Women, Identity and Employability: gendered expectations and recruitment to a nontraditional occupat

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Women, Identity and Employability gendered
expectations and recruitment to a non-traditional
occupation, engineering construction
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Alison AndrewFaculty of Social SciencesThe Open
University2 Trevelyan SquareLeedsLS1 6ED

• www.a.m.andrew_at_open.ac.uk

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• Paper based on case study of women apprentices
  and workers in one particular non-traditional
  occupation, engineering construction
• Qualitative in approach, mainly based on
  semi-structured in-depth interviews, observation,
  group discussion and two reviews of recruitment
  process
• Valuable opportunity to look more closely at
  craft and technician level training and work

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The Engineering Construction Industry

• Constructs plant and makes and maintains
  equipment for process industries eg oil and gas,
  food, energy. Also nuclear plant
  decommissioning.

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Apprenticeship Scheme in Engineering Construction

• Offers craft skills and technician
  apprenticeships
• Usual age 17 - 21
• Combines training centre with FE day release
  (12-18 months) followed by on-site placement
• Generally at least 95 male (numbers fluctuate)
• Some female apprentices isolated in completely
  male settings, others with one or more other
  women. Instructors nearly all male
• 1 women on site (EOC notes among the most
  segregated areas of employment)

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• Tiny, hidden minority of women raises the
  question do women see themselves and are they
  seen by others as employable within the
  industry
• Women not seen as having identities compatible
  with the engineering community, may have to
  develop these in order to belong
• Apprenticeship said to involve legitimate
  peripheral participation and identity
  transformation to full membership (Lave and
  Wenger, 1991) but both legitimate peripheral and
  full participation may be difficult for women,
  starting at pre-recruitment stage and continuing
  through to employment or lack of it.

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• Looking at
• Gendered expectations and recruitment
• Sustaining and progressing in employment

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• Access to reliable and useful labour market
  information important for employability - a
  problem for those considering a non-traditional
  route?
• Reported difficulties accessing information from
  school, college, careers advisors, and often such
  choices not promoted
• Parental and other encouragement key, but
  gendered expectations on all sides

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• If you dont already know what you want, you
  wont get it
• But gendered expectations make this unlikely,
  without positive intervention or influence
• Even with initial interest, progress uncertain,
  confidence in choice easily knocked through
  delays, setbacks
• May turn to more traditional routes

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• Tendency of trainers and employers to see lack of
  confidence as necessary filter for employment and
  employability
• Tough industry, need to fit in and be fit, hit
  the ground running
• Contrasts with more nurturing approaches eg
  feminist informed
• Criteria of acceptability the cultural
  reproduction of white male hegemony is all but
  guaranteed (Collinson, Knights and Collinson,
  1990 60)

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• Interview questions reported by women may convey
  messages to them about who is seen as employable
  within the industry pictures of gender
  isolation and otherness of women

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• Recruiters believed need to select right people,
  retain them, be honest and fair to applicants
• Notions of having it in you and individual
  characteristics responsible for success or
  failure, shared by recruiters and many women
  training and working in the industry
• Neglects contextual nature of development
• Can be an espoused liberal equal opportunities
  ethos which works towards greater female
  participation but stops short of challenging the
  terms in which they are expected to participate
  (Rodd and Bartholomew, 200639)

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• Employability not just gaining entry but
  maintaining it, gaining full membership
• May be difficult for women

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• Im always seen as being an apprentice. Even
  though Im not, Im qualified, Ive worked in all
  different branches of the industry

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• Many positives of working in the industry, but
  also costs
• Young women, and, in a different way, young men,
  do not make gender-contrary moves scot-free
  (Cockburn, 1987202)
• Fitting in, managing gendered bodies,
  monitoring dress and other aspects of appearance
  and behaviour
• Nevertheless, some examples of harassment and
  abuse

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• Women may have to compromise their identities to
  meet the demands of the workplace and fit in

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Conclusions

• Gendered expectations, model of identity which
  sees employability attributes as individual and
  relatively fixed
• This view expressed by trainees and workers in
  the industry as well as by trainers and
  recruiters
• Neglects social practices, power dynamics,
  socially constructed meanings and idea that
  industry itself could be transformed
• Employability also about quality, level and
  renumeration of employment, not just initial
  entry, but all of the above can be to the
  detriment of women

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References

• Cockburn, C (1987) Two-Track Training Sex
  Inequalities and the YTS. Basingstoke and London
  Macmillan.
• Collinson, D. Knights, D. and Collinson, M.
  (1990) Managing to Discriminate. London and New
  York Routledge.
• Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning
  legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge
  Cambridge University Press.
• Rodd, M. and Bartholomew, H. (2006) Invisible
  and Special young womens experiences as
  undergraduate mathematics students, in Gender
  and Education, 181, January 06, 35-50.
• Wenger, E. (1998) Communities of Practice
  learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge
  Cambridge University Press.