperience: Explaining Differential Treatment

A dominant theme within the meritocratic explanations offered by most of our participants, all in their early twenties and just out of college, centers on differential treatment because of experience, something linked to age. The following quotes demonstrate how women viewed their younger age as a reasonable explanation:

I don’t get as much responsibility because I’m younger. Whenever there’s a discussion during a meeting, I’m not asked for any input and my ideas don’t seem like they’re […] it’s kind of like “let the adults talk” and I’m the little intern who’s supposed to take notes. Even if it’s my own meeting, I don’t really get to participate. (Carol, Asian)

Carol recognized that getting less responsibility is poor treatment. Beth also thought that she is treated differently, “But not necessarily in a bad way. I think, well, to some extent because of my age, I think I get treated a little bit differently, but because I’m new […] I’m still learning the ropes” (Beth, White). Similarly, Stephanie qualified how being made fun of is not “bad:”

They all make fun of the new hire, because I seem young, but not in a bad way, just that they know we don’t know a lot. They’re like, “Yeah, go ahead and ask those questions, because you’re new and young.” (Stephanie, White)

Such teasing, or lack of responsibility in Carol’s example, was explained away as due to youth. Further, Sara commented, “I think I look very, very young, so definitely. I’ve been called ‘girly’ very affectionately” (Sara, Latinx). Many respondents described their female peers, and sometimes describe themselves, as “girls.” As illustrated above, across the interviews, our respondents seem determined to view being called “girl” in positive ways and not to allude to the broadly negative gendered social connotations around the term as related to emotional sensitivity, physical weakness, and helplessness. Notably, reference to male peers as “boys” was absent from the interviews.

Contradicting the Meritocracy: Kinship through Whiteness

While the invocation of meritocracy in general, and the role of age within it, was very prevalent among our respondents, at the same time, an alternative narrative emerged among White women. Specifically, some White women shared a differential experience based on age that was interpreted positively as being included in a workplace family. Here we see evidence of White women’s privileged racial positioning in predominately White workplaces, as a kinship shared with White men seemed to give them a sense of belonging:

Because if you’re a girl, you’re automatically their daughters, and they’re telling you how they want their daughters to be an engineer. They’re super nice to you. They’ll pick up everything. “Oh, you wanna go see what, honey? Oh, let me show you.” Yeah. If you’re a guy, you don’t get any of that. (Martha, White)

Men who “want their daughters to be an engineer” saw Martha as similar to their loved one and thus provide more guidance. Martha’s experience supports findings from older women in the oil and gas industry, who attributed their success as due to playing a daughter role with senior men (Williams et al., 2012). This is echoed by Beth, who detailed how she spends time with her White male mentor’s family outside of work, and also turned to him for assistance with life tasks such as finding a dentist and deciding on a retirement plan. She stated that “because my dad doesn’t live [here], David got to fill in the role.” Other respondents used more circumspect language when using the family metaphor: “My mentors are both men. I do think that helps that our group is really small. Not a family, but somewhat like that. You feel like everyone’s going through the same processes together. I feel really comfortable” (Christine, White). Melanie similarly reported a sense of kinship with her White male mentors who wanted to pass along what they know to the next generation:

I really think [the White men at my company] want someone to carry on the knowledge that they have. I just think they’re genuinely nice people who really care about one another. This is probably the closestknit group of people in a workplace you could probably ever meet. They all look after one another. I feel very fortunate that they’ve welcomed me as part of this environment. I definitely feel like I’m one of them. (Melanie, White)

These women did not make the explicit connection between Whiteness and feeling like family, or in other words, that shared racial membership with their male co-workers and mentors facilitates such feelings of connection. Rather, they expressed this kinship as due to being young, not young and White. Importantly, none of our respondents mentioned positive familial connections with female co-workers or mentors, and none mentioned being mentored by a person of color. Further, we can infer that Whiteness is important to this theme, because such familial characterizations of the workplace were not expressed by our respondents of color. On the contrary, many expressed negative sentiments of standing out and feeling different from their male coworkers, as we explore in Part 2. In this sense, White women are advantaged relative to their peers of color; although as women they are part of a minoritized population, they are sometimes able to use their race to secure advantage, or at least mitigate disadvantage. In effect, they are in the position to push their gender disadvantage into the background, at least during the inductive phase of their careers. But as we discuss in the conclusion, these advantages may wane as they mature in their jobs.

