Gendered Engineering in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia

• In Event: 308 - Section on Sociology of Sex and Gender Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 09. Gender, Work and Family: Session II

Abstract

Engineering is often viewed as a paradigmatic “inhospitable” professional environment for women (Faulkner 2009a; 2009b). A growing comparative literature seeks to explain the low enrolments of women in engineering higher education and employment. In order to scrutinise the key arguments in this literature, we analyze the case of (post-)Soviet Russia. Russia is an interesting “negative” case since by 1979 engineering employment had reached gender parity. We focus on Charles and Bradley’s important contribution to the literature (2009), which emphasized the role of “gender essentialist ideology” (GEI) in shaping women’s curricular and career choices. In their model, GEI can be surmounted when educational and professional opportunities are more restricted and societies less affluent, but once choice opens up GEI becomes the dominant influence on women’s selection of educational fields. Ramirez and Wotipka (2001) propose a contrasting explanation whereby women’s enrollment in engineering and science increases when women are “empowered” through increasing participation in higher education as a whole. Our findings do not support Charles and Bradley’s proposed mechanism, but are consistent with Ramirez and Wotipka’s implied model. Using our case study findings we propose a dynamic model of the gendering of educational fields which draws on the earlier literature on the sex-typing of jobs.

Authors

• Sarah Ashwin, London School of Economics

• Irina Kozina

• Roberto M. Fernandez, MIT Sloan School of Management