Women engineers have a visibility problem. Like women in other ultra-masculine sectors, they are often excessively visible as women, but overlooked when it comes to their technical expertise. This paradox gets in the way of forming relationships at work and hurts their advancement.
The Problem of Visibility for Women in Engineering, and How They Manage It
Women engineers have a visibility problem. While they are often excessively visible in terms of their gender, when it comes to their technical expertise, they have to win their space in the limelight. This paradox gets in the way of forming relationships at work and hurts their advancement. To learn how women deal with this, researchers interviewed 50 female engineers in three FTSE 100 organizations in the UK, asking them about their day-to-day experiences of work, opportunities for career progress, and how they overcame the challenges they faced. Women talked at length about how they felt sexually objectified and had to work harder than men to prove their technical competence. Researchers gleaned four strategies women use to navigate this environment: They conform to “unchallenging” gender stereotypes, they embrace feminine stereotypes, they downplay their gender, and they try to be “one of the boys.”