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I’ll get hired somewhere.” While they were aware that some people might perceive
gender differences, the women themselves did not accept those stereotypes. For instance,
one female student said, “I think in general you’re looked at as not as physically or
mentally as strong as men for the job you’re doing. I don’t take that. I think men and
women are completely equal.”
At the same time there were some interesting gender differences in this
perception. Female students were more likely than male students to perceive as
problematic for women: discriminatory attitudes toward women on the part of teachers or
others in scientific fields both generally and at Rowan (80.3% of the men thought such
discriminatory attitudes were no problem for women at Rowan, compared to 64.1% of
the women). This difference echoes recent research showing that gender issues, such as
discrimination against women in the workplace, are more salient issues for women and
that women are more likely to frame experiences as gender issues than men are (Rusch,
2002). Women were also more likely to see as problematic for women the lack of
information about careers in scientific fields and the lack of female role models in
scientific fields– presumably because they had experienced this themselves. Almost half
of the men, on the other hand, saw a lack of encouragement by teachers, counselors,
friends or family as problematic for women, but only a third of the women did – again,
presumably because they themselves had strong support for their pursuit of engineering,
as we saw above.
IIG-241