Becoming Engineers: An Exploration of Latinas' Trajectories Through Engineering

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 14
  In Roundtable Session: Diversity and STEM

Abstract

This qualitative study explores how Latina professional engineers’ intersectional identity has shaped their careers in the context of their membership in a Hispanic-serving professional engineering organization (PEO). Specifically, this study argues that Latina engineering professionals carve out productive career paths because, and not in spite, of who they are. \ Findings show how Latinas’ self-awareness, fostered by organizational membership, acts as capital that empowers them to overcome potential barriers to their professional advancement. The PEO’s explicit emphasis on Latinas’ identity resonates with research on persistence among women of color in STEM that argues the importance of “counterspaces”: spaces that honor the racial/ethnic and gender identities of women of color in STEM (Ong, Smith & Ko, 2018).

Author

• Emily Tancredi-Brice Agbenyega, LaGuardia Community College