Becoming A Female Engineer

The problem of under-representation of women in engineering has attracted wide attention.Becoming a female engineer experiences three stages: the choice of course of study,adapting to the course of study,and career development.These three stages are interrelated and influence each other.Girls in engineering who are in the "male field" are facing different pressures from various parties at each stage,and each stage may force women to leave the engineering field.This research adopts the qualitative research methodology,taking nine girls from different engineering majors as participants,collecting data through semi-structured in-depth interviews,and applying grounded theory analysis methods to the nine engineering girls in their professional choice and professional adaptation and professional development.This research describe the changes of nine girls and the different characteristics of each development stage.In presenting the research results,we always loyal to the first-hand information obtained in the field survey,and obtained the different development characteristics of the nine engineering girls at each development stage and the correlation between each other.In addition,different development characteristics of each stage are analyzed in combination with relevant theories,so as to obtain corresponding laws to help girls in the field of engineering achieve better development.There are three major characteristics of engineering girls’ professional choices:family intervention,self-determination and follow-up.There are four types of professional adaptation: family support,school and teacher influence,close peer relationship,and self-effort.The professional development stages of engineering girls can be divided into professional adaptation influence type,stereotype obstruction type and self-compromise type.The development types of engineering girls at each development stage may not be single,they may be influenced by multiple types,so the development paths of each engineering girl are different.Therefore,the development path of each engineering girl is also different.According to their different development characteristics at each stage,corresponding countermeasures and suggestions are proposed to improve the retention rate of women in the engineering field and train more excellent female engineers.