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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
published: 30 June 2017
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00875
Edited by:
Deborah Anne O’Neil,
Bowling Green State University,
United States
Reviewed by:
Teresina Torre,
Università di Genova, Italy
Alison Sheridan,
University of New England, Australia
*Correspondence:
Nadya A. Fouad
nadya@uwm.edu
†Present address:
Wen-Hsin Chang,
Student Counseling Services, Iowa
State University, Ames, IA,
United States
Specialty section:
This article was submitted to
Organizational Psychology,
a section of the journal
Frontiers in Psychology
Received: 20 January 2017
Accepted: 12 May 2017
Published: 30 June 2017
Citation:
Fouad NA, Chang W-H, Wan M and
Singh R (2017) Women’s Reasons
for Leaving the Engineering Field.
Front. Psychol. 8:875.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00875
Women’s Reasons for Leaving the
Engineering Field
Nadya A. Fouad1*, Wen-Hsin Chang1†, Min Wan2and Romila Singh3
1Department of Educational Psychology, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, United States, 2Department of
Management, McCoy College of Business, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX, United States, 3Lubar School of
Business, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, United States
Among the different Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math fields, engineering
continues to have one of the highest rates of attrition (Hewlett et al., 2008). The turnover
rate for women engineers from engineering fields is even higher than for men (Frehill,
2010). Despite increased efforts from researchers, there are still large gaps in our
understanding of the reasons that women leave engineering. This study aims to address
this gap by examining the reasons why women leave engineering. Specifically, we
analyze the reasons for departure given by national sample of 1,464 women engineers
who left the profession after having worked in the engineering field. We applied a
person-environment fit theoretical lens, in particular, the Theory of Work Adjustment
(TWA) (Dawis and Lofquist, 1984) to understand and categorize the reasons for leaving
the engineering field. According to the TWA, occupations have different “reinforcer
patterns,” reflected in six occupational values, and a mismatch between the reinforcers
provided by the work environment and individuals’ needs may trigger departure from the
environment. Given the paucity of literature in this area, we posed research questions
to explore the reinforcer pattern of values implicated in women’s decisions to leave the
engineering field. We used qualitative analyses to understand, categorize, and code
the 1,863 statements that offered a glimpse into the myriad reasons that women
offered in describing their decisions to leave the engineering profession. Our results
revealed the top three sets of reasons underlying women’s decision to leave the jobs
and engineering field were related to: first, poor and/or inequitable compensation, poor
working conditions, inflexible and demanding work environment that made work-family
balance difficult; second, unmet achievement needs that reflected a dissatisfaction with
effective utilization of their math and science skills, and third, unmet needs with regard to
lack of recognition at work and adequate opportunities for advancement. Implications of
these results for future research as well as the design of effective intervention programs
aimed at women engineers’ retention and engagement in engineering are discussed.
Keywords: women engineers, attrition decisions, reasons for attrition, person-environment fit, occupational
turnover, women’s career development
INTRODUCTION
Researchers, educators, policy makers, economists, psychologists, and leaders in technology fields
have decried the underrepresentation of women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math
(STEM) fields. Billions of dollars of federal funding over the past 20 years have focused on
developing interventions to increase the pipeline of middle and high school girls entering STEM
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fields (White House Office of Science and Technology Policy,
2013). For example, in fiscal year 2011, nearly 3 billion federal
dollars were spent on STEM education, roughly a third to support
and encourage underrepresented groups to enter STEM fields.
The result is that 18% of engineers graduating in 2011 were
women, an increase from the 15% of graduates in engineering
in 1990 (National Science Foundation [NSF], 2014). Despite the
gains in female engineering graduates, only 11.7% of women are
practicing engineers, a figure that has been relatively constant
for two decades. Clearly, many women engineers are leaving
the field of engineering. Even though they are attracted to
the field, and complete a rigorous program of studies to be
prepared as engineers, something occurs to either prevent them
from entering an engineering career or leave the field after they
enter.
There have been many attempts to understand why women
leave the engineering profession (e.g., Buse et al., 2013;
Singh et al., 2013;American Association of University Women
[AAUW], 2015;Fouad et al., 2016). Some have argued that
women are not confident enough to be engineers (e.g., Cech
et al., 2011), others reported that women are vulnerable to
stereotype threat (Murphy et al., 2007;Block et al., 2011), and
engage in more social coping (Morganson et al., 2010), or
that women are dissatisfied with their pay and promotional
opportunities (Hunt et al., 2012). Other research pointed
out that women engineers may contemplate departure when
they perceive their work and occupational environment as
not meeting their needs (American Association of University
Women [AAUW], 2015). Blickenstaff (2005) reviewed the many
explanations for women’s departure from a science career
and concluded that many of these explanations have focused
inappropriately on the need to remediate some aspect of
girls and women. She argued that a series of solutions are
needed, starting with a greater diversity in the workforce and
emphasized the need to create an equitable workplace that
would foster innovations that reflect diverse perspectives in
design. Blickenstaff (2005) highlighted the need for changes to
science education in order to increase the retention of women
scientists, but her arguments are equally relevant for the field of
engineering.
These studies provide valuable insights into the reasons why
women may consider leaving their engineering workplaces and
the engineering profession. However, with the exception of one
study (Fouad et al., 2016) that compared women currently
working in engineering with those that left the field, there
is a paucity of research that understands the reasons why
women engineers left the engineering profession. Just like “exit
interviews” help human resource managers understand and
address areas that need to be fixed within the organization,
understanding the experiences of women engineers who left
the profession can help shed light on workplace factors that
were instrumental in their decisions to leave the field so that
organizations can adequately address appropriate mechanisms to
retain and engage women engineers.
