Superwomen in STEM: Exploring How Professional Latina Engineers Navigate Their Career Trajectories

• In Event: 21.062 - MTCC Roundtable Session Six
  In Roundtable Session: 21.062-7 - Seeking Equity in Male-Dominated Professions: Women Navigating an Unforgiving Terrain

Abstract

My study explores the forms of capital Hispanic/Latina women with Bachelor’s degrees in engineering use to navigate their career paths. I argue that Latina professional engineers, as “border women,” can possess insight, “conocimiento” regarding the doubly minoritized status of their identities (i.e. gender and race/ethnicity); such insight can become a facultad, a faculty that arises from the need to survive in hostile social fields characterized by grave injustices perpetuated along the borders of sex/gender and race/ethnicity (Anzaldúa, 1987). Findings from qualitative data analysis show that this faculty acts as capital that enables Latina engineers to succeed even as it reveals the need for broader, systemic transformation of historically-rooted oppressive social structures.

Author

• Emily Tancredi-Brice Agbenyega, LaGuardia Community College