The Changing Landscape of Women in the Professions: Why Women Study Law and Not Engineering?
Carroll Seron, Professor of Criminology, Law & Society and Sociology and Law, University of California, Irvine; IALS Visiting Fellow.
Chair: Professor Avrom Sherr, Director, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies.
Today, the legal profession in the US and the UK enjoys gender parity in education and at career launch, though questions of equity persist at later stages in the life course. By contrast, engineering in the US and the UK has remained what might be described as a white, male bastion. What explains the persistent underrepresentation of women in engineering? Do findings from a recent study of US engineers suggest lessons for explaining women’s disproportionate departure from law at mid-career? Professional socialization is organized around the cultivation of professional role confidence: at career launch there is the expectation that newly minted professionals enjoy “expertise confidence,” or confidence in the broadly-defined competencies and skills required of practice as well as the somewhat more amorphous but equally important “career–fit confidence” that one’s current career plans suit one’s individual interests and values. Findings from a study of engineers in the US at the point of career launch show that while men and women enjoy equal endowments of expertise confidence, women’s career-fit confidence is significantly less than their male counterparts. In part these differential patterns between men and women unfold through work experiences. I conclude by considering how the concept of career-fit confidence might inform our understanding of women’s mid-career departure from law.
Event details
- Type Seminar
- Sector Engineering
- Region
- Organiser Institute of Advanced Legal Studies
- Venue
Charles Clore House
17 Russell Square
London
WC1B 5DR - Contact details
- Cost Free
- Date and time Tuesday, 21 February 2012 at 18:00 for 1 hour
