Predicting Women’s Persistence in College Engineering: Micro-aggressions and Identity Management

• In Event: 567 - Regular Session. Gender Inequality

Abstract

In the current study, we explored how the centrality of undergraduate women engineering students’ identities as “women” and “engineering students,” interference between those two identities, and two identity management strategies, social re-categorization and positive distinctiveness, mediated the effects of gender micro-aggressions on their levels of self-efficacy and likelihood of persisting in engineering. We analyzed survey responses from 405 women and found that gender micro-aggressions increased the self-rated importance and centrality of two identities: that of being a woman and that of being an engineering student. In addition, engineering identity predicted increased self-efficacy and persistence, whereas gender identity predicted reduced likelihood of persistence. The relative effectiveness of these two identity management strategies is discussed.

Authors

• Dara Elizabeth Naphan, University of Nevada, Reno

• Marta Elliott, University of Nevada, Reno