We seek to make four contributions with this research.
First, we use a national sample of women engineers from
a variety of engineering disciplines that allows us to draw
a comprehensive portrait of women engineers’ workplace
experiences that foreshadowed their occupational departure
decisions. Second, by uncovering the reasons for departure
from the perspective of women engineers who already left
the engineering field complements the insights generated from
research on women engineers that are contemplating leaving
the field. Third, we identify a comprehensive set of workplace
factors that are theoretically implicated in individuals’ decisions
to persist in, or depart from an occupation but have not yet been
addressed in extant research. We do so by using a theoretical
lens that allows us to capture the interface between individual
and workplace factors that underlie persistence and departure
decisions. Finally, we employ qualitative analysis that offers a
rich supplement to the empirical research. By using qualitative
analysis of comments from women engineers who recently
departed from the engineering field, we are able to identify the
factors that tipped their decision toward departure rather than
persistence.
Theoretical Background and Research
Questions
Occupational turnover is costly, especially in fields like
engineering that are characterized by rigorous education and
training requirements. In addition, occupational turnover costs
get amplified in fields like engineering that have a high cost of
entry and exit, and when reentry is difficult (Ng and Feldman,
2007). Occupations, defined as “collections of work roles with
similar goals that require the performance of distinctive activities
as well as the application of specialized skills or knowledge to
accomplish these goals” (Dierdorff et al., 2009, p. 974), have been
shown to exert a “top–down” influence (Cappelli and Sherer,
1991) on a variety of individual level outcomes and experiences.
TABLE 1 | Reinforcers, description, and number coded for women who left engineering.
Reinforcer Description Number of comments coded
Comfort∗Needs related to activity, independence, variety, compensation, security and working conditions 699
Safety Needs related to company policies, supervision-human relations, and supervision-technical 383
Achievement∗Needs related to using abilities and achievement 282
Status∗Needs related to advancement, recognition, authority, and social status 252
Altruism Needs related to co-workers, social service and moral values 239
Autonomy Needs related to co-workers, social service and moral values 38
∗Reinforcers found in engineering occupations (Rounds et al., 1981).
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In a series of studies, Dierdorff and his colleagues explain
how occupations exert this “top–down” influence on individual
behaviors and outcomes. According to Dierdorff and Morgeson
(2013), any occupation encompasses several organizations, and
jobs are embedded within the organization and occupation. They
further note that occupations are characterized by their own
“cultural features” (Morgeson et al., 2010, p. 353) and specific
“occupational reinforcer patterns” (Dierdorff and Morgeson,
2013, p. 689) that promote or inhibit the satisfaction of needs
and values of the employees working in the organizations. They
also add that occupations enable or constrain the emergence of
different work design elements that shape the manner in which
work roles are enacted and jobs performed in any organization
(Morgeson et al., 2010). Finally, they argue that occupational
theories like the Theory of Work Adjustment (TWA) add unique
value to our understanding of the links between occupational
contexts and individual level outcomes because they “describe the
influences occupational context exerts on individuals’ behavior
and attitudes, and suggest that congruence between individuals
and their environments can explain various outcomes such as
job satisfaction” (Morgeson et al., 2010, p. 353) and in our case,
occupational turnover decisions.
The TWA (Dawis and Lofquist, 1984;Dawis, 2005), may
be useful in explaining why women leave engineering since
it was specifically developed to understand factors involved
in people’s decisions to leave an occupation or job (Juntunen
and Even, 2012). The TWA belongs in the realm of person-
environment theories within large class of occupational theories
In general, person-environment fit theories capture the interface
between individual and specific environment (job, organization,
or occupation) factors that underlie the individuals’ satisfaction,
adjustment, and/or fit with the environment and are manifested
in their decisions to persist in or leave that environment. One
person-environment fit theory in particular, TWA originally
focused on the process of adjustment to work (Dawis and
Lofquist, 1984;Dawis, 2005;Swanson and Schneider, 2013),
but it is also useful in predicting whether individuals would be
satisfied with their jobs (or occupations) and how long they
might remain in the job (or the occupation). Person-environment
fit within TWA is considered to be reciprocal. The occupation
(or environment) has requirements of the individual (his or her
ability to do the job), and the individual has requirements of
the environment (the environment’s ability to satisfy his or her
needs). According to TWA, if an individual’s needs are met by
the reward (reinforcers) in the occupation, he or she is predicted
to be satisfied and will stay in the occupation. Conversely, if
there is little correspondence between an individual’s needs and
the occupational reinforcers, and the individual cannot act to
bring the two more in alignment, the individual will leave the
occupation.
In terms of the person-environment fit framework, the TWA
describes the person or the individual perspective through the
construct of values and needs. Values are viewed as representing
a grouping of needs. Dawis (2005) defined six crucial values:
achievement, comfort, status, altruism, safety, and autonomy.
