Understanding the Male Student Perception of Culture Climate for Women in Engineering Education

Alexis Nicole Barney; Benjamin Ahn; Matthew Nelson

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Conference: 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Baltimore , Maryland
Publication Date: June 25, 2023
Start Date: June 25, 2023
End Date: June 28, 2023
Conference Session: Women in Engineering Division (WIED) Technical Session 7
Tagged Division: Women in Engineering Division (WIED)
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Page Count: 31
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--44548
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/44548
Download Count: 389

Paper Authors

biography

Alexis Nicole Barney Iowa State University

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I am an undergraduate student at Iowa State University, studying Math Secondary Education. I began my studies as an aerospace engineering student and quickly noticed a chilly culture climate for women studying engineering. I decided to conduct research on the topic to see how the dominant group (white-male students) views these issues and what are they doing to solve them. Furthermore, I explored what could be done to improve the culture climate for minoritized groups, inevitably raising retention rates in engineering programs!

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biography

Benjamin Ahn Iowa State University of Science and Technology orcid.org/0000-0002-3808-0398

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Dr. Benjamin Ahn is an Associate Professor at The Ohio State University in the Department of Engineering Education.

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biography

Matthew Nelson Iowa State University orcid.org/0000-0002-7026-3178

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My background and interests are in RF, embedded systems, and engineering education. I have a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and a M.S. in Computer Engineering both from Iowa State University. I am now working towards my PhD in Engineering Education in th

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Abstract

It is well known that female students often experience a “chilly” culture climate in engineering, affecting many student outcomes, including persistence in engineering programs. What is lacking in the literature is how women’s experiences compare between different engineering disciplines. Furthermore, their male students’ perspectives on gender equity and perception of culture climate across different disciplines are missing. We studied three engineering disciplines, aerospace, civil, and chemical, with varying female-student-body representation to address the following research questions: (1) What is the current state of the culture climate for women studying engineering in their respective disciplines at the studied university? How does female-student-body representation impact the culture climate in the engineering discipline? (2) What is the male student’s perception on the culture climate for women in their engineering discipline? (3) Is there a disconnect between the culture climate female students experience and the perception male students hold of the culture climate for women? (4) What can be done to create meaningful changes to the culture climate for women at the university level? To answer these questions, we designed a survey and semi-structured interview to be administered to female and male engineering students across the three engineering disciplines. Our findings are consistent with the literature that women are still experiencing a chilly culture climate through peer tensions, types of gender discrimination, and feelings of isolation. From our data, we saw some trends indicating that women in engineering fields with greater female-student-body representation report experiencing fewer instances of gender discrimination and feelings of isolation than those in fields with less female-student-body representation. However, based on the demographics of our study, these results are inconclusive. As for the male-student-perspective, our findings show there is a large disconnect between what women are experiencing and what the male-student perception of the culture climate is. We argue that understanding the male-student perspective of the culture climate for women is critical to developing meaningful interventions for gender-related issues in engineering education. Lastly, we discuss intervention suggestions from participants to spread awareness and create meaningful changes to gender-related issues in engineering education across engineering disciplines. We compare these new perspectives to the suggestions for meaningful changes already established in the literature.

Citation
Format

Barney, A. N., & Ahn, B., & Nelson, M. (2023, June), Understanding the Male Student Perception of Culture Climate for Women in Engineering Education Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--44548

TY - CPAPER
AB - It is well known that female students often experience a “chilly” culture climate in engineering, affecting many student outcomes, including persistence in engineering programs. What is lacking in the literature is how women’s experiences compare between different engineering disciplines. Furthermore, their male students’ perspectives on gender equity and perception of culture climate across different disciplines are missing. We studied three engineering disciplines, aerospace, civil, and chemical, with varying female-student-body representation to address the following research questions: (1) What is the current state of the culture climate for women studying engineering in their respective disciplines at the studied university? How does female-student-body representation impact the culture climate in the engineering discipline? (2) What is the male student’s perception on the culture climate for women in their engineering discipline? (3) Is there a disconnect between the culture climate female students experience and the perception male students hold of the culture climate for women? (4) What can be done to create meaningful changes to the culture climate for women at the university level? To answer these questions, we designed a survey and semi-structured interview to be administered to female and male engineering students across the three engineering disciplines.
Our findings are consistent with the literature that women are still experiencing a chilly culture climate through peer tensions, types of gender discrimination, and feelings of isolation. From our data, we saw some trends indicating that women in engineering fields with greater female-student-body representation report experiencing fewer instances of gender discrimination and feelings of isolation than those in fields with less female-student-body representation. However, based on the demographics of our study, these results are inconclusive. As for the male-student-perspective, our findings show there is a large disconnect between what women are experiencing and what the male-student perception of the culture climate is. We argue that understanding the male-student perspective of the culture climate for women is critical to developing meaningful interventions for gender-related issues in engineering education. Lastly, we discuss intervention suggestions from participants to spread awareness and create meaningful changes to gender-related issues in engineering education across engineering disciplines. We compare these new perspectives to the suggestions for meaningful changes already established in the literature.
AU - Alexis Nicole Barney
AU - Benjamin Ahn
AU - Matthew Nelson
CY - Baltimore , Maryland
DA - 2023/06/25
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Understanding the Male Student Perception of Culture Climate for Women in Engineering Education
UR - https://peer.asee.org/44548
DO - 10.18260/1-2--44548
ER -