“ I am Not a Feminist, but…”: Making Meanings of Being a Woman in Engineering

Engineering is often described as one of the last bastions of a macho culture where women continue to experience minority status. In this article we ask, how do women make meaning of this status? We explore this question in the context of students‟ socialization into the profession over the course of their engineering education. Drawn from diary data, our findings show that young women hold multiple and contradictory perspectives about their status as women in engineering. The strands of these perspectives are articulated around (a) a feminist critique, (b) gender essentialism, (3) meritocracy and individualism, and (d) exceptionalism. These findings suggest that their taken-for-granted assumptions about essentialism, meritocracy, individualism, and exceptionalism trump the opportunity to take a feminist critique to its logical conclusion. We end by exploring the irony of their simultaneous adherence to and rejection of feminist critiques of engineering.