Subtle differences and cultural ideology can impede confidence

Subtle differences and cultural ideology can impede confidence

By Liz Lockhart

Over-confidence can be downright annoying, whereas the right amount of confidence can be very appealing and attractive.  Having little or no confidence can be seen as unattractive and can be impeding to all aspects of life.  Striking the right balance is down to several different factors many of which start when we are very young.

Subtle differences in the way that men and women are stereotyped and treated when they are children can have a lifelong knock effect.  Equally cultural ideologies about what it means to be competent can have long lasting effects.

Confidence is essential to a healthy mental outlook, whilst a feeling of confidence in ourselves and our abilities is vital to maintaining mental wellbeing.

A recent study which is published in the current issue of American Sociological Review highlights that lack of confidence is the main cause for female students to drop-out of studies to become an engineer.   The findings underscore the important part that parents, schools and society plays in the role of confidence building.

The study shows that the issue of importance for female engineering students is their lack of ‘professional role confidence.’

This term refers to people’s faith in their ability to go out into the world and be professional engineers and their belief that engineering sits well with their other interests and values.  The study authors refer to this as ‘expertise confidence’ and career-fit confidence,’ respectively.

The lead author of the study is Erin Cech, a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research.

Cech says ‘Women engineering students go to the same classes, take the same tests, and get the same GPAs as men, sometimes even higher.  But, what we found is that the women in our study developed less confidence in their engineering expertise than men did and they also developed less confidence that engineering is the career that fits them best, even though they went through the same preparation process as men.’

Cech added that as a result of these confidence issues, women who begin college as engineering majors are less likely than men to remain engineering majors and less likely than men to believe that they will be professional engineers in the future.

This poses the question of why women engineering students develop significantly less confidence than men.

‘It stems from very subtle differences in the way that men and women are treated in engineering programmes and from cultural ideologies about what it means to be a competent engineer.  Often, competence in engineering is associated in people’s minds with men and masculinity more than it is with women and femininity,’ said Cech.

‘So, there are these micro-biases that happen, and when they add up, they result in women being less confident in their expertise and their career fit,’ Cech added.

The study centred on 288 students who entered engineering training programmes in 2003 at four separate institutions of higher education.  The students were surveyed in 2003 and then again in 2007.

‘While our sample is small, we found no evidence that women’s desire to have families leads them to leave engineering majors or impacts whether they believe they will be professional engineers in the future,’ Cech said.

‘In addition, for both men and women, there was no evidence that negative math self-assessment predicts persistence in engineering majors  or impacts whether they believe they will be professional engineers,’ she added.

However, the study suggests that the desire to have a family has negative implications when men are considering a career as an engineer.

‘What we think is going on is that men who have strong traditional family plans may have some expectation of being the bread winner for their family and, therefore, they seek jobs outside of engineering that are actually better paid.  So, they go on to law school or into finance or something like that,’ Cech said.

Cech offered several recommendations as to what could be done to improve women’s confidence and increase the probability that they will persist with their engineering training.

‘I think the most direct way that engineering programmes can address this issue of women giving up on engineering is by doing a better job of bringing practicing engineers into the classroom,’ Cech says.   She also suggests that some of these engineers could be part of panels put on by women in engineering organisations.

‘It would be good for them to talk about their confidence in their expertise and their confidence that engineering is the right fit for them.  If these things can be brought to the forefront and explicitly talked about, it may help women and men engineering students develop confidence of their own’ she said.

Another recommendation is that engineering programmes should offer more directed internship opportunities that put students with working engineers on real-world engineering projects.

‘This type of practical real life experience, designed in part by educators familiar with gender biases in the profession, could help broaden students’ often narrow conceptions of the role of engineers to include skills that they might not realise are important such as communication and teamwork.  These internships could also increase student's awareness about the wide variety of engineering careers available to them, allowing more students to find their fit within the profession,’ concluded Cech.

This study is part of a larger project called ‘Future Paths: Developing Diverse Leadership for Engineering’ and is funded by the National Science Foundation.