2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Context of All in Which You Live: How Women Engineering Students Perceive Gender-Based Patterns in Teams

Gender-based patterns of marginalization are prevalent in engineering student teams, affecting both task division and group conversations. Historically, men are often perceived to handle technical, hands-on work, while women are delegated to organizational or social roles. Furthermore, societal conversational norms permit men to be direct leaders, whereas women adopting similar styles may be viewed as "bossy." Previous studies identified that teams with two or more women report lower satisfaction levels than teams with only one woman, despite guidelines against isolating marginalized students (Keough, M., Hirshfield, L., & Fowler, R. (2021)). Interviews suggest this may occur because women are more likely to recognize problematic team dynamics affecting other women, revealing issues they might overlook without female peers (Keough, M., Hirshfield, L., & Fowler, R. (2021)).
This study extends these insights by exploring whether women engineering students can identify problematic team dynamics in a contrived meeting transcript and relate these to their personal experiences. Eight female engineering students analyzed a transcript of a fictional team demonstrating poor dynamics by evaluating their perceptions of each member. Our analysis reveals that participants instinctively assigned gender roles: the percived “leader” was identified as female, while aggressive members were thought to be male; roles perceived as nurturing or organizational were associated with women.
Our findings underscore the entrenched gender stereotypes shaping women's perceptions in engineering teams, highlighting the need for more inclusive and supportive environments. By understanding these dynamics, we propose actionable steps to improve team experiences for women in engineering. Future research will explore strategies to empower women to recognize and counteract marginalizing behaviors, even when isolated within teams.

Authors

Ms. Keating Dinsmore Ms. University of Michigan [biography]

Ms. Dinsmore is an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan, majoring in electrical engineering. Ms. Dinsmore’s academic and professional pursuits focus on advancing quantum physics, sustainability, and gender equity in engineering education.
As part of the Perot Jain TechLab Electrification Cohort, Ms. Dinsmore designed a solar-power system for electric vehicles. She has contributed to Dr. Zhang’s Quantum Engineering Lab on low-noise photodetectors for quantum optics and is active in Dr. Hirshfield’s SWEET Lab.
Ms. Dinsmore’s technical expertise and dedication to fostering equitable environments drive their work to address systemic challenges for women in engineering.
Laura Hirshfield University of California, Berkeley [biography]

Laura Hirshfield is an Assistant Teaching Professor and Director of Undergraduate Education in the Chemical and Biomolecular Department at the University of California, Berkeley. She received her B.S. from the University of Michigan and her Ph.D. from Purdue University, both in chemical engineering. Her research focuses on investigating inequities in student experiences and how that relates to their personal identities.
Dr. Robin Fowler http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6161-0986 University of Michigan [biography]

Robin Fowler is a Technical Communication lecturer and a Engineering Education researcher at the University of Michigan. Her teaching is primarily in team-based engineering courses, and her research focuses on equity in communication and collaboration as well as in group design decision making (judgment) under uncertainty. She is especially interested in how power relationships and rhetorical strategies affect group judgment in engineering design; one goal of this work is to to understand factors that inhibit full participation of students who identify with historically marginalized groups and investigate evidence-based strategies for mitigating these inequities. In addition, she is interested in technology and how specific affordances can change the ways we collaborate, learn, read, and write. Teaching engineering communication allows her to apply this work as she coaches students through collaboration, design thinking, and design communication. She is part of a team of faculty innovators who originated Tandem (tandem.ai.umich.edu), a tool designed to help facilitate equitable and inclusive teamwork environments.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025

For those interested in:

Broadening Participation in Engineering and Engineering Technology
engineering
gender