Abstract
This study focuses on investigating the main elements that have an effect on women’s decisions to enter a career in technology-oriented fields, and more specifically, to discover whether studying crafts, especially technical work, during basic education affects their decisions in this context. The study was carried out using a semi-structured questionnaire, and the data consist of the responses from 12 female technology education teachers and 12 female engineering students. A qualitative theory oriented content analysis was carried out through identifying, coding, analysing and reporting the patterns within the data. The findings revealed that the most influential career anchor identified by all these women was a technical or functional competence. Secondly, their familiarity with the field was a relatively important element. These findings suggest some positive perspectives on women’s interests in technology-oriented career paths, and indicating that supportive interventions can be implemented.
Highlights
Technology-oriented fields still seem to be a rather male-dominated area, and the reluctance of women to enter occupations in the natural sciences or technology has already been established in previous studies (Sander, 2012; Klapwijk & Rommes, 2009; Mammes, 2004)
This study focuses on investigating the main elements that have an effect on women’s decisions to enter a career in technology-oriented fields, and to discover whether studying crafts, especially technical work, during basic education affects their decisions in this context
This study seeks to determine what are the main factors that have an effect on women’s decisions to study and enter a career in technology-oriented fields and, to investigate whether studying craft, and especially technical work, during basic education affects their decisions in this context
Summary
Technology-oriented fields still seem to be a rather male-dominated area, and the reluctance of women to enter occupations in the natural sciences or technology has already been established in previous studies (Sander, 2012; Klapwijk & Rommes, 2009; Mammes, 2004). Based on EU statistics (She Figures, 2012), gender differences stand out in the field of science and engineering in most EU countries It seems that because of the efforts that have been made, some of the gaps have been slowly shrinking over the recent years and women have been catching up with men in total employment and in some precise areas. 19) statistics, the share of women among highly educated people as professionals or technicians is 53 percent, the proportion drops to 32 percent among women employed as scientists and engineers, a narrower category of employment. This exemplifies the problem of gender segregation. The latest National Core Curriculum for Basic Education (NCCBE, 2004) introduced seven crosscurricular themes for Finnish education, one of them being ‘Human beings and technology’
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