Careers that move up the technical ladder. Careers that move from one challenging project to another, but do not move up any ladder. Despite similarities in these areas, the experience of women in engineering jobs is not equal to that of men. For men, self confidence is strongly and positively correlated with perceived success at work, and with the opportunity to develop technical expertise. For women, self confidence is most strongly correlated with perceived success in their lives outside of work, and is negatively correlated with the importance attached to the opportunity to develop technical expertise.
Technical women are in conflict.
There is no relationship between perceived success at work and their perceived success in the non-work part of their lives. For the men, perceived success in the work and non-work parts of their lives is correlated strongly in a positive direction. It all fits together for the men, and not for the women, who seem to be particularly in conflict with the role of technical expertise in their careers. A 7-point scale was used with a list of 17 job characteristics, and respondents were asked to rank the importance of each. The difference is even greater for men and men in managerial positions.