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Feminists and other proponents of engineering diversity often encounter resistance to initiatives and programs intended to increase diversity in engineering. Supporters of diversity often suggest both strategies for attracting underrepresented group members and changes to engineering itself. It is less common for proponents of diversity to directly address the stubborn resistance to diversity that frequently prevails in the discipline. This paper addresses resistance to diversity in engineering education using a psychodynamic approach to group social identity. From a group-psychodynamic perspective, resistance to diversity as threatening to the group and to its identity is predictable, although the particular circumstances and culture of the group remain to be analyzed. We give particular attention to the role of engineering "leaders" in influencing group responses to the perceived diversity threat, suggesting a number of practical changes in engineering culture that are likely to mitigate the sense of threat associated with increasing diversification.
Keywords: engineering / diversity / feminism / psychoanalysis / leadership / group identity / language
Naming Diversity
Professions, businesses, and educational institutions increasingly promote the cause of diversity and commit resources to enhancing the success of members of different social groups. This is certainly true of the engineering profession in general and of colleges, departments, and programs throughout the United States that train and educate engineers. At the same time, there remains a great deal of misunderstanding within engineering about "diversity"-what it is, why institutions should be concerned with it, and how to achieve it. In this paper, we apply insights drawn from psychodynamic group theory to engineering and engineering education to investigate some common problems concerning the institutionalization of diversity. In particular, we argue that understanding resistance to diversity is enhanced by a group-psychodynamic perspective and that leaders of in-groups play a key role in conducting group responses-consciously and unconsciously, positively and negatively.2
Although concern with diversity has deep historical and philosophical roots (Mill 1994), diversity in the United States is usually identified with contemporary feminism and, thus, for many in male-dominated professions, with a host of negative associations of radicalism and misandry. Critics of diversity also may assume that it is anti-individualist, respecting group membership more than individuality and individual achievement. However, for feminist advocates of diversity, there is no inconsistency between respecting individual...