How interests in science and technology have taken women to an engineering career

A main result from this study is the great role the majority of women gave their fathers in influencing and introducing them into the world of S&T during childhood. Almost all of the female engineers had a father who was an engineer or was employed in a job where skills in technology were necessary. To have a parent who is working in a similar area is one of the factors encouraging women to choose technical educations (Court & Moralee, 1995). According to Jacobs, Chhin & Bleeker (2006) parents play an important role in their children’s career choices. It was shown that father’s expectations were related to their daughters’ later gender-typed occupational expectations, and that the adult daughters were satisfied with working in gender-nontraditional fields. Also other male relatives in this study as paternal and maternal grandfathers, uncles, brothers, brother-in-laws and male cousins have influenced the women when they were younger. The older male relatives have introduced the girls into traditionally male activities much in the same way as the fathers, while the younger male relatives have been playmates. The plays have always been traditionally boy games. Together these persons have created masculine settings around the girls. These findings also point to the importance for fathers to bring time together with their young children. Childcare has traditionally been regarded as a female task, but fathers’ role in childcare slowly increases in many countries.

The women’s stories of their mothers’ roles were different compared to their fathers’ roles. There are no reports of mothers doing traditional male activities together with their daughters, with the objective of teaching them how to handle different tools or to solve technical problems. Mothers’ influences focused on the usefulness of further education, barely in any case to influence into a career in S&T. In addition, no other female relatives did. According to the women’s stories, this is a clear distinction compared to the important role other male relatives have had in introducing the women to S&T. These results do not agree with findings by Otto (2000), who showed that mothers were the most important person to discuss career plans with. Of all people to whom youth could turn for help with making career plans, their mothers were the most important persons. Simpson (2003) speculates about the roles of mothers: “most mothers’ influence appears to work through more emotional and normative channels” (p. 459). She is the person that is interested in school work, has aspirations for her children’s educational attainments, and has an overall impact on her children’s lives. This is also in accordance with Mastekaasa & Smeby (2008), who reported of no differences concerning mothers’ encouragement for gender traditional and nontraditional programs.

It is interesting to notice that when girls and boys in this study played together they chose traditionally boy games. This was constant during the whole childhood and adolescence. Some women reported of participating in male sport activities when they were older. Thus, the girls early ‘learnt’ the rules of traditionally boy games and told that they became comfortable in traditional male settings. They later on built upon these experiences in their working lives. Similar results are found by Boyne Coats & Overman (1992), who reported that women in nontraditional professions had more male but fewer female playmates than women in traditional professions. Read (1992) found that students in nontraditional programs had childhood experiences, which influenced their selection of career. Those could be to test male models and to try boys’ activities. None of the women in this study reported their male playmates engaged in traditional girl games. It became obvious from this study, that when women entered traditional male settings they adjusted to and accepted existing male game rules, while boys did not enter or adjusted to girls’ rules. However, in another part of the material (not reported here) male engineers reported that when women enter a working community of only men, the ambience will be better and men very much appreciate when females enter into a group.

Experiences early in childhood could have great influences on future interests in science (Osborne, Simon, & Collins, 2003). To feel joy and curiosity in combination with success leads with great probability to an existing interest in science. Small children may practice scientific thinking long before they meet science lessons in school (Crowley & Galco, 2001). Parents’ attitude is important for welcoming children’s questions and to encourage exploration (Brophy, 1987). Gardner (1975) talks about the importance of science-oriented toys, books and magazines for developing interests in science. Parent’s participation shaped the path of children’s naturally-occurring scientific thinking in a study of parent-child interactions in a science exhibition at a children’s museum (Crowley & Galco, 2001). However, the most important outcome of parent-child scientific thinking could be that children identify themselves as competent in scientific thinking and that scientific thinking is an important priority. This is perhaps more important than the scientific content children encounter. This study shows that the women have experienced one or more of the situations above early in life. They have told about encouraging and stimulating home environments where it was allowed to test different devices. They have had fathers and other male relatives who have introduced them into a technical world. The most important outcome however, could be that they early experienced themselves as competent and that the things they were doing were important. Thus, they early started on a line which they experienced as important and interesting and which took them to a technical career.

Self-efficacy is the most important factor for children’s desire to learn (Skolverket, 2003). Bandura (1997) says that women tend to judge their own self-efficacy lower in S&T compared to men but also compared to other areas and subjects. The parent’s credence to their children and especially to their daughters concerning capacity in S&T is thus very important. The above study shows that the parents’ support probably have given their daughters better self-efficacy concerning S&T than they would have had without support. As the individual shapes her own life from what she thinks she could manage (ibid.), a higher self-efficacy is positive concerning the future career. Furthermore, parents’ expectations seem to be crucial for how their children will succeed in school (Solomon, 1994). In this study it is not possible to deduce how big the parents’ expectations have been on their daughters.

