Looking through glass walls
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Publication Details
Subtitle: Women engineers in Portugal
Author list: Araújo AM
Publisher: Elsevier: 24 months
Publication year: 2014
Journal: Women's Studies International Forum (0277-5395)
Volume number: 45
Start page: 27
End page: 33
Number of pages: 7
ISSN: 0277-5395
Languages: English-Great Britain (EN-GB)
Abstract
Women face significant barriers adjusting to the professional culture of
engineers, which is strongly connected to hegemonic masculinity. This
study aims to investigate how Portuguese female engineers negotiate
their identities and subjective positions in a relational environment
marked by this dominant form of masculinity. Drawing on the analyses of
interviews with 39 female engineers, we focused on the ways women
position themselves in this professional culture and cope with the
gender regimes they experience in this environment. Using a Foucauldian
Discourse Analysis, we identified an essentialist and dichotomous
discourse about what it is to be a man or a woman in engineering and the
following four themes: disguising differences with similarities,
assuming differences by valuing femininity, assuming differences and
inequalities, and maintaining limits and respect. The participants in
this study seemed to be stuck in a prison with transparent and
unbreakable glass walls, which risks their personal and relational
well-being.
engineers, which is strongly connected to hegemonic masculinity. This
study aims to investigate how Portuguese female engineers negotiate
their identities and subjective positions in a relational environment
marked by this dominant form of masculinity. Drawing on the analyses of
interviews with 39 female engineers, we focused on the ways women
position themselves in this professional culture and cope with the
gender regimes they experience in this environment. Using a Foucauldian
Discourse Analysis, we identified an essentialist and dichotomous
discourse about what it is to be a man or a woman in engineering and the
following four themes: disguising differences with similarities,
assuming differences by valuing femininity, assuming differences and
inequalities, and maintaining limits and respect. The participants in
this study seemed to be stuck in a prison with transparent and
unbreakable glass walls, which risks their personal and relational
well-being.
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