How do women experience higher education? Is there a
significant difference in the experiences of women in men-dominated fields
verses women in women-dominated fields? Preexisting sociological research has focused
primarily on the differences in how men and women choose their majors, as well
as differences in outcomes after college based on gender. However, there has
been very little research on college women’s experiences within their
major. Over the course of this semester, I have interviewed undergraduate women
at GMU in majors with that consist of over 70% women, or less than 30% in order
to understand how this gender concentration has affected their academic
experience. Due to the pandemic, the interviews have been held over Zoom,
rather than in-person. This electronic format poses some unique challenges that
I did not anticipate when I first envisioned this project. My participants and
I have persevered through internet connection struggles, distractions that come
from working from home, and the difficulty of building a rapport in a virtual
setting. Nevertheless, my interviews for this project have been successful,
thanks to the willingness and honestly of my participants. As I write this, I
recently finished conducting all the interviews for this project, so my next
step is to have the recordings transcribed, and then to code my transcripts.
Although I have not yet had the opportunity to analyze my interviews for trends, my hope is that this project will help provide those who work in higher education with a more comprehensive understanding of how to make men-dominated majors more accessible to women. From what I have discovered so far, the experiences of women undergraduates, particularly those in men-dominated majors, could stand to be improved, even at a school as inclusive as GMU. Encouraging more women to join these majors is one possible solution to some of these inequalities.
