Women’s Autonomy, Relatedness and Competence: A Comparison of Engineering Programs in Two Different Cultures

Despite the extensive efforts made, women remain dramatically underrepresented in engineering fields. Over the years, an enormous amount of research attempted to understand the recruitment and retention of women in engineering. Retention issues include the "leak in the pipeline" phenomenon that refers to women leaving either their academic programs or engineering jobs. Self Determination Theory (SDT) demonstrates that autonomy-relatedness and competence are essential psychological aspects that, when met, facilitate learning, motivation, and persistence. This work aims to understand if culture influences female students' levels of autonomy, relatedness, and competence to the extent that could increase the number of women in engineering fields. Several studies have focused on the relationship between culture and education to develop methods to strengthen learners' educational level and motivation. This study presents the comparison of two land-grant institutions offering Engineering degrees. Both institutions are similar in size and academic offering in their Engineering Colleges while keeping different cultures. One institution is located in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, and the other one is a Hispanic Serving Institution in the Caribbean. The differences in culture among institutions were evaluated and compared with the number of female students in engineering majors and their reported autonomy, relatedness, and competence levels. The ultimate goal of this research work is to understand how culture influences the number of females in engineering fields.