UC Irvine

Social psychological research on gendered persistence in science, technology, engineering,and mathematics (STEM) professions is dominated by two explanations: women leavebecause they perceive their family plans to be at odds with demands of STEM careers, andwomen leave due to low self-assessment of their skills in STEM’s intellectual tasks, net oftheir performance. This study uses original panel data to examine behavioral and intentionalpersistence among students who enter an engineering major in college. Surprisingly, familyplans do not contribute to women’s attrition during college but are negatively associated withmen’s intentions to pursue an engineering career. Additionally, math self-assessment doesnot predict behavioral or intentional persistence once students enroll in a STEM major. Thisstudy introduces professional role confidence—individuals’ confidence in their ability tosuccessfully fulfill the roles, competencies, and identity features of a profession—and arguesthat women’s lack of this confidence, compared to men, reduces their likelihood of remainingin engineering majors and careers. We find that professional role confidence predictsbehavioral and intentional persistence, and that women’s relative lack of this confidencecontributes to their attrition.