The Workplace Support Received by Young Women Engineers in Sri Lanka

Abstract

: This study aims to ascertain the factors that influence young women engineers in Sri Lanka to choose engineering as their career choice and to study the nature of workplace support they receive in a highly gendered work environment. An online self-administered questionnaire containing five-point Likert type and open-ended questions were distributed via email among a conveniently selected sample of over 200 young women engineers with less than 10 years of working experience in Sri Lanka. Eighty-two responses were received. Likert-type responses were analyzed using descriptive statistics and graphical methods, while thematic analysis was employed for responses to the open-ended question. Cleverness in mathematics and the higher reputation prevailed in the society for the engineering profession have majorly contributed to the young women engineers’ career choices in engineering. They experience a fairly supportive working environment in their workplaces. Many of them were satisfied with their salary, promotions and other professional achievements. Qualitative responses further revealed the gender-based discrimination, lesser job opportunities, industry-wise differences, fallacies on women engineers and difficulties in balancing the work-life as the other concerns in their workplaces. Although these findings cannot be generalized to the Sri Lankan industrial sector due to the use of convenient sampling, this study reveals prevailing concerns of young women engineers for the attention of the engineering fraternity and employers.