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the female students indicated that an uncle, aunt or close friend of the family was in
engineering, and encouraged them to go into the field.
One of the well-known aspects of having fewer female role models in math and
science is that a smaller proportion of high school math and science teachers are female
than male. Therefore the students were asked whether they had had any female math or
science teachers in high school. Perhaps it is a sign of the times, or a result of a
population that had already selected engineering as a field of pursuit, that over 95% of
both males and females had at least one female math or science teacher in high school
(less than 2% of the female students had not). Therefore, this did not seem to be an
important variable to pursue.
Thus, in terms of role models for education, female students have somewhat of an
advantage in terms of mother’s education. In terms of occupational role models,
differences were relatively small, and focus group interviews suggested that females look
beyond their immediate family for significant role models in the field.
Support for Engineering
Students were asked about the extent of support they received for their pursuit of
engineering by family members, friends, and high school faculty and staff. Both male and
female students said that they had strong support for their engineering pursuits on the part
of mothers, fathers, friends, high school teachers and counselors (Table ID-11). There
were practically no gender differences in this. The only statistically significant gender
difference was that mothers of female students were somewhat less positive than mothers
of male students (86.2% of the female students' mothers had “positive" opinions of their
being in engineering, compared to 92.0% of the male students' mothers).
ID-64