Part 2. Naming Gender

In Part 1, we argued that the female engineers we interviewed rarely acknowledged how gender shaped their interactions with others at work. However, the salience of gender is not an either/or proposition; rather the larger question is when and how gender becomes salient, and how women make sense of it (Britton, 2017). In this section, we discuss how, if gender becomes clearly visible in social activity and moves to the foreground, the potential emerges to trouble meritocratic, supposedly gender-neutral, frames. Our respondents offered two primary instances of gender salience in their workplaces: becoming aware that women and men are doing different work despite similar credentials (sub-theme: gender essentialism), and encountering direct sexism (sub-theme: exception to the rule). In addition, many women of color discussed how their racialized and gendered bodies in these White-male-dominated workplaces produced particular experiences of standing out. Additionally, many women of color called out gender quite explicitly as motivating instances of differential treatment, yet then proceeded to back away from this invocation, a practice we call mental gymnastics.

Gender Essentialism: Normalizing Workplace Segregation

Even in their first year in the workplace, respondents observe that men and women tend to occupy different types of jobs. To make sense of this, some respondents relied on narratives of natural differences in preferences or abilities:

I think they just try and see which personalities work well together. He’s an idea maker so he has all these ideas for how to make it better. I’m good at interacting with people and organizing, so they’re like, “We’ll put her with him and she can get his ideas forward.” Maybe girls are better at that. I don’t know. (Martha, White)

This male peer was afforded an agentic subject position, “idea maker,” while Martha took on the tasks of “interacting with people and organizing,” a more reactive subject position. Then, Martha described a gendered division of labor endorsed by “them,” where she was “put with him” and then worked to “get his ideas forward.” While she did not explicitly define “them” in the context of her engineering workplace, it is inferred to be White men. And while she did not explicitly endorse it, neither did she challenge the explanation that “maybe girls are better” at some things and that work assignments are made in recognition of such stereotypes. Similarly, Grace thought that she and other women were hired for specific roles at a semiconductor company because they were perceived to have normatively feminine traits and preferences:

We deal with the people [working in the plant] all the time, and you have to know how to deal with people who are angry and don’t necessarily want to listen to what you’re talking about. We’re all social butterflies. It might be because a lot of women in engineering really want to have jobs where they deal more with people than with the data, and Q&R ––that’s quality and reliability–– is very much dealing with people on the job […] The technical quality and reliability team is mostly men, and they deal with the actual data more than they deal with people. They go into a lab and do experiments and stuff. (Grace, Latinx-Asian)

Grace described gendered preferences shaping work segregation at her work ––within quality and reliability, women work in customer-facing and auditing jobs, while men are clustered into technical roles. She did not call out this segregation by work function as inequitable, even though, women must disproportionately “deal with people who are angry” and did not listen to her despite their subordinate position in the workplace. For Grace, social butterflies want jobs dealing with people, which leaves being in the lab to men, a space that gender scholars argue is more prestigious (Seron et al., 2016).

Exception to the Rule: Sexism as an Aberration

The second common way respondents explicitly named gender relates to sexist interactions with others, a pattern that has been detailed in other research (e.g., Rosser, 2004; Williams et al., 2014). Yet, even when our respondents detailed negative experiences and recognized them as having a sexist tone, they were not counted as evidence of a pervasive and continuing system of inequality. Rather, these experiences were rationalized away as aberrations. For example, Kim discounted gendered treatment on the job:

There was one irate moment that I had…, where one of my co-workers was like—I was lifting, I think it was like a four-liter bottle or something. [My coworker] he goes, “Oh, no, you should let me do it.” I’m just like, “You are five inches shorter than me, and probably weigh like 50 pounds less, if not more. I’m good.” I don’t think it came from a place of sexism. I think it was more of ‘I’m trying to be chivalrous,’, but in a misguided way. (Kim, Asian)

While Kim implied that she negatively received and reacted to his insistence, deeming it “misguided,” she explained it as chivalry, an outdated attitude that men may exhibit, though she did not see it as originating from an actual “place of sexism.” Yet her experience depicts the existence of benevolent sexism, where men automatically make assumptions that women are weaker or less competent, often despite clear evidence to the contrary (Glick & Fiske, 1996). As men’s offers or insistence on helping can be viewed as kind or generous, this is a particularly insidious form of sexism, as it positions women as inferior to men, while at the same time making direct rebuttal seem rude.

