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Role Conflict and Engineering Career Choice

C.K. Triplett1, J. Husman1, and J. Y. Hong2 1 Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287 / 2 University of Georgia, GA 30602

Abstract Although many factors influence career goals, recent research in women’s career development have focused on issues such as gender role attitudes, family issues, multiple role conflict, and the effects of support and barriers (Hackett 1997). In this study, senior engineering students were given surveys designed to measure their self-concept of actual self, ideal self, and a generic engineer (career self). The 50 adjectives female engineering students used to describe actual self, ideal self, and career self were compared with their male engineering counterparts and female education students. These descriptors were split into the following four categories: 1) self-confident/ goal-directed 2) emotional/ positive attitude 3) creative /unconventional and 4) sociable/outgoing. Significant differences were found for both sets of comparisons, especially in the emotional and sociable categories.

In addition to the quantitative data, students were asked to explore what a standard working day might be like for them in the future. These answers were then analyzed using qualitative research techniques. Both quantitative and qualitative data indicate that female engineering students appear to be stuck in the middle of trying to balance personal needs or goals with professional ones. This study suggests that role conflict may create more problems for women who enter a non-traditional field such as engineering.

Summary

Although many factors influence career goals, recent research in women’s career development have focused on issues such as gender role attitudes, family issues, multiple role conflict, and the effects of support and barriers (Hackett 1997). Social cognitive career development theories focus heavily on self-efficacy beliefs. Hackett and Betz (1981) have suggested that women’s gender role socialization process does not provide them many opportunities to develop self- efficacy in tasks that are necessary for traditionally male occupations.

Although self-efficacy has been linked to career gender role stereotypes, in this presentation we will focus on self-concept. Self-efficacy judgments emphasize mastery criteria (Zimmerman, 1995) and are influenced by evaluating the self in comparison with past performance (Bong & Clark, 1999). Self-concept, which is related to self-efficacy, stresses normative assessment of ability, such as being better than others (Zimmerman, 1995; Bong, 1998). As gender role stereotypes are more strongly influenced by norm-referenced comparisons than criterion- referenced comparisons, we examined students’ self-concept to reveal an underlying mechanism of gender role stereotype and its relation with career commitment. Specifically, we recruited Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education

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Yeon Hong, J., & Triplett, C., & Husman, J. (2005, June), Role Conflict And Engineering Career Choice Paper presented at 2005 Annual Conference, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--15145