Professional Role Confidence and Gendered Persistence in Engineering

TLDR

Social psychological research on gendered persistence in STEM is dominated by two explanations: women leave because they perceive family plans to conflict with STEM demands, and because they underestimate their STEM skills. The study uses panel data to examine behavioral and intentional persistence among engineering majors and introduces professional role confidence as a key factor explaining why women are less likely to remain in engineering. The authors analyze panel data on engineering students, measuring professional role confidence and tracking their persistence intentions and behaviors. The results show that family plans are not linked to women’s attrition but deter men, math self‑assessment predicts neither persistence, and professional role confidence is a strong predictor of persistence, with women’s lower confidence driving their attrition.

Abstract

Social psychological research on gendered persistence in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) professions is dominated by two explanations: women leave because they perceive their family plans to be at odds with demands of STEM careers, and women leave due to low self-assessment of their skills in STEM’s intellectual tasks, net of their performance. This study uses original panel data to examine behavioral and intentional persistence among students who enter an engineering major in college. Surprisingly, family plans do not contribute to women’s attrition during college but are negatively associated with men’s intentions to pursue an engineering career. Additionally, math self-assessment does not predict behavioral or intentional persistence once students enroll in a STEM major. This study introduces professional role confidence—individuals’ confidence in their ability to successfully fulfill the roles, competencies, and identity features of a profession—and argues that women’s lack of this confidence, compared to men, reduces their likelihood of remaining in engineering majors and careers. We find that professional role confidence predicts behavioral and intentional persistence, and that women’s relative lack of this confidence contributes to their attrition.