Developing Diverse Leadership for Engineering

With colleagues Carroll Seron, Brian Rubineau and Erin Cech, Silbey is conducting a longitudinal panel study of engineering students from entry to college to the workplace. The current work, funded by the National Science Foundation, revisits the panel five years after graduation and amidst their early years in the labor market. Our theoretical model adjudicates among the most important contending explanations for persistent gender stratification in professional employment by testing social psychological theories of causal individual and gender differences; organization-level processes of culture, chilly climates and tokenism; and social capital theories concerning the efficacy of social networks. The research is designed to identify gaps in our understanding, as well as to address some of the methodological problems associated with answering outstanding questions about gendering in STEM occupations.