Cluster analyses were used to identify three to six needs
that corresponded to a particular value. Achievement values
include using one’s abilities in the work environment and
the job providing the individuals with a meaningful sense of
accomplishment. Comfort values capture various aspects of the
work environment that provide security, compensation, good
working conditions, engaging work, variety in work, and ability
to be independent. Status values reflect the occupation’s provision
of opportunities for advancement, recognition, authority, and
social status. Altruism values include having good relations with
co-workers, doing things for other people, and doing work that
does not feel morally wrong. Autonomy values include being
able to be creative, having responsibility, and being able to be
autonomous. Finally, Safety values reflect fair company policies,
good supervisors who back up their workers and provide good
training.
From the perspective of the environment, research underlying
TWA has identified occupational ability patterns and
occupational reward patterns in describing a wide variety
of occupations. Early research on TWA established reinforcer
patterns for STEM careers, including engineering (Rounds et al.,
1981). For example, the occupation of engineering reinforces
Achievement, Status, and Comfort. No studies have explicitly
examined the STEM occupational reinforcers with women or
their satisfaction with their engineering jobs and the engineering
occupation, although a few studies have examined women’s
departure from STEM careers. It is possible that women leave
the engineering field because of a need-reinforcer mismatch.
They may, for example, have other needs for reinforcers not
provided by the environment, such as altruism or autonomy
as was illustrated in a study by Trower and Chait (2002). They
surveyed women faculty in over 130 institutions and found that
female faculty in STEM have lower job satisfaction than their
male colleagues. The researchers found that difficulty of fitting
into a department, opportunities to work with senior faculty,
and institutional support were the most significant factors that
impacted women faculty’s level of job satisfaction. However,
since this study only focused on women who worked in academic
environments, the results may not apply to those who work
outside of academic settings.
In a longitudinal study, Glass et al. (2013) examined women’s
departure from STEM fields over time. They found that
women in STEM-related occupations were more likely to leave
their occupational field than women in other professions. The
researchers found that demographic and family characteristics of
women in STEM jobs were not saliently different from women
in non-STEM professional jobs (Glass et al., 2013). Moreover,
some protective factors such as higher earning, egalitarian gender
attitudes, and better work-life support might prevent women
from leaving their occupations temporarily but did not prevent
women from moving out of the STEM fields over time. The
authors argued that one possible reason that women in STEM
occupations often move to non-STEM jobs and occupations is the
chilly climate that they experienced in their working conditions
and environment. This view is further corroborated in an
extensive study by Hewlett and Luce (2005).Hewlett and Luce’s
(2005) surveyed 2,493 Science, Engineering, and Technology
(SET) professionals and conducted additional surveys of 1,910
men and women within three multinational companies and
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found that women SET professionals confronted a variety of
“push” and “pull” factors that shaped their decisions to persist
in or leave the field. The women SET professionals in their
study reported that they loved their work, found it intellectually
challenging and stimulating, and loved being able to use their
hard-earned skills to make a contribution to society, these were
the “pull” factors that kept these women highly committed and
involved in their fields. Yet, these women faced extreme job
pressures, narrow, murky career advancement opportunities,
and often worked in workplace cultures, that were “at best
unsupportive and at worst, downright hostile to women” (p. 7)
that thwarted their attempts to succeed and thrive and “push”
them out of the workplaces. Viewed in terms of the TWA, it is
possible that there is a misalignment or a mismatch between the
women’s needs from their work environments and occupations
and what their environment (job and/or occupation) offered and
provided them.
Although these previous studies provided valuable
information about the differences between women in STEM
fields and non-STEM fields and indicated that promotion, higher
job satisfaction, and job commitment might help companies keep
their female workers, little is known specifically about whether
women engineers’ actual working conditions and experiences
may underlie a “need-reinforcer” mismatch and act as a potential
trigger for them to quit the engineering field. Using the TWA,
we apply the lens of the six values and their corresponding
needs to delve into, and categorize, the match/mismatch between
the working conditions experienced by women engineers who
worked in engineering and the needs they sought to satisfy in
their workplaces. Such an approach will allow us to not only
develop a deeper understanding of the key areas of person-
environment match/mismatch but also help us document the
different types of reasons and circumstances that precipitated
a large group of women engineers to leave the engineering
field after pursuing an engineering career. Given that there is
little empirical literature and limited conceptual and theoretical
guidance in this area, we offer the following research questions:
Research Question 1: Are women engineers’ decisions to leave
their jobs and the engineering field driven by a mismatch between
their occupational needs and the reinforcers provided by the
work environment?
Research Question 2: Will women engineers’ attrition decisions
be characterized by the same reinforcer pattern of values and
needs of Achievement, Status, and Comfort as described by
Rounds et al. (1981)?
Research Question 3: Will women engineers’ attrition decisions
be characterized by other reinforcer pattern of values and needs
not captured by Rounds et al. (1981)?
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Procedure
The data were collected through an online survey in 2009.
A survey link was sent to 70 universities with engineering
departments across the United States. These universities were
chosen from an annual list compiled by the American Society
for Engineering Education (ASEE) that profiles the universities
based on their record of graduating the most women engineers
for that year; our list was based on ASEE compilation of 2008.
Out of the 70 universities that were contacted, 30 universities
and their engineering departments formally partnered with
the researchers. The women engineering alumnae from these
30 universities were sent a link to the website; only those
who agreed to the informed consent were given access to the
survey.
Links to the survey website were also sent by these women
alumnae to their female engineer colleagues, friends, and family
members. A total of 5,562 women who had a bachelor’s degree
in engineering participated in this survey after completing the
informed consent form.
