Women Electrical Engineering Faculty: How do they Experience EE Department Climate and Promotion and Tenure?

Women Electrical Engineering (EE) faculty are without question an elite group of highly educated professionals. Nonetheless, only 14.2% of women EE faculty are tenured/tenure-track [44]. Attracting, retaining and promoting women faculty members are essential to the engineering professoriate and deserve further exploration. This paper highlights recent research on women EE faculty members at four-year research institutions for those who have an interest in studying women faculty in academic settings. This qualitative study found that women EE faculty members face an alienating, isolated and sometimes hostile work environments. These findings were evident in work processes such as collaboration, networking and mentoring which women EE faculty members faced explicit and implicit bias. Nearly all women EE faculty members experienced emotional harassment while a third experienced physical or sexual harassment in the department or with the promotion and tenure process. Although work-life balance and support from other women could be a positive aspect, sometimes these experiences paralleled the negative department environment. Such work environments can have lasting repercussions for women personally and professionally and negatively impact their experiences with the promotion and tenure process. Recommendations for institutions, EE departments, department chairs, faculty members and future research are offered to help promote a supportive culture for women EE faculty members applicable to other STEM environments.