Further, Melanie rationalized sexist behavior as coming from a certain “class” of men, her plant’s operators, whose job does not require a college degree and over whom she, as an engineer, has higher rank: “I’ve gotten so used to sexist jokes now. Most of the operators are really, really old men who’ve worked in the same plant for 40 years. They had no rules” (Melanie, White). Having become desensitized to “sexist jokes,” Melanie explained them as an artifact of times past. She partitioned what continues to happen in the present as isolated to a certain type of men, the lower-level operators. Beth also explained sexism as something that happened in the past but does not continue. She shared a story about a colleague’s experience:

One time she, as the project lead, was talking to some plant manager, and was telling the guys there, “This is what we need to do. This is what I recommend.” They said, “We don’t believe you. You’re a woman. We wanna talk to your boss.” […] I think it shook her for someone to say, “I don’t value the work that you have because of your gender.” (Beth, White)

In making sense of this incident, Beth further commented that it was “ridiculous” that such a thing happened, but also expressed confidence that this explicitly sexist treatment of a colleague was an historical aberration because it happened long ago. As such, she did not anticipate sexism will affect her because it is no longer present in her workplace culture.

Standing Out: The Experiences of Women of Color

Perhaps because their intersectional identities are viewed as lower status on both gender and racial hierarchies, resulting in heightened feelings of physical marginalization, most women of color reported feeling different based on how they look, and made explicit reference to their occupations being dominated specifically by White men:

If I would describe every meeting I go to, it’s me and a bunch of White old men […] I normally never really notice race. It’s not really something that I think—part of just where I grew up. I do notice, sometimes, that it’s just humorous how it’s like, I’m a younger Hispanic female, and in all of these meetings, it’s old White men. It’s hard not to notice when everybody looks one certain way, and I’m different than that. (Alexandra, Latinx)

Gender and race/ethnicity became salient for Alexandra as she noted the juxtaposition of a “younger Hispanic female” body, which is “hard not to notice” relative to the “old White men” in her workplace. While she made light of this incongruity by saying it is “just humorous,” she nevertheless was clearly attuned to how she stands out. This sentiment is echoed by Jenny, who was highly aware of her relative positioning: “All of the managers I interact with are older White men. That was sometimes a little—when it’s suddenly you versus management, it becomes very apparent to you that that is you versus older White men” (Jenny, Asian). Jenny’s repetition of the phrase “older White men” emphasizes her lower social position as result of her intersectional identity. Cindy connected her intersectionality to possible sexual harassment:

One of my fears is that people won’t give me the respect that I need, or that I would like to have. Because I’m a woman, I’m a different race than them, and I’m younger than them. You know, I’m like probably the most unique person you’ll see [at this company] because of that […] Some people, I mean, could be a little bit inappropriate, some of the guys would start maybe hitting on me, but not too much, because you can’t cross that line. (Cindy, Asian)

Cindy saw herself as “the most unique person” and recognized that it made her vulnerable. Yet, she seemed to trust her workplace to maintain an invisible line, tolerating sexual harassment but only to the level of “a little bit inappropriate.”

Mental Gymnastics: Shifting Explanations by Women of Color

While voicing explicit recognition of physically standing out was unique to women of color in our sample, so too was explicit recognition of disadvantage due to gender. Specifically, many women of color called out experiences of exclusion or bias and connected it to their intersectional identities; yet their sense-making of marginalization still relied on a meritocratic logic, to the extent that they often backpedaled gendered or racialized interpretations directly after invoking them. For example, Nicole, spoke at length about the racial discrimination she experienced throughout her early life and during college. She chose to work in a startup rather than an established company because of its racial diversity, but noted that there were still issues of inequity at her workplace:

