Empowering Capital: An Exploration of Intersectional Identity Among Latina Professional Engineers

• In Event: 45.034 - STEM at the Intersections: Navigating STEM Fields From Minoritized Positionalities

Abstract

In this paper I analyze how Latina professional engineers’ awareness of their intersectional identities acts as a form of capital in the context of a culturally-rooted professional engineering organization (PEO). Findings suggest that the value of identity can be understood in the context of Latinas’ awareness of their social position: the social field of the PEO attributes value to their social and professional identities and so Latinas develop a habitus wherein positive sense of identity is integral. Moving into the chilly climate of engineering, this habitus maintains the value of awareness of one’s identity as a form of capital for Latina professional engineers despite the dominance of contrasting values that typify other engineering-related social fields Latinas occupy.

Author

• Emily Tancredi-Brice Agbenyega, LaGuardia Community College