Nineteenth International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations

Abstract

The retention of women engineers has remained a problem world-wide despite more than forty years of research. Women engineers will leave their organisation (e.g. Professionals Australia 2015) and the profession (e.g. Fouad et al. 2011) to attain interesting, challenging work. However, there is little understanding of how this work is attained, particularly in project-based organisations (PBOs). Additionally, analysis of the gender composition of professional networks identifies crucial issues that impact negatively on women’s careers (e.g. Xu & Martin 2011), yet there is little knowledge of engineers’ informal networking practices within organisations or the impact of these on their careers. To address these gaps, this study asks: How do informal networks impact on professionals’ ability for attaining interesting, challenging work in an engineering PBO in Australia? It adopts a critical ethnography methodology incorporating Social and Organisational Network Analysis and traditional ethnographic fieldwork methods framed by Acker’s (2006) inequality regimes theory. This study establishes that interesting, challenging work in a PBO is attained through projects where engineers are assigned to project teams through an intraorganisational recruitment and hiring process where connections with powerful and influential people are vital for team assignment. Through this organising process and the general work requirements (Acker 2006)—long work hours and network development out of work hours, plus structural differences in women’s and men’s informal network relations, women experience inequalities in attaining interesting, challenging work. This study provides recommendations for managers, organisations, and individuals to improve women engineers’ retention by lessening gender inequalities and facilitating change.