Teachers’ engagement in their pupils and encouragement about pupils future studies in S&T were reported by a number of women. Results show that interaction between teachers and pupils is the most important factor concerning attitudes to science (Echinger, 1997). Different kinds of separate occasions could also have big importance for the individual (Helldén & Solomon, 2004; White, 1996). Some women told about meetings with female students who studied on the computer and mechanical programs, respectively. These meetings made so deep impressions that these women changed the minds of their future careers.

The women told about their great interests in mathematics, but also of great interests in the science subjects physics, chemistry and biology. Their interests in physics and biology were greater than that in chemistry. Lindahl (2003) shows that both girls´ and boys´ interests in physics and chemistry were lower than those in other subjects. In this study with women engineers it is perhaps not remarkable that their interests in physics are above average.

The abovementioned shows that the women had favorable conditions during childhood and adolescence for developing interests in the S&T-filed. However, to cope with the problem of too few women as engineers, the close connection between men and technology has to be acted on (Mellström, 1995, 1999). Salminen-Karlsson (2003) describes difficulties in changing the education to Master of Engineering but also describes forces which work for a change. The role of an engineer has gradually changed from being a team leader to a co-worker in a group. Gender issues ought to be considered when changing engineers’ roles. The technology agenda also ought to include topics that interest girls, who often have other priorities and interests compared to men (Sjøberg, 2000). As an example the simple and cheap device ‘Solvatten’, ‘Book of Water’, is mentioned. This device, which helps cleaning water only by use of solar energy, helps preferentially women at the countryside in developing countries. It is designed by a Swedish woman. Probably, additional women would like to join technical areas if there were greater possibilities for women to model close-to-everyday products. However, the women described in this study adjusted themselves after male norms.

A group of nine male engineers, chosen from the same engineering programs and who graduated during the same period as the women, were also interviewed in this study. The whole procedure with interviews, data collection, analyses etc was the same as that for the women. It was found that these men also had had a childhood and an adolescence with much technical stuff, where male relatives had served as models for these men. The presence of technical stuff and male relatives serving as models during childhood and adolescence have thus been important for both female and male engineers participating in this study.

This study focused those women who reported interests early in life for S&T. The result points out that their fathers, and to a lesser extent, other male relatives, introduced the women into a male technology world. There are of course other factors, not in focus of this study and not accounted for here, which in addition have been important for these women in their careers. It is also important to keep in mind that only twenty women participated in the study and it is not possible to generalize from this. However, for those women who were interested in S&T early in life, they reported that their fathers were very important for their technical career.

Most of the women reported of an early interest in mathematics, science and/or technology and pointed out the importance of a home with technical stuff and an allowable atmosphere. One conclusion from this study is the importance of an early contact with the S&T-field. Not all children have parents and other relatives, who are engaged in these subjects. Nevertheless, there is of great importance for society to early take care of those girls (and boys) who show interests for S&T. Teachers in pre-school and primary school have a very important role. Unfortunately, many of these teachers themselves have bad self-efficacy concerning S&T (Roehring et al., 2011). In-service training programs within the S&T-field would be of great importance. In Australia and New Zeeland research has shown that pre-school teachers’ lack of scientific knowledge has a great impact on the amount and content of teaching S&T in pre-schools (Fleer, 2009; Garbett, 2003; Smorti, 2005).

An example of how to wake and to take care of children’s interests in S&T is the special campaign Karlstad University has done in the so called ‘Children’s university’. Children at the age of eight to twelve are welcome together with their parents or other adults to take part of a lecture in some exciting subject, specially designed for children. This campaign has been very successful, with hundreds of children attaching the lecture every week, and has got big response in media.

Public knowledge mostly refers to knowledge in the humanistic field, e.g. about famous authors and their classical volumes. Why is not knowledge in S&T, e.g. about exoplanets, regarded as equally important? In discussions it is not uncommon that persons make a point of not knowing any S&T and more or less point out this. This is not the best basis for creating interests for S&T. It is important that S&T for the general public in the future will have the same status as the humanistic field. This S&T alienism could to some extent also be seen in the gender field. In ecofeminism there is a dichotomy between male/science and female/nature (Merchant, 2005). Mies & Shiva (1993) critique modern science, and view the dominant stream of modern science as a projection of Western men’s values. Science is related to men, and with this follows power and dominance. In that sense science has a negative flavor. This contrasts to the ambitions to stimulate women to work in the S&T-field. These issues create ambiguity and point to need for further discussions within the gender field.