Yeah, I do feel like there is a weird essence of male dominance. I’ve brought it up a few times to different people, but, yeah, definitely, gender. It’s hard for me to put my finger on it because I have so many different reasons why it could be. (Nicole, Black)

Here, despite first stating “definitely, gender,” Nicole wavered and seemed to consider a wider range of reasons. This suggests that naming gender inequity remains fraught and uncomfortable. Sara also identified overt discrimination as:

People just holding themselves back because I’m there. It makes them uncomfortable. I guess, there’s just a different dynamic when I’m a woman and they’re a man, I guess […] Yeah, I would say, especially with my supervisor. I’ve heard that he is just much more—he just seems much more comfortable with the guys. Well, I know that other women have told me he doesn’t swear around us. I just feel like he is trying to get over all this discomfort when he’s around me, also because we’re just so different too. It’s hard to connect in that way […] I think it’s definitely about experience. It’s about proving yourself in a lot of ways. (Sara, Latinx)

After explicitly describing a sexist treatment, Sara moved to offer an explanation based on experience, falling back on a meritocratic frame. Similarly, Jenny planned to move to another engineering role to gain experience and legitimacy:

I think I wanna be in operations engineering, just because I think I need that experience, to really be seen as a legitimate engineer. They don’t have as much respect for engineers who haven’t had the trial by fire of working in a plant […] I think men are given more leeway than women. I do still think that there is a subtle perception of just, if you see a—if you put a guy and a girl together, I think there’s still a perception like maybe I should talk to the guy first, or maybe the guy’s more of an engineer than the girl. I do think people are at least willing to change their minds, once they get to know you. Maybe their initial perceptions will still be a bit more biased. (Jenny, Asian)

Here we see additional evidence of vacillation between invoking gender and meritocratic frames. Jenny began her explanation for moving jobs by utilizing a meritocratic lens, speculating that gaining additional experience in operations would lead to being viewed as a “legitimate engineer,” but then pivoted to acknowledge that men benefit from stereotypes of engineering as masculine. Yet, although she believed that “initial perceptions” were biased, she was optimistic that she could prove herself, putting the responsibility on herself to “change their minds.” Thus, while many women of color experienced and called out racism and sexism, they were still grappling with how to reconcile discrimination with the meritocratic frames that they also used to make sense of their engineering workplaces. Mental gymnastics are evidence of the pernicious ways that the narrative of engineering as a meritocracy continues to thrive.

Discussion

Our research builds on the work of gender scholars studying male-dominated fields such as engineering, who have called attention to the ways that underrepresented women contribute to the maintenance of inequality (Powell et al., 2009; Seron et al., 2018). As new entrants to the workforce, for our respondents to explicitly name gender as a relevant factor that significantly shaped their work would be to directly challenge the dominant cultural view of engineering as meritocratic. Doing so could open a space for them to contemplate and recognize how the systematic nature of gender inequality in their profession places them in a subordinate position despite their accomplishments. Therefore, our study sought to answer how these women endorsed a gender-blind frame that characterizes their workplaces as fundamentally meritocratic (research question 1), and alternatively, how they named gender as relevant to experiences and interactions at work (research question 2). Further, drawing on the insights of intersectional scholars, in answering both of these questions we sought to address how the invocation of these frames differed for women of color compared to their majority White female peers.

In response to the first question, overall, our findings revealed evidence that most young women in our sample endorsed strong beliefs in a meritocratic system. They clearly expressed having equal opportunities to advance and do well as long as they work hard. Thus, consistent with social psychological theories of system justification and feminist critiques of the myth of science as a meritocracy, our respondents viewed their likelihood of success as linked to their demonstrated skills and abilities. Echoing the results of prior empirical research on women in college, our respondents appeared thoroughly professionally socialized as engineers, exhibiting confidence that engineering is indeed blind to gender and not expressing concerns that their gender has or will impact how others evaluate them (Dryburgh, 1999; Hartman & Hartman, 2008; Seron et al., 2016). Additionally, they were able to extend the logic of meritocracy to instances where they do perceive differential treatment, which they cast as due to inexperience and age, factors that are inextricably linked for this group of young women just beginning their careers.

