Approaches Nonprofit Organizations Use to Engage Women in Engineering
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47611/jsrhs.v11i4.3359Keywords:
Women in Engineering, Nonprofit Organizations, Fueling BelongingAbstract
The engineering field has one of the lowest rates of female employment. In order to promote women in the field of engineering, many nonprofit organizations have formed with the purpose of increasing female engineers and retaining women already working in the field. The current study explores the approaches nonprofit organizations that promote female engineers use to engage women through semi-structured interviews with representatives and a content analysis of their websites. Findings revealed six major themes: their mission, portrayal of engineering, harassment in the workplace, female role models, community, and member demographic. With the exploration of these themes, it was found that each organization was built on a basis of belonging with each of these themes tying to the idea of allowing women to feel as though they have a place in the engineering field. Each organization had their own unique strategies in order to achieve this goal of “fueling belonging”. Future research should increase the sample size to include more organizations to further identify the approaches these nonprofits use and work in increase the employment of female engineers.
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