The Dynamics of Belonging Among Undergraduate Women in Engineering

Broadening participation in engineering has been a pressing focus of engineering education research for decades. Despite efforts to improve engineering access for historically underrepresented groups, progress has been slow. The National Academy of Engineering and other governmental and professional agencies have voiced the need to increase the presence of women in engineering as a national priority. Women have always been underrepresented in engineering spaces and are too often told either explicitly or through negative treatment that they do not belong in engineering. This messaging is a barrier to broadening engineering participation for women; when women do feel like they belong, conversely, they are more likely to enter and remain in engineering spaces. My study was designed to understand women's experiences of belonging at different organizational levels. I investigate women's perceptions, competencies, motivations, and opportunities for belonging both within their engineering programs/colleges and outside of engineering at their institutions. Using this multi-level approach, I identified connections between belonging components at each level and found that the source of women's belonging and engagement matters for their overall levels of belonging and intentions to persist in engineering. The results of this study revealed that women experience higher levels of belonging outside of engineering than within their engineering programs. However, belonging in engineering related to students' intentions to persist toward their engineering degrees, but belonging outside of engineering did not. I also found that different activities relate to women's belonging at each level, which could have implications for how we support students in finding belonging. My findings present an opportunity for educators to be intentional about how and where they help students cultivate belonging. If we can help women find greater belonging in their engineering programs/colleges, we may be able to influence the likelihood that they persist in their engineering program in a way that belonging initiatives outside of engineering may not.