Sample
About 10% (554) of these women never entered the field of
engineering, 27% (1,464) chose to leave the engineering field, and
60% (3,324) were still working in engineering in 2009. In this
qualitative study we focused on the comments of the 27% of the
participants (N=1,464) who left the profession of engineering
having worked in engineering workplaces for a period of time.
Of the 1,464 women participants who chose to leave the
engineering field, 65% identified themselves as white, 4% as
Asian/Asian American, 3.8% as African American, 2% as Latina,
22% as Multi-racial, 1% as “other,” and less than 1% self-identified
as Native American. Regarding their marital status, 66% of
women in this group were married, 23% were not married, 4%
were in a committed relationship, 1% reported having separated
from their spouse/partner, 1% were divorced, and 1% reported
being widowed. About 60% of women in this group were parents.
In addition, 19% of the women (279) left the engineering field less
than 5 years ago. For this group, the average age of women ranged
from 19 to 66 with a mean age of 35 years.
For other women who left engineering after having worked in
this field, their ages ranged from 21 to 85 years. Almost half of
these women reported having a full-time employed spouse. About
42% of women who left the engineering field reported at least 40
working hours per week in current non-engineering positions.
The annual salary reported by women who left the engineering
field ranged from less than $ 25,000 to more than $ 250,000.
Twenty-three percent of women reported an annual salary of less
than $ 25,000, and 26% of participants reported an annual salary
between $ 51,000 and $ 100,000. In the sample, 26% of women
who left the engineering field reported that their total family
income was higher than $ 151,000 per year.
The top five majors reported by the women who left the
engineering field were: Industrial Engineering (20%), Mechanical
Engineering (18%), Electrical Engineering (13%), Chemical
engineering (13%), and Civil Engineering (11%). Among this
group of women, 42% pursued an additional educational degree:
27% earned a M.S., 12% earned a MBA, 9% earned a B.S., 3%
earned a M.A., and nearly 2% earned a Ph.D. Additionally, the
top four reasons why these women chose to leave the engineering
field were work-family imbalance (16%), loss of interest in
engineering work (12%), lack of opportunities for advancement
(11%), and dislike of engineering tasks (9%).
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Survey Questions
The survey questions included both Likert type questions as well
as open-ended questions. We used the responses to the two
open ended questions for qualitatively analyzing that data and
reporting the results in this paper. The two questions that were
used for analyses were: what was their opinion and experience
on why women leave engineering and what were their own
experiences in engineering that they would like to share with
researchers. Guided by TWA theory, the responses to the two
questions were coded into six categories and used in the present
study. Seven researchers from both a management department
(one faculty member and one doctoral student) and a counseling
psychology department (one faculty member and four doctoral
students) coded the comments. In particular, each doctoral
student coded 100 pages on average (with 3–6 statements on each
page) and each faculty member coded 30 pages, and 10 pages
overlapped. Thus, approximately 200 statements were coded
by multiple raters. Any discrepancy in coding for a statement
was flagged for discussion. After comparing the coding between
researchers and doctoral students, we flagged 3% out of 1,863
comments and the discrepancies were reconciled.
RESULTS
The participants’ comments were grouped into categories of
mismatch between their values related to Achievement (needs
related to using abilities and achievement); Comfort (needs
related to activity, independence, variety, compensation, security,
and working conditions); Status (needs related to advancement,
recognition, authority, and social status); Autonomy (needs
related to creativity, responsibility, and autonomy); Altruism
(needs related to co-workers, social service, and moral values);
or Safety (company policies, supervision-human relations, and
supervision-technical). The factors, below, and in Table 1, are
discussed in order of most frequently identified values (Comfort)
to least (Autonomy).
Comfort
It comments were the most frequently identified as contributing
to the needs-reinforcers mismatch in terms of how employees
perceived their work environment, specifically the needs related
to working conditions, pay, and security. There were 669
comments coded to the “Comfort” category of values.
Within the Comfort category of values, and the “working
conditions” set of needs, those relating to work life imbalance
stood out in their frequency. Many women reported that the
engineering job was a busy one, to the point that it impacted
their work-life balance. Many women reported that engineering
jobs could be very demanding and “most companies expect
+40 h.” They reported being challenged to be able to work
fulltime when they had small children at home. For example, one
participant stated that “I often had meetings scheduled outside
of childcare hours, had travel expectations, and heavy workloads
were not decreased. Eventually I went to working part time as
a consultant, working to support tests and launches primarily
for satellites.” The majority of women who left the engineering
field stated that it was difficult for them to find part-time jobs
in the engineering field, and that was the main reason they left
the occupation altogether. However, it needs to be noted that not
all of the women who left the engineering field had the same
experience. A few had different experiences that related to their
dissatisfaction with the nature of the work itself. One of these
women commented, “sitting in front of a computer screen is
fine and dandy when I have meaningful work, but I didn’t have
meaningful work that kept me busy 40 h a week.” This particular
respondent felt so strongly about the lack of meaningful work that
she mentioned this was the only reason that made her decide to
leave engineering.
Compensation was also an issue that was brought up by
women engineers who left engineering. Some of them stated
that the compensation they earned was not enough for them
to pay childcare. As a result, it made sense for some them to
quit their jobs and stay home to take care of their children
on their own. For example, one of the participants shared that
the “cost of childcare was very high... In my case, it became
financially illogical to continue working, and my job satisfaction
alone was not enough to keep me there.” Still others noted that
they realized that people usually had better compensation in
a business position than in an engineering position and that
pay discrepancy drives many to leave engineering. Many women
engineers specifically mentioned a concern with the possibility of
glass ceiling and stated that they were not paid equally compared
to their male counterparts and noticed “a gap in pay between men
and women at the same skill level.” One respondent commented
that having a lower salary than her male colleagues made her
think about moving to another field to make more money.
