2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

But Does It Pass the Bechdel Test? A Scoping Literature Review of the Journal of Engineering Education's Publications Over the Past 25 Years

Women’s experiences in engineering education have been examined for more than two decades, yet the breadth, emphases, and representational practices of this scholarship remain unevenly mapped. To complement topic/method trends with an equity lens, we introduce an adaptation of the Bechdel test for scholarship published in the Journal of Engineering Education (JEE) to assess whether articles center women’s voices in relation to one another and to engineering.

This paper presents the results from a scoping literature review (ScLR) conducted to map the landscape of research on women’s experiences published in the Journal of Engineering Education (JEE) since 2000 and examine representational patterns. Specifically, we explore the following research questions: (1) What is the current landscape of literature published in JEE around women’s experiences in engineering? (2) To what extent do articles “pass” an adapted Bechdel test? (2a) Does passage vary by year, topic, or method?

The ScLR follows the methodology presented by Arksey and O’Malley (2005), which breaks the process into five stages: (1) identifying the research questions, (2) identifying the relevant studies, (3) study selection, (4) charting the data, and (5) collating, summarizing, and reporting the results. These stages were performed iteratively, which allowed for researcher reflection along each stage. The study was grounded in four central inclusion criteria: (1) published in JEE between 2000-2025, (2) women, (3) experience, and (4) engineering. The database search was conducted in September 2025 and resulted in 1,103 publications after removing duplicates. The publications are currently being analyzed in three screening cycles (title, abstract, full-text). We will report descriptive trends over time in topics and methods, the proportion of articles passing the adapted Bechdel test, and associations between Bechdel passage and study design, participant level, and theoretical framing. Findings from this analysis will help reveal priorities for future work to more fully represent women’s experiences in engineering education.

Authors

Dr. Rachel Figard http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1524-5778 University of Georgia [biography]

Dr. Rachel Figard is an Assistant Professor at the University of Georgia in the Engineering Education Transformations Institute (EETI) and the Department of Environmental, Civil, Agricultural, and Mechanical Engineering (ECAM). Her primary areas of research include disabled student experiences, design justice, the impact of institutional policy and practice on student experience, and accessible user experience design. She received a Ph.D. in Engineering Education Systems and Design from Arizona State University (ASU), an M.S. in User Experience from ASU, and a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from North Carolina State University.
Aidan Donald Carr University of Georgia
Chima F. Umeaku http://orcid.org/0009-0007-8567-116X University of Georgia [biography]

Ph.D. student in Engineering Education at the University of Georgia. My research examines inclusive pedagogy and student persistence in engineering, with a focus on operationalizing Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in program design.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 21, 2026, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 24, 2026