Problematizations of women's underrepresentation: Comparing educator interviews with the literature

Various arguments for increasing diversity and the presence of underrepresented groups in engineering have been put forth. However, little attention has been paid to those arguments themselves or their implications. The goal of this paper is to call attention to the need for further reflection upon and analysis of how engineering educators understand and discuss underrepresentation and diversity. Specifically, it examines the motivations of a diverse group of engineering educators to undertake work on feminist engineering education initiatives. It builds on prior scholarship from the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) of the ways in which underrepresentation has been framed as a problem. Participants' responses to the question of why underrepresentation is a problem are quoted at length and discussed. They are compared with prior findings from an analysis of the framings found in engineering education publications. Several differences between the publications and interview data are identified and the implications of these findings for engineering education, engineering education research, underrepresentation, and diversity more broadly, are then discussed.