f) Ability to perform in teams
For items IIa and IIb, respondents were asked, “Please indicate how much you disagree or agree with each of the
statements” with the options disagree strongly, disagree, agree, agree strongly. For the remaining items, the prompt
read, “Rate yourself on each of the following traits as compared to your classmates. We want the most accurate
estimate of how you see yourself.” The options for these items were lowest 10%, below average, average, above
average, and highest 10%. The Cronbach’s alpha score was calculated for each set of items to confirm intra-construct
reliability.
A repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA), using gender and administration (time) as the factors, was
then performed with the data. The ANOVA provides information on overall differences between men and women’s responses,
effect of administration, and any interaction effect. If the overall ANOVA was statistically significant for either
gender or time, it was followed by additional statistical tests (see full paper at the link below for a complete
description of the statistical analyses performed for this study).
What We Found
The quantitative data indicates that, over the course of the four years of their engineering education, men have
higher confidence than women in their math and science abilities and in their ability to solve open-ended problems.
No difference was observed in confidence in professional and interpersonal skills. While the gap in academic
self-confidence for male and female students is statistically significant, the confidence for both genders is high
and the numerical magnitude of the gap is small. It is true that engineering majors of both genders do have high
levels of self-confidence in mathematics (which has been well-studied) relative to other majors. However, the
observed gap between the genders does appear to be meaningful; from the interviews, it’s apparent that marked
differences exist between male and female engineering majors, as demonstrated by both spontaneous verbalizations
about confidence and in the different responses to questions by men and women. For instance, both men and women
volunteered “confidence” as being an issue related to gender, and some male respondents who perceived women as having
special advantages over men in engineering speculated that maybe the women they knew actually weren’t as good or
deserving of rewards as their male peers. Together, the qualitative and quantitative data suggest that there is a
clear difference in academic self-confidence between male and female engineering students, even when the study group
is restricted to those who could be considered successful, having completed their engineering degree in four years.
It’s unlikely that there is a single, specific reason for the existence of this ‘confidence gap,’ and the suggestions
discussed at length in the full paper (see link below) do not exhaust the possibilities for why the gap might exist,
although they do suggest possible routes for considering how to address these differences. And the evidence does
suggest that this gap results in women engineering students being shortchanged. Data suggest that self-confidence in
a particular academic area affects whether a person will attempt or persist in a task, and may be a key to career
decisions. While the overall confidence of women in areas such as mathematics may be high relative to women in other
majors, they may be disadvantaged compared to their male peers in engineering when it comes to pursuing opportunities
such as graduate school and engineering positions.
Lower self-confidence could lead women to conclude that they are not
good enough,’ and they might disproportionately decline challenging
opportunities. In this way, a ‘confidence gap’ might turn into a
genuine, cumulative ‘experience gap’ over the course of the
undergraduate years.
Fortunately, we did not
see an experience gap in our respondents. All were high-performing engineering students and most had a myriad of
substantive experiences outside the classroom (e.g., internships, summer jobs, research projects, design competitions,
service organizations, and so on) that would contribute to their value to even the most discerning employer. Yet, the
perceptions of both women and men remained: that women were somehow less well equipped for engineering work than
their male counterparts.
Authors: Debbie Chachra and Deborah Kilgore
Source: Proceedings of the 2009 American Society for Engineering Education Conference
The full paper, including references, is available via ASEE proceedings search.
Brief created April, 2009; revised May, 2013
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