Another woman stated, “the career path in engineering does not
allow for comparable income or management growth. There was
a choice [for me] between further specialization and returning to
an MBA.”
Some women expressed that the engineering field could
not provide them with steady employment. For example, one
of the participants shared that “I never felt like I had job
security because of layoffs and the threat of layoffs.” Similarly,
another stated, “I personally do not feel there is enough security
working in industry.” As noted above, there were only limited
opportunities for part-time work in an engineering field for those
who need to have more flexible working schedule. Furthermore,
many women stated that it was “hard to take a break and then
come back” to the engineering field. One of them stated, “leaving
engineering and trying to come back is not an easy feat. That is
why many women who take a break to care for their children,
never return.”
Working conditions also influenced individuals’ decisions to
not work in engineering anymore. For example, one of the
participants shared, “I worked for an organization that was an
old boys club. The industrial nature of the job was dirty, smelly,
and hazardous. This company had been run by white men for so
many years that these guys had no idea how to integrate women
into their organization.” Similarly, another woman stated, “the
physical work environment in manufacturing is often loud, hot,
cold, dusty, smelly, etc., and in early assignments, shift work or
being on call may be required.”
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Safety
The second set of unmet needs was related to whether the
organization’s policies and practices were fair. There were 383
comments coded in this category. Even though some women
reported that they had good relationships with their co-workers
and liked the engineering tasks they were doing, the lack of
mentoring support combined with discrimination from their
supervisors, formed the key reasons in their decision to leave the
field.
Many women talked about the need for female mentors and
role models in the field. For instance, one of them wrote, “The
biggest problem I experienced was lack of a female mentor. My
last 2 years working as an engineer, I finally found a female
mentor, however, she was the comptroller of the company, not an
engineer. I had no female to whom I could look up to.” Echoing
a similar sentiment, one woman noted “It was also hard without
having female mentors in the field. It would have helped to have
someone to talk with about issues.” One of the participants stated
that she loved being an engineer, and “if I had had a female
mentor, I may have stayed. But I felt very alone and didn’t feel
encouraged or inspired to continue.” Assisting women engineers
finding/ matching with female mentors could be critical to help
them stay in the field.
Flagrant violations of some HR policies also contributed to
women’s decisions to leave the field of engineering. One of them
disclosed that her boss suggested that she should sleep with their
customers, and when she refused to do so, her boss filed sexual
harassment claims on her. Some women reported that their
bosses did not support them when they needed to have maternity
leave or requested more flexible work schedules. For instance, one
participant shared that her boss told her she would never return
once she went on maternity leave. Others stated that their bosses
were unwilling to let them work part-time. Still another woman
tried to discuss with her boss when her job had increased to 70%
of the time spent on traveling, including overnight travel. She
stated that “I tried to transfer to a different position within the
company and was unable to. My boss was totally unwilling to try
and work out a compromise on the travel so I left.”
Violation of other company policies also contributed to the
woman engineers’ decisions to leave the field. For example, one
of the participants reported, “I found that ethical concerns were
not well-addressed, and the company was more interested in
papering over problems, often at very high expense, than actually
solving them.” Failure to accommodate disabled individuals was
also noted as a factor that pushed some women away from the
engineering field. For instance, one woman shared, “I am disabled
and needed disability accommodations. I requested them and
was turned down. In addition, my management purposely took
away the few accommodations that I had received under another
manager (like flexible working hours). I was put on display and
required to regularly go into inaccessible rooms in order to do
my job.”
Achievement
The third most frequent set of unmet needs focused on needing
to feel confident in using one’s abilities and having meaningful
work. How this mismatch between needs and environmental
reinforcers influenced women’s decisions to leave the engineering
field can be found in 282 comments. Many women engineers left
the field because they wanted to work in other environments that
better utilized their abilities. For example, one of the participants
stated that even though she was a top ranked engineer when
she was working in the field and enjoyed engineering work, her
passion in her life was teaching math and science to students.
As a result, she decided to leave the engineering field. Similarly,
another woman chose to switch to another field because the new
field allowed her to use “the analytical, research, and writing skills
that I developed during my engineering training and work, as well
as use my compassion, creativity, multidisciplinary thinking, and
cross-cultural values and skills.” There were also some women
who decided to change their career path because sometimes
working in the engineering field was not the ideal place for them
to apply their math and science skills. For instance, one of the
women who loved math and science found that the engineering
jobs she had “involved no math and little science.” This became a
factor that pushed her out of the field.
Some woman left the field because the engineering job did not
give them a feeling of accomplishment. For example, one of the
participants shared that a “big killer” in her engineering job was
that she “learned nothing.” Echoing her point of view, another
participant reported that engineering “just wasn’t a very fulfilling
profession” and she also decided to leave the field. Another
woman stated that she found the engineering culture unsatisfying
and felt much more fulfilled after she changed her career to work
in another field.
Status
Lack of recognition was another factor that pushed women out
of the engineering field. There were 252 comments that fell into
this category. It appears that some women did not feel they were
being respected or received enough recognition in their work.
