Factors Contributing to the Success of Women Working in Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) Careers

Background

A metaphor frequently used to describe the under-representation of women in SET is the “leaky pipeline” (Pell, 1996). Women are lost for SET fields along the development of their careers from school and at various other crucial life milestone phases (cf. the funnel model of Cronin & Roger, 1999). In the remainder of this section we will give a brief overview of the usual reasons for leakage and also indicate what we think is responsible for success in a SET career.

Blickenstaff (2005) gave an overview of factors he found in literature for the under representation of women in SET (see also Cronin & Roger, 1999). He found that some factors provided good reasons why women are leaving SET fields whilst others did not stand up to scrutiny. He cited the following reasons from research why women leave SET: (a) biological differences between men and women, (b) girls are not well prepared for a science career, (c) girls have a negative attitude towards science and did not have positive experiences with science at school, (d) there are no role models in science for girls, (e) science curricula do not apply to girls, (f) pedagogical styles of science classes fit boys better than girls, (g) there is what Blickenstaff (2005, p. 372) calls a “chilly climate” in science classes towards girls, (h) it is expected that girls conform to traditional gender roles and (i) the worldview imbedded in scie4nce is masculine. These nine categories can be divided into individual factors and institutional or structural factors which are in principle external to the individual and are briefly discussed below (Fox, 1998; Sonnert, Fox, & Adkins, 2007).