Gendered patterns in senior engineers’ leadership learning

Abstract

In this paper, we present findings from a secondary gender analysis of interviews conducted for a larger study examining how senior engineers learn to lead over the course of their careers [7, 36-37]. In particular, we analyze a subset of career history interviews conducted for the larger study—four male and four female participants paired by career stage and organizational context—through a gendered lens. In the end, we identified 4 themes that differentiated the experiences of male and female engineers in our sample: 1) Explicit mentions of gender, 2) Mobility, 3) Enacting leadership, and 4) Response to failure. With an understanding that gender can impact experiences implicitly and in ways that are highly contextualized, we explore subtle gender dynamics in engineers’ situated leadership learning opportunities and experiences.