Examining the STEM Pipeline: The Role of Organizational Socialization in STEM Career Persistence

Women earn over half of bachelor’s degrees and make up half of the workforce in the U.S.; however, they remain underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) careers. Research focused on identifying ways to increase the number of women in STEM careers has largely focused on ways to get more women to enter the “pipeline.” However, the pipeline logic fails to explain the substantial attrition of STEM-educated workers, especially women, during the two years after their graduation from college. Individual difference explanations for this gendered attrition are less applicable because graduates have already established their interest, ability, and commitment to STEM fields. I propose that STEM workplace environmental factors may partially account for the dropout of recent graduates, and the higher attrition of women, in particular. Specifically, I will examine whether STEM women and men differ in perceptions of their organizational socialization experiences, that is, in knowledge about their roles and perceived integration into the organization. I expect that these socialization experiences will predict STEM graduates’ intentions to persist in their occupations and in their STEM work fields more generally. Further, I hypothesize that the relationships between organizational socialization experiences and intentions to persist will be stronger for women than for men, underscoring the importance of environmental (vs. individual difference) factors that may affect persistence