"WE'VE ALL LEARNED A LOT OF WAYS NOT TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM": PERCEPTIONS OF SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING PATHWAYS AMONG TENURED WOMEN FACULTY

Abstract

Women’s career development and socialization into the sciences and engineering is generally acknowledged to be uniquely guided by factors including having role models and mentors who provide useful guidance. This study examines aspects of department culture that encourage retention of women science and engineering majors through the perspectives of ten tenured women professors in Florida public university science and engineering departments. Interviewees refl ected on their personal experiences and those of their women colleagues and students to develop recommendations on social support and mentorship opportunities, improving treatment of women faculty, and developing departments that also function as a community and family. Tenured women faculty reject the pipeline approach and describe their own circuitous pathways into academia. They describe the strain of the role of “female professor” and its impact on research, teaching, and university service. These women explain how women and men together struggle to navigate divisions between departments based on research interest and with their bids for tenure and promotion to full professor. However, they explain that women emphasize community and collegiality more than men. Isolation and mistreatment of women and poor community in departments dissuade women junior faculty from continuing in the professoriate.