Gendered transitions, career identities and possible selves: the case of engineering graduates

Vanda Papafilippou,Laura Bentley

doi:10.1080/13639080.2017.1375088

Vanda Papafilippou, Laura Bentley

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1080/13639080.2017.1375088

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Abstract

This article, drawing upon the Paired Peers project, a longitudinal qualitative study (n = 90), examines how seven UK engineering graduates, four women and three men, construct their career identities during the transitionary period from university to work. It explores how gender and the occupational cultures that reside within the sector, and the wider sociocultural context, affect women’s careers identities, choices and trajectories. The longitudinal design, characteristics of the cohort and the theoretical framework of possible selves contribute to the originality of this empirical research. In this paper, we show how female graduates gradually adapted their occupational aspirations and career identities to fit with socio-cultural expectations and how they struggled to construct viable ‘engineering’ selves in the vital career identity development phase of their first years of employment when most female STEM graduates change careers.

Highlights

That is, “how individuals define themselves in the context of a career and can provide an internal compass promoting self-direction in career-related behaviour” (Simosi, Rousseau and Daskalaki 2015, 135) is considered crucial in the early phases of a career for career progress and well-being (Praskova, Creed and Hood 2015)
Individuals are required to be self-directed in managing their career, cultivate their knowledge and skills, set goals, accumulate experiences and build networks in order to sufficiently prepare for the education to work transition and increase opportunities for employment (Tomlinson 2007; Strauss, Griffin and Parker 2012)
Our findings suggest that there are complex processes –cultural and structural- that contribute to the shaping of the career identity and development of, especially, female engineering graduates

Summary

Introduction

That is, “how individuals define themselves in the context of a career and can provide an internal compass promoting self-direction in career-related behaviour” (Simosi, Rousseau and Daskalaki 2015, 135) is considered crucial in the early phases of a career for career progress and well-being (Praskova, Creed and Hood 2015). It has been noted that within the engineering industry in particular, workers are required to develop distinctly proactive career behaviours (Brown 2004). This is because engineering is technology-dependent and because, as a profession, it has become increasingly globalised and as a result the employment prospects of a skilled worker in the sector at all stages of their career are considerably more challenging (Brown 2004). This, along with the UK enrolling only 15% of women to undergraduate engineering degrees in 2014 (HESA 2015), leaves the UK labour market with the lowest proportion of female engineering professionals in the EU (Kiwana, Kumar and Randerson 2011) accounting for only 7% of those working within the sector (IET 2013)

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