Yet consistent with theories of intersectionality, we found evidence that the viewpoints and experiences of young women engineers diverge in ways that speak to the existence of racial privilege among some women despite a common identity as female engineers. Specifically, we found some evidence of a contradictory narrative espoused by White women, regarding the existence of “work families.” Interestingly, respondents who discussed feeling like daughters in relation to their older, White male colleagues or feeling connections of kinship to their co-workers, did not appear to reflect on how this contradicts the narrative of a meritocratic workplace which they also espoused. Nor did they ever appear to consciously reflect on their racial advantage, consistent with research on the power of whiteness as an unmarked category (Brekhus, 1998; Doane & Bonilla-Silva, 2003). In other words, because of their position within the race system in the United States, White women are unlikely to notice the privilege their race confers, as Whiteness is normative and therefore invisible. Further, our finding resonates with Alegria’s (2019) recent study of mid-career women in technology, where White women “stumbled” into mid-level management positions, often as a consequence of the direct recommendation or encouragement of their White male supervisors (p. 736). While their continued advancement will almost certainly be halted by the maintenance of the glass ceiling, such limited advancement is less likely to be available to their female peers of color.

In response to our second research question, we found that when women did explicitly and consciously recognize that gender matters in their workplace, they forced experiences and observations of inequality to fit within a meritocratic logic in two ways. First, when they discussed microaggressions or even stronger examples of bias, they compartmentalized them as aberrations. Whether they are historical, due to outdated attitudes, or coming from lower status people such as operators, respondents partitioned off and dismissed these instances as exceptions to keep the overall frame of the meritocracy intact (Britton, 2017; Francis et al., 2017; Powell et al., 2009). Second, if our respondents did recognize gender segregation in the workplace, they tended to explain it as a logical and efficient extension of different natural abilities and preferences between men and women; this is consistent with theories of gender essentialism, which detail how common narratives about women and men’s ‘natural’ differences underlie and are used to justify continued inequality in the labor force (Charles & Bradley, 2002, 2009). From this perspective, different career paths were not viewed as the result of biased assessments and structures of inequality, but simply the result of individual and authentic choices freely made. In other words, our respondents are shaped by a durable narrative of meritocracy in engineering, to the extent that they explained segregation as due to women and men having naturally different skills that lead to differences in locations and responsibilities in the engineering workplace (Seron et al., 2018). In their reluctance to challenge sexism, they are likely unwitting contributors to its maintenance in their workplaces.

Furthermore, consistent with theories of intersectionality, we also found that women of color were more cognizant of, and more likely to, name their gender as a disadvantage. Echoing some empirical research on the exclusionary experiences of women of color in STEM majors in college (e.g., Carlone & Johnson, 2007; McGee & Martin, 2011), many women of color clearly pointed to the dominance of older White men in their profession, as well as articulated the discomfort of standing out at work, and the possibility of receiving negative attention as a consequence. These findings are consistent with research on the hypervisibility of women of color in many academic and professional spaces, who feel pressure and experience ostracism as tokens, because they are one of very few with the same gender and racialized identity (Dickens et al., 2019; King et al., 2010; Wilkins-Yel et al., 2019). Importantly, the theme of standing out was not observed among White women in our sample. This speaks to the likelihood that barriers to success in this White male-dominated field are more likely evident to, and experienced by, women of color due to their position at the intersection of the race and gender systems (Dickens & Chavez, 2018; McGee & Bentley, 2017; O’Brien et al., 2015). And yet, women of color also expressed conflicted or contradictory reasoning, both naming and then un-naming gender in the same passage, often landing back on a meritocratic explanation for their negative experiences or treatment. Thus, while it appears that they did experience some isolation or exclusion due to their gendered and racialized identities, minoritized female engineers in our sample nevertheless appeared to retain some optimism in the functioning of the meritocracy.

As such, while there appear to be differences in the experience and awareness of gender, both women of color and White women in our sample might be considered what Risman (2018) refers to as millennial gender straddlers, or young women in the current historical moment who mix and match contradictory and inconsistent understandings of gender. We suspect these discourses are a protective mechanism, practiced and honed through years of socialization as they progressed in an engineering trajectory (Francis et al., 2017). Their ability to combine meritocratic explanations with others that contradict or at least undermine such explanations, enables them to endure marginalization and bias in an occupation that they have entered after years of rigorous education and training in a male-dominated college major.