For instance, one woman commented, “I could expect very little
recognition, both financially and organizationally.” Similarly,
another participant stated that people often told her that she “had
to work twice as hard to get half the recognition.” In addition,
one of the participants stated, “Excellence in engineering is
not rewarded with promotions, raises, or even appropriate
recognition.”
Another significant factor that many women highlighted was
related to the lack of opportunity for advancement. Some of
them encountered challenges in terms of getting promotions
in a male dominated field and felt that “that the climb up the
ladder of advancement is littered with constant obstacles.” Many
of them expressed that other fields offered more advancement
opportunities than the engineering field. For instance, one of
them said that there are “more perceived opportunities for
advancement in the business world.” Some of them reported that
they decided to leave engineering “not because of a dislike for
engineering, gender discrimination, or other such inequality,”
but because “the opportunities for advancement (and financial
gain) were greater [elsewhere].” Some women reported that
they were promoted out into other fields. For example, one of
them reported that “I left operations to become manager of the
commercial group and whereas my engineering background was
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useful, it wasn’t the main skill necessary to perform the job. I
really liked Operations but in order to get promoted, one had to
move up and out of Operations.”
Altruism
The fifth set of unmatched needs was related to employees’
relationships with their co-workers, doing things for other
people, and doing work that is consistent with their moral values.
There were 239 comments that were related to this category.
Some women reported that they “wanted to work with people
with social skills.” One of them stated, “I left my job not because
of dissatisfaction with engineering, but the people I worked with.”
Many of the participants talked about a “boys club” mentality that
still exists in engineering. For example, one of the women shared,
“There is still an “old boys club” where women are excluded from
“male-bonding” events (poker games, golf, etc.). This informal
channel of information is often where we can learn more about
our managers and job expectations but puts us at a disadvantage
because we aren’t even invited to participate.” Some decided to
leave the engineering field because they wanted to feel like they
were doing things for other people. For example, one of the
women stated that she “wanted to feel the work I was doing
mattered to my community.” Another woman chose to change
her career path and focus on improving healthcare, stating that’s
an area that “truly contributes to society.”
Autonomy
The final set of needs refers to employees’ needs to be
autonomous. This category had the least number of comments;
only 38 comments fell into in this domain. One of the women
who left the engineering field shared that she wanted a change
and wanted to have “more leadership/management roles, roles
where there are more women, roles with more opportunities for
growth, getting more broad experiences rather than depth in
one area.” Some chose to switch their career path because they
wanted to try out the viability of some of their own ideas. For
instance, one woman who left engineering stated, “I was bored (of
designing the same product over and over, of reacting to the same
mfg [manufacturing] defects, of working with the same rough
clients, and when I finished my MBA, I went into management
consulting.”
Our first research question posed whether women engineers’
decisions to leave their jobs and the field of engineering
will be shaped by the need-reinforcer mismatch as posited
by the TWA. Our results reveal that women’s decisions to
leave engineering reflected that the work environment did
not fulfill their occupational values. Our second research
question posed whether the occupational reinforcer values
of Achievement, Comfort, and Status would characterize
women engineers’ decisions to leave the field. Although, we
found the same three dominant values emerge in women’s
rationale for leaving engineering, the pattern we found (of
Comfort, Achievement, and Status) was a little different
from what Rounds et al. (1981) initially described. Finally,
the last research question asked whether there will be
other unmet needs that characterize women’s decisions
to leave the engineering field, and we found that unmet
needs related to safety and altruism did play a likely role
in women’s decisions to leave their engineering work and
field.
DISCUSSION
The purpose of this study was to provide a deeper and more
comprehensive understanding of the reasons women engineers
leave the field than what has been previously known. Using
the TWA (Dawis, 1994), we undertook a qualitative analysis
of comments made by 1,464 women engineers reflecting a
wide variety of work experiences and conditions that factored
into their decisions to leave their jobs and the engineering
field. According to the TWA (Dawis, 1994), departure from
a work environment is due to a mismatch between the
needs an employee has and the reinforcers provided by the
work environment in the organization, which is embedded
within the occupation. TWA proposes six overarching needs:
comfort, safety, achievement, status, altruism, and autonomy.
The reinforcers found in engineering occupations are related
to achievement, status, and comfort. We suggested that women
would be more likely to leave an engineering occupation if
their needs in these areas were not reinforced by the work
environment. Overall, our results provide definitive answers to
the three research questions.
The first research question posed whether women engineers’
decisions to leave their jobs and the engineering field is driven by
a mismatch between their occupational needs and the reinforcers
provided by the work environment. As the results and comments
reveal, there are clear indications that women’s decisions to leave
their jobs and the engineering field was shaped by a lack of fit
between their needs and values and the reinforcements present
in their work environment. The second research question asked
whether women engineers’ attrition decisions will exhibit the
same reinforcer pattern of values and needs of Achievement,
Status, and Comfort as described in Rounds et al.’s (1981) original
study. Our results show that occupational values and needs
related to Comfort, Safety, and Achievement predominantly
characterized women engineers’ attrition decisions, and this
pattern closely paralleled the one suggested by Rounds et al.
(1981). The final research question centered around the possible
presence of a different reinforcer pattern of values than the one
original characterized by Rounds et al. (1981). Our results showed
the emergence of another set of occupational reinforcers related
to status, altruism, and autonomy needs. These three needs were
not identified by Rounds et al. (1981) in their original work on
engineers. The following paragraphs discuss the meaning and
implications of these findings.
