2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Many technology workplaces are (still) characterized by masculine cultures, connected to various forms of discrimination. Discrimination has been suggested as one explanation for the persistent gender gap in engineering/technology. Yet surprisingly few quantitative studies have examined discrimination towards men and women in technology workplaces. Previous studies exploring discrimination of women have seldom elaborated on discrimination based on age. Meanwhile, discrimination experienced by men has rarely been studied.

This paper fills these identified research gaps by analyzing gender differences in age-based discrimination encountered by university-educated engineering professionals, and the linkages between discrimination and equity climate in engineering workplaces in Finland. The data is derived from a web-based survey focusing on ageism and age-based discrimination at work, conducted in May-June 2024 by a labor union for university-educated engineers. The respondents (N=708) were employed full-time, 71% were male and 29% female, and their age ranged from 24 to 70 years (mean 44). Various descriptive and statistical methods were used to analyze the data.

The results show that women are nearly twice as likely as men to experience age discrimination at work (11.3% and 6.2%, respectively). However, the prevalence of discrimination experiences varies considerably between age groups (from 2.6% to 17.2%), whereas position or sector do not have a significant impact. The results further reveal that women more often tend to rate their workplace equity climate as poor, and men as good. Respondents who have experienced age-based discrimination are significantly more likely to rate the equity climate of their workplace as poor (40.0 %) than those who have not (23.0%).

The findings indicate that since men less often encounter discrimination than women, and consider the equity climate good, they are probably less willing to engage in improvements. On the other hand, experienced discrimination impacts men’s views of the equity climate more than women’s.