Women Ph.D. Students in Engineering and a Nuanced Terrain: Avoiding and Revealing Gender

Tensions regarding gender emerged from interviews conducted with 20 women Ph.D. students. This article does not focus explicitly on the reasons for women’s continued underrepresentation in engineering. Rather the students’ explanations for underrepresentation serve as a case study with which to analyze their gendered experiences. They avoid freely narrating their own gendered experiences but reveal the gendered experiences of other women. Engineering’s strong gender-neutral discourse remains powerful enough for women to continue claiming that hard work and perseverance will result in success, despite experiences and observations that tell them otherwise.