Comfort needs emerged as the most dominant category of
occupational needs that were misaligned with the reinforcers in
the work environment and this mismatch undergirded women
engineers’ decisions to leave their workplaces and the field.
A third of the comments were related to unmet comfort needs
that were associated with perception of poor and/or inequitable
compensation, poor working conditions, as well as an inflexible
and demanding work environment that made it difficult to
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balance work and family roles. Many participants noted that
it was challenging for women with young children at home to
persist in the engineering field because of the heavy workload
and travel expectations. However, many women also noted that
they tried to find ways to actively alter the work environment to
bring those needs more in alignment, but were not successful in
advocating for part time work or flexibility in their jobs.
Unmet safety needs took the form of unfair, and sometimes
illegal, organizational practices and policies. From the
comments it appears that many women engineers experienced
discrimination from their supervisors or sexual harassment
but the system of filing a discrimination charge was not
functioning well in the company they worked with at that time.
In addition, the comments point to unmet safety needs in the
form of non-existent systems and practices that would increase
employees’ engagement in the workplace. Specifically, we found
that women engineers’ unmet needs for mentoring in the work
environment increased their feelings of isolation and made it
hard to aspire for further advancement in the company.
These deeply troubling and unsatisfying job experiences
are analogous to the “push” factors that Hewlett and Luce
(2005) describe in their study on female SET professionals’
decision to take the “career off-ramps” when confronted by
hostile macho cultures, extreme job pressures, isolation in the
work environment, and murky career advancement paths. These
“push” factors were strong enough to override the “pull” factors
that these women reported in terms of loving their work for
its stimulating, intellectually challenging aspects and for being
able to use their skills to make a difference in the world. Similar
to the Hewlett and Luce (2005) female SET respondents, the
women engineers in our study also left the field of engineering
because they wanted to utilize their skills in another field; these
comments reflected their unmet achievement needs. Some chose
to study engineering because of suggestions from family or school
counselors or because they were good at math and science,
and eventually the unmet need to more effectively use their
math and science skills than the current environment offered,
led them to another career. Some participants also shared their
eagerness to learn new things and contribute to the community,
both of which were not being addressed by their current work
environment.
Finally, many women described unmet needs linked to status,
which reflected their needs for recognition and opportunities for
advancement. Comments related to status needs related to their
dissatisfaction with fewer advancement opportunities than their
male co-workers and lack of recognition by their supervisors.
This finding was consistent with the trends reported by Powell
et al. (2009) in their study on women engineers.
Thus, as predicted, many women left engineering because
the environment did not provide them the opportunity to meet
their needs primarily related to comfort, safety, and achievement,
despite their attempts to bring the needs and reinforcers more
in line with each other. According to the TWA, the women’s
descriptions of attempts to change policies, talk with supervisors,
or make modifications to their work environment, are considered
attempts at active adjustment, that is, acting on the environment
to reduce dissatisfaction. As the theory would predict, when those
attempts fail, the individual will choose to leave the environment
altogether, which is reflected in the pattern of findings from our
study.
Cumulatively, our results indicate that fulfilling one’s needs
related to challenge, autonomy, and a sense of balance, parallels
the same three dominant needs within the kaleidoscopic model
(Maineiro and Sullivan, 2005) that emerge at different points
in women’s lives and careers. However, unlike Maineiro and
Sullivan’s (2005) model, and research by O’Neil and Bilimoria
(2005), the current study did not take a longitudinal or a ‘phased’
view of women’s careers.
The women in our group also noted two additional types of
reinforcers that were not met in the engineering organizations
they work for: safety and altruism. Safety comments were
primarily related to lack of supervisor support and the unfair
application of policies. Many women noted that the “boys club”
culture in the engineering field still exists and many participants
in our study stated that it made them feel like an outsider.
These comments are consistent with other reported research on
women’s experiences in STEM occupations (Farrell, 2002;Gupta
and Sharma, 2003;Hewlett and Luce, 2005). The lack of altruism
needs indicated that working in engineering did not require a
lot of interpersonal interactions. Some women engineers decided
to change their career to allow them more opportunities for
interpersonal interactions.
Practical Implications and Suggestions
for Future Research
According to O’Neil et al. (2013, p. 103), “Career development
occurs at the intersection of the individual and the organization.”
We contend that to the extent that organizations are the
vehicles through which the occupational reinforcer patterns
and values are made manifest, then career development may
be viewed as occurring at the intersection of the individual,
organization, and the occupation. In highlighting the person-
environment fit issues that undergird women’s decision to
leave the engineering profession, it is important to place the
results from this study within the larger context of women’s
career development. Our results revealed that women’s individual
competence and ability to connect with others is a significant
factor in their career decision-making and progression and it
parallels one of the patterns that O’Neil et al. (2008) identified
in their overview of research on women’s careers. The results
also indicate that beyond the needs for competence, autonomy,
challenge, and balance, women’s career decisions are also
shaped by issues of inequity – in compensation, advancement
opportunities, and interpersonal treatment (in the form of
harassment and discrimination). These issues were somewhat
reflected in O’Neil and Bilimoria’s (2005) characterization of the
“pragmatic endurance” career phase which described women’s
perseverance through demanding organizational environments.
Future models of women’s career development need to more
explicitly take into account the role of workplace inequities
in shaping women’s career choices and their overall career
trajectory. In addition, we encourage researchers to employ
inductive approaches to build theory that captures the complex
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interplay of occupational, organizational, and personal factors
that shape technically skilled women’s career choices and career
trajectories.
