2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Women remain underrepresented in engineering, leaving the profession at a rate double that of men. To address this inequity, change agents, such as engineering educators and industry professionals, must increase our understanding of women’s engineering career pathways, including their decisions to leave the profession. Through narrative inquiry and a novel, boundary-spanning framework, we explore the career stories of women who have left engineering after having worked in industry. We make sense of the participants’ career decisions by considering their career journeys through the lens of the unfolding model of turnover, a theory frequently used by organizational psychologists yet not fully applied to the study of women’s engineering career decisions. In this paper, we describe the engineering career journey of Louise, one of three participants from our larger study. We invite you to come alongside us as we explore Louise’s engineering career story through the shocks (jarring events), scripts (plans of action), and image violations (violations of goals and values) of the unfolding model of turnover. By creating and reflecting on Louise’s interpreted narrative and career journey map, we gain a deeper understanding of the tensions and difficult decisions Louise had to make along her engineering career journey. Without role models or career guidance, Louise experienced tension in balancing the needs of her work and growing family. She felt pressure to decide between her family and work. She chose to stay home with her family and pursue part-time, flexible engineering work; however, was unable to find a long-term position. Furthermore, she sought a re-entry path into engineering for years, yet has never found a pathway back. If she could have found a long-term, part-time engineering position she would likely still be practicing engineering today. Similar to Louise, Hewlett et al. (2008) found that most women who left SET careers (science, engineering, and technology) sought re-entry paths. Findings such as these suggest if more employers would provide flexible work options and create pathways for returning engineers, more women would remain in or return to the engineering profession, thereby increasing the representation of women in the engineering workplace.