Romila Singh’s research while affiliated with University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and other places

Women’s departure or nonentrance into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics professions, particularly engineering, has been a lively source of scholarly inquiry for the past three decades. Much of the literature in this area has been with solely female samples of participants, begging the question as to whether or not men and women either choose to leave the profession or not enter for the same or similar reasons. This present study collected a large sample of men ( n = 1,273) who had either left or never entered the engineering profession and compared their responses to a large sample of women ( n = 1,235) on a set of categorical response variables. Using the perspective of the Theory of Work Adjustment, our results suggest that there are gender differences in reasons for departure, raising the possibility that engineering climates differentially reinforce needs for men and women. Implications of this research are discussed.

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.

We build on the spillover and crossover research on work-family interactions and use Conservation of Resources Theory (Hobfoll, 1989) to examine the effects of work-family conflict on withdrawal and affective outcomes. Employing the same theoretical platform, we uncover the mechanisms that explain the relationship between the two directions of work-family conflict and work-family facilitation. Using a geographically and functionally diverse sample and multi-source data from three studies, in study 1 we first test whether an incumbent’s work to family interference (WIF) contributes to their family to work interference (FIW) and subsequently increases their propensity to withhold work efforts (psychological withdrawal) and desire to leave the organization. Results support the argument that FIW mediates the relationship between WIF and psychological work withdrawal but not turnover intentions. In study 2, we extend the model by examining the effects of spousal assessment of job incumbent’s WIF and its relationship to incumbent’s FIW and subsequent job and life satisfaction and find full support for the hypothesized mediating effects of FIW on the relationship between WIF and affective outcomes. In study 3, we examine the role of spousal and incumbent well-being as mediators of the relationship between WIF and FIW and the relationship between work to family facilitation and family to work facilitation. Results demonstrate both crossover and spillover effects: the relationship between WIF and FIW and between WFF and FWF is mediated by spousal and incumbent well-being. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.