Women's doctoral student experiences and degree progress in education versus engineering

Title: Women’s Doctoral Student Experiences and Degree Progress in Education versus Engineering Author: Ann K. Masterman Directed by: Heather Rowan-Kenyon, Ph.D. This study’s purpose was to compare the lived experiences of doctoral women studying Education, a prototypically female field, with women studying Engineering, a prototypically male field to illustrate the phenomenon of doctoral degree progress in the two fields. Using critical feminist theory and Valian’s (1999) concept of gender schemas, this study examined doctoral education culture in Education and Engineering and how these cultures influence women’s doctoral student experiences and in turn their degree progress (Tong, 2009). Although women represent over 50% of doctoral student enrollment and degrees earned, gender disparities exist in Education and Engineering. Once enrolled, women are proportionally more likely to complete Education doctorates and less likely to complete Engineering doctorates (Council of Graduate Schools, 2008; Gonzales, Allum, & Sowell, 2013; Nettles & Millett, 2006). This trend is important because it implies there is something about Education and Engineering doctoral environments that make them more and less conducive for women’s success, respectively (Gardner & Mendoza, 2010). This study used a qualitative interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) approach to capture the essence of women’s doctoral degree progress by interpreting the lived experiences of 10 Education and 11 Engineering doctoral women (Smith, Flowers, & Larkin, 2009). After 63 in-depth interviews and two focus groups, four themes emerged. Overall, the Education women reported fewer positive doctoral experiences and more barriers to degree progress than the Engineering women due to the funding and research assistantship structure, the faculty advisor relationship, and the department environment. Both groups of women described doctoral education culture as proactive, independent, and competitive – characteristics more consistent with masculine gender schemas. Doctoral education culture also reflected the feminine gender schemas of flexibility and collegiality/collaboration, which were more apparent in the prototypically masculine Engineering field than in the prototypically feminine Education field. Implications for how doctoral education can be re-conceptualized, delivered, and researched are provided, calling for the incorporation of more feminine gender schemas into doctoral education culture in order to promote and achieve gender equity. WOMEN DOCTORAL STUDENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to a number of individuals who have helped me along the way in my educational journey, including completion of this dissertation. First and foremost, I am grateful to my parents, Craig and Marjory Masterman, for enabling me to attend the University of Richmond, followed by Syracuse University where I earned my undergraduate degree. Without their emotional and financial support, I may not have been able to pursue advanced graduate study. Also, I am thankful to my Master’s degree advisor, Dr. Carol Anne Phekoo, for encouraging me to spread my wings and pursue a Ph.D. in Higher Education in the first place. I am looking forward to teaching in the Higher Education Administration program at the University of Miami next semester to give back to my Master’s program and to Dr. Phekoo, whose mentorship and instruction prepared me well for doctoral study at Boston College. Most importantly, I am thankful to my dissertation committee for their patience and encouragement throughout my doctoral program. To my dissertation chair Dr. Heather Rowan-Kenyon – you have been instrumental in my ability to complete this degree. Your valuable and timely feedback and guidance throughout the dissertation process has helped me better organize my thoughts and translate them onto paper. To Dr. Ana Martinez Aleman – your Philosophy of Higher Education class opened up my theoretical world and gave me a new found love of feminism and critical feminist theory. I realized in that class that the first step to achieving equity is to raise consciousness, first within ourselves, and then among other people and the social institutions that surround us. To Dr. Elizabeth Sparks – it has been a pleasure working with you during my tenure as President of the Graduate Education Association at LSOE. I loved our discussions i WOMEN DOCTORAL STUDENTS about how to improve graduate education, and I sincerely hope that this dissertation’s findings can shed some light and provide practical value about how graduate schools of Education and Engineering can continue to support women (and men) doctoral students in pursuit of the doctoral degree.