While at this particular point in their careers our respondents appeared mostly unaware of, and untroubled by inequality, we anticipate that the future may be different. For example, as they progress in their careers, the gender segregation of workplace roles may appear less benign when differential income and status trajectories associated with these roles clearly visible (Cech & Blair-Loy, 2010). Further, instances of bias, discrimination, and microaggressions, even if somewhat rare, may be less easily dismissed as they accumulate over time (Valian, 2005).

Limitations and Directions for Future Research

This study makes a new contribution to the literature through its focus on young women just entering the engineering workforce. Although, as mentioned above, we anticipate that the endorsed meritocratic framing will begin to fail them in the future, the current study cannot examine this proposition. Further, our findings are limited to experiences revealed to us by our respondents in interviews, as our study design did not include observations of interactions and events within their workplaces that would have cast a more comprehensive light on the salience of gender.

Finally, while our sample is relatively racially/ethnically diverse in terms of the representation of Latinx and Asian women, only one of our respondents was Black. Thus, we are not able to speak to potential differences between Latinx and Black women, who share in common a status of very low levels of representation, but almost certainly have different experiences and obstacles in engineering workplaces. As such, future research might follow contemporary young women from different racial/ethnic groups from their point of entry into the STEM labor force and throughout the subsequent years of their careers in such fields, to ascertain whether and how their understandings of inequality evolve over time, and how this may affect their retention in engineering. Such research can advance our collective understanding of the ways that women may evolve from contributing agents to potent disrupters of the contemporary gender system.

Practice Implications

Our findings speak to the need for more active discussions and interventions related to gender inequality in post-secondary engineering spaces as well as occupational spaces, to make both young women and men aware of the pervasiveness of gender inequality in engineering is a necessary step to dismantling it (Hartman & Hartman, 2008). Clearly it is important for men to be aware of how their actions—or inaction—perpetuate inequality; and related to the specific focus of our paper, heightening women’s awareness of systemic inequality in engineering could provide the foundation to realize shared experiences with other women. As such, while awareness of gender discrimination can be demoralizing, coupling it with understanding of the systemic nature of inequality, as well as knowledge of shared strategies to address it, can promote self-efficacy and persistence (Brown et al., 2010; Cech et al., 2011; Weisgram & Bigler, 2007).

Further, our findings suggest that White women appear somewhat oblivious to their racial privilege in engineering spaces, pointing to the imperative of raising awareness of the systemic nature of racism, and promoting understanding of how the systems of gender and race interact to continue to preserve the privilege of White men. Clearly there are challenges to designing and implementing diversity and inclusion trainings that achieve the intended effect of increasing individuals’ knowledge about the existence of inequality and resolve to change things, rather than leading to reactance or denial (Cundiff & Murray, 2020; Pietri et al., 2019). Yet there is evidence that such programs can be effective, particularly if they include elements of experiential and incremental learning (Zawadzki et al., 2012). As such, we join with the voices of other researchers and social justice advocates in pointing out that these programs and interventions to facilitate awareness of gender and racial inequality are critically needed.

Conclusion

Our respondents begin their adult work lives as engineers relying on their youth to make sense of their hegemonically masculine workplaces. Invoking age and limited experience provides an adequate cover to make merit work in the moment, but their justification is by definition time-stamped, with diminishing relevance over time in the workforce. While as engineers they go against gendered occupational norms in form, they do not appear aware of, or prepared to attack, systemic gender inequality in their profession. Indeed, their general disavowal, either explicitly or implicitly, that gender discrimination and bias occur in their workplaces, likely contributes to the (re)creation of inequality. Without being challenged, the sexist beliefs and actions of male co-workers can easily continue without reflection, and the biased norms, expectations, and rules of the workplace culture can remain perfectly intact; yet it is also important to acknowledge that if women do call out or fight against inequality, they are subject to sanctions and retaliation by men whose privilege and power in the gender system is threatened (Britton, 2017; Cech & Blair-Loy, 2010; Seron et al., 2018). Disruption of the gender system, and its intersection with systemic racism, requires the active awareness and engagement of both men and women in contemporary society.