Based on our findings, there are some suggestions that might
be useful for employers and educators. First of all, women
left engineering even though their needs were in line with
the needs provided by the occupation, but not adequately
reinforced through the organizations’ work design, systems, and
practices. In other words, engineering is a field that reinforces
achievement, comfort, and status, and yet women expressed
dissatisfaction with the lack of reinforcers in those areas as it
manifested through the organizational practices and cultures.
This would seem to be an area for intervention by employers,
interventions that provide career development opportunities for
employees, a sense of accomplishment at work, security, good
compensation, good working conditions, and opportunities for
advancement.
Many of the comments related to comfort focused on
frustrations with the ability to manage multiple roles. Although
many of participants’ organizations had work-life benefits,
women noted they were actively discouraged from using them.
Clear communication from organizational leaders supporting the
use of work-life benefits would be helpful as also clear messaging
dissuading supervisors from imposing career penalties on women
for using any work-life benefits. Having flexible work schedules,
creating more part-time opportunities, or allowing employees to
work remotely could also be beneficial for engineers who have
care-giving responsibilities.
Organizational and HR leaders also need to send a clear
message regarding a work environment that is free from
harassment and discrimination and policies that reflect fair,
equal, and respectful treatment of all individuals at work. Many
of our participants stated that it would be helpful for them to
have a woman supervisor or mentor to discuss the challenges
they face in their work environment. Given the paucity of women
engineers at all organizational levels, it might be challenging
to fulfill this particular need, but companies could train their
male supervisors to become more sensitive and responsive to
challenges that their women engineers face.
Based on our results, companies could also train supervisors
on how to provide positive feedback and encourage their
subordinates. It might be helpful for companies to provide more
training opportunities for their employees so that they can learn
new skills and knowledge to apply in their work. Companies
could create some social events to increase cohesiveness among
employees. It might also be beneficial to let employees know
why their work is important and how it could benefit other
people in the community. In addition, organizations could create
volunteer opportunities for their employees to partner with
community members on mutually meaningful activities and
projects.
Even though our study provides more detailed explanation of
why women engineers leave the field, there are some limitations
that need to be acknowledged and which serve as potential
areas for future research to investigate. First of all, we did
not directly ask women engineers the different things they
needed to adjust in their work environment. This could be
valuable for future researchers to find out what do women
engineers need to cope with the challenges they face. It would
be also important to document the successful strategies used
by women engineers who have persisted in the engineering
field and draw lessons from their efforts to actively alter their
work environments to meet their occupational needs. Toward
that end, scholars need to build new theories, refine existing
theories, and/or integrate complementary theoretical frameworks
to offer a more nuanced understanding of this phenomenon.
Our use of the TWA framework provides some compelling
new insights, explanations, and interpretations of this area of
inquiry but there are additional theoretical and methodological
ways to approach this multifaceted phenomenon. Second, since
we solicited written responses to open ended survey questions,
we did not have an opportunity to clarify the meaning of
their comments. Future researchers should be encouraged to
use multiple methods to capture women’s work experiences
and not be limited to one method of data collection. The final
limitation that needs to be noted is the sample used in our
study. Although we argued that it is important to capture the
women engineers’ voices and experiences, we emphasize that it
is equally critical to understand male engineers’ perspectives and
work experiences that undergird their decisions to continue in,
or leave, the field of engineering. In fact, it will be interesting
to see whether some of the mismatch needs found in our
study of women engineers also is an equally relevant driver
of male engineers’ decision to leave the field. As noted by
Emslie and Hunt (2009), male engineers have been facing
similar dilemmas of work-life balance. We encourage future
research to explore whether TWA theory will be helpful in
explaining the departure and persistence decisions of male
engineers.
CONCLUSION
Our research was broadly anchored with the person-environment
fit theoretical framework and we used the TWA (Dawis and
Lofquist, 1984) to shed light on a little known facet of women
engineers’ work experiences, i.e., the degree to which the
work environment fulfilled and matched women engineers’
occupational needs, and the extent to which these unmet needs
triggered their decisions to leave their engineering jobs and the
occupation. Lee et al. (1999) noted that “Individuals experience
unique circumstance when they leave” (p. 450) and our results
contributed to the growing literature on understanding the
drivers of occupational turnover decisions by uncovering some
of these “unique circumstances” that galvanize women engineers
to leave the engineering field that they worked and trained hard
to enter.
ETHICS STATEMENT
The study was carried out in accordance with the
recommendations of the Institutional Review Board at the
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The research protocol was
approved by the IRB at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
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Fouad et al. Reasons for Leaving Engineering
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
NF and RS designed the study and collected the data; NF
took the lead in writing significant parts of the manuscript;
RS shared part of the writing. W-HC and MW took the lead
in data cleaning and analysis, writing the methods and results
section. All authors were involved in coding and resolving
discrepancies. All authors contributed substantially to the final
manuscript.
FUNDING
The data reported in this paper was part of a project
that was funded by the National Science Foundation
(“Women’s Persistence in Engineering Careers: Contextual
Barriers/Supports”; NSF # 0827553) and awarded to the first
and the fourth co-authors on this paper. Any opinions, findings
conclusions, and recommendations are the authors’ and do not
necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
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Conflict of Interest Statement: The authors declare that the research was
conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could
be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
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Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 11 June 2017 | Volume 8 | Article 875
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