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For a number of years now women have been entering occupations and professions which traditionally have been perceived as male. The Sex Discrimination Act 1975 made both direct and indirect discrimination on the grounds of sex unlawful and the professions have seen increasing numbers of women achieving the educational qualifications necessary for initial entry. Gender differences still exist in numbers entering particular professions and engineering is a critical case in this respect. However, the focus of interest has now shifted to what happens to women who have entered the professions. Promotion and progress for women, and gender differences in careers, are currently matters of interest and concern particularly for professional women themselves. As problems over gender differences in initial entry have eased, attention has focused on gender and promotion in professional careers.
Careers in professional engineering are mostly constructed in organizations, as distinct from small professional practices. In organizational contexts senior positions result from regular promotion progress upwards through organizational career hierarchies. It is also the case that senior positions in organizations involve management. Promotion in engineering careers in organizations requires moving from doing the engineering work to managing others who are doing the engineering work. This career route out of engineering into management has resulted in a problem of professional identity for engineers[1]. The notion of their particular expertise is in any case unclear since their knowledge base and skills are wide and very diverse. Then, when such expertise diversity is compounded by career moves out of engineering and into management, the problem of professional identity for engineers is intensified.
This article argues that management constitutes a career hurdle for women engineers; that women engineers find it difficult to build managerial careers. The move into managerial positions represents the real "glass ceiling" for women engineers' careers. "A barrier so subtle that it is transparent yet so strong that it prevents women and minorities from moving up the management hierarchy" (Morrison and Von Glinow 1990, p. 200, quoted in[2]).
For women who are developing careers as professional engineers (defined as "persons employed in technical work for which the normal qualification is a degree in science, maths or engineering"[3]), there are enormous difficulties. Women engineers are constructing careers in a profession where men heavily outnumber women....