Literature Review: Interventions
Given some of the issues hampering the advancement of women in S&E careers, it is helpful to examine some of the interventions used in both academic and industry settings that have proven successful.
Research indicates that women systematically differ from men in their source of motivation to enter S&E. Blossor (1990) found that female students tend to make their decisions regarding career choice based on internal feelings as opposed to external information. This makes the women least likely to have sufficient information to make decisions concerning their future careers. This is problematic because S&E fields tend to have less affective appeal. Blossor suggests possible interventions for future use.
There are several successful intervention programs aimed at increasing the number of women in S&E. Mentoring interventions have been shown to help with recruiting, retention, persistence, and many other areas that have been historically problematic regarding the representation of women in S&E. Below are reviews of several interventions with special emphasis placed on particularly successful or unsuccessful elements.
The Women in Engineering Initiative
The Women in Engineering Initiative (WIE) utilized mentoring to achieve the goals of recruitment, retention, and needs assessment (Brainard, 1993).
The WIE utilized several mentoring programs including peer, professional engineering, and faculty mentoring (Brainard, 1993). While the primary focus was on graduate students in S&E, the principles applied and lessons learned, can be applied at any level.
Peer mentoring included support systems for graduate students through support groups, and one-on-one mentors. Mentors were matched on relevant variables including age and marital status (Brainard, 1993). It is possible that this matching on work/life issues was one key factor for the peer support success. (See Work/Life Issues for more detail).
Faculty mentoring included matching graduate students with faculty members. Goals of this portion included providing career guidance for students, while at the same time providing faculty members with a better sense of women’s “seriousness” in Engineering (Brainard, 1993).
Also, the faculty mentor program served as a vehicle to promote a friendly environment for women by increasing faculty awareness of issues and served to increase women’s self confidence, independence and positive career experiences (Brainard, 1993).
Professional engineering mentoring, involved establishing relationships between students and engineering professionals. This portion of the program was designed to aid the transition from academia to industry (Brainard, 1993).
While this program is ongoing, annual evaluations indicate a high level of success in achieving the goals of the intervention (Brainard, 1993).
For more detailed information on this intervention, detailed success measures, and its programs see (Brainard, 1993; Brainard, 1991).
Teacher Education Equity Project
The Teaching Education Equity Project (TEEP) utilized mentoring to achieve climate change. Mentors were used to guide professors in the proper inclusion of gender equity topics in syllabi, course programs and policies. Results indicate that the use of mentors leads to levels of positive institutional change (Sanders & Campell, 2001).
Mentor Net
Mentor Net utilized E-mail lists and discussion groups to foster mentoring. Results indicated that the electronic medium provided a safe environment to share experiences, as well as providing access to other S&E professionals (Single, Muller, Cunningham & Single, 2000).
Assessment of the intervention found that benefits of the program include an increase of information, advice and encouragement for career choices in S&E for students. Universities benefit from increased retention rates and improved climate (Mattis & Allyn, 1999).
Those pursuing such an intervention should include a wide breath of topics to attract a large number of subscribers, and the assignment of facilitators to help promote the development of a safe environment in the groups (Single et al., 2000).
The Nevada Women in Science and Engineering (WISE)
The Nevada Wise program was a 6 year program designed to increase the retention rate of women scientists, engineers and mathematicians. The program focused on faculty members and graduate level students (Rees, Amy, Jacobson, & Weistrop, 2000).
One of the key components was the inclusion of mentoring. Results indicate that the presence of women mentors lead to an increase in the retention rates of both female graduate students and junior faculty; also, it was found that mentors are associated with attracting more female graduate students and junior faculty (Rees et al., 2000).
North Carolina’s Friendly Inclusion Model
The purpose of the Friendly Inclusion Intervention was to increase faculty member’s awareness of gender related differences in the effectiveness of teaching methods (Rosser & Kelly, 1994).
Results indicated that overall, the climate of the classroom became more positive after the intervention. Both males and females experienced increased levels of confidence regarding math and science ability. However, women’s confidence increased significantly more than that of males (Rosser & Kelly, 1994).
This increased confidence level further benefited the climate of the classroom resulting in increased communication levels between female and male students, as well as an overall increase in female communication on a whole (Rosser & Kelly, 1994).
Finally, results indicate that women taking part in the intervention had lower rates of attrition than those not in the intervention (Rosser & Kelly, 1994).
Dow Chemical Company: Dual Career Support
The purpose of Dow Chemical’s program was to support the needs dual career families. In dong so, Dow was able to support the inclusion of women in the industry by recognizing the problems faced by dual career couples. Key elements of this program included help with relocation costs, and job placement assistance for partners (For a detailed review see Mattis & Allyn, 1999).