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Finally, a summary is included at the end of the chapter recapping the research gap and the main aim of the study, as well as presenting the conceptual model.
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(Colarelli & Bishop 1990, Di Fabio & Palazzeschi 2012). While other studies investigating women in STEM have examined different career outcomes, this study is interested in understanding the factors related to and strengthening occupational commitment not least due to their importance and potentially diverse and dynamic roles in technical domains such as STEM. Occupational commitment is also considered an important variable requiring more research investigation taking into consideration the leaky pipeline that STEM industries are suffering in terms of attaining and retaining female employees.
Women in STEM and Occupational Commitment:
Despite the increase in the number of females joining the workforce, women in STEM fields still make up around 10% of full-time jobs and 7.7% of managerial positions (BLS 2011). The job demand for these professions is on the rise where job demands in the IT sector are expected to increase by 12% from 2014 to 2024 in the USA, for example (Munoz-Boudet 2017). Many studies investigated how to encourage school girls to study Engineering, for example, while others have concentrated on how to keep women in academic programs (Cech et al. 2011). These attempts have succeeded in increasing the number of female graduates from US STEM programs where the number jumped from 5% in 1980 to 22% in 2008 (NSF 2008). However, with the vast 83% majoring STEM graduates working in industry or business (NSF 2011), only a small number of studies have directed their attention to researching non-academic females working in STEM domains (Buse et al. 2013).
Among these, the vast majority of research investigations have attempted to answer the question of why females exit these professions (Hewlett et al. 2008). Statistics show that more than two thirds of females give up their STEM careers within 15 years from graduating, that is double the number of men who quit (Frehill 2008) comparted to 10% in other industries (Livingstong 2014). To be able to remain in
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and be committed to STEM occupations, research has recommended enhancing culture and organizational practices. This may include establishing a culture inside the organization that will appreciate the contribution of women by supplying clear routes towards growth, facilitating mentoring opportunities, and promoting work- life balance (Foud & Singh 2011). Such recommendations, despite their importance, have resulted in only a slight increase in the participation of women in these occupations. Therefore, this study focuses on the concept of occupational commitment for only those females who persist and succeed rather than further investigating the numerous, complex challenges covering the whole population of women with STEM qualifications.
Since occupational commitment is the concept that reveals attachment and motivation, it is used in this research to examine the persistence of females pursuing STEM careers. Occupational commitment is used as an outcome variable that aids in establishing the motivations and intentions of females working in these domains (Blau 1988). Intention is a significant notion within STEM fields since a vast number of females end up either quitting their jobs or even leaving the occupation for good, after a certain amount of time. Occupational commitment is also used in this research as a work-related behaviour or an attitude. It influences actions, performance, future career decisions (Brown & Lent 1996), and affects consequent job behaviours (Darden et al. 1989). In addition, career success, satisfaction, and involvement are all interlinked with the discussion of occupational commitment (Baker et al. 2002).
Occupational commitment was found to be a major indicator of the intention to remain in the profession (Blau & Lunz 1998) and an antecedent of intention to change occupations (Carless & Bernath 2007).
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Definition of Occupational Commitment:
Becker was among the early researchers who started studying commitment in the 1960s and 1970s. He considered commitment as a kind of loyalty towards organizations and examined the effect of previous decisions and options on an employee’s behaviour. Later, a rather attitude-oriented prospect on commitment emerged. The concept of commitment has evolved into a more intricate and versatile construct where scholars are utilizing the concept in many ways. Blau (1985) considered commitment to be a single dimension indicating affectional connection.
Meyer et al. (1993), on the other hand, proposed a multidimensional three- component framework. Commitment has also been studied in different domains whereas the early searches focused on organizational commitment of the employee (Mowday et al. 1979). One trend in the research has been to analyse employees in different work domains, such as occupations, unions, and jobs (Meyer & Allen 1991). Commitment targets represent the entities that a person is committed to.
Scholars have studied various commitment targets, such as occupation, organization, career, and goals (Vandenberghe 2009). Further studies dealt with the dimensions of commitment initially identifying three dimensions pertaining to loyalty, involvement, and identification (Oreily & Chatman 1986). In later studies, Meyer and Allen put forward the three-component model of commitment (1990, 1991, 1993) detailing three distinct mind-sets related to three features of motivation: desire to affect, cost to cognition, and obligation to social influence.
Occupational commitment can be defined as a verifiable and particular line of work a person enrols in at a certain point in time to earn a living (Lee et al. 2000). It comprises a variety of required skillset, knowledge, and different duties according to each occupation and is interchangeable across settings (Meyer et al. 1993).
Despite the fact that the terms career, occupations, and professions have been used
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conversely in the literature, to some extent, occupation best fits the concept under examination in this study. Occupation is preferred over profession because it tends to be broader (Weng & McElroy 2012). It includes both professionals and non- professionals. This agrees with the notion that both professionals and non- professionals can be committed to their line of work (Meyer et al. 1993). Occupation is chosen over the term career, as well, in an attempt to avoid any possible confusion where many authors have defined career as a set of jobs, vocational choices, and other activities related to work throughout a person’s lifetime (Arthur e1989). This definition does not agree with the notion discussed in this paper. Various interpretations of the term career may yield different responses as well, thus a narrower work concept, like occupation, is being used (Blau et al. 2009).
Occupational commitment has been defined also as an individual’s belief in and recognition of the values of the line of work followed, and eagerness to maintain association with that occupation (Vandenberg & Scapello 1994, Okuram 2012). Blau et al. (1993) explain that occupational commitment is a person’s stance towards her profession or vocation. It has also been perceived as a psychological tie between an individual and his occupation that is due to an emotional response to that occupation (Lee et al. 2000).
Although the topic of occupational commitment has received a considerable amount of attention in the literature across various domains (Cohen 2007, Blau & Lunz 1998, Weng & McElroy, 2012), major gaps still exist in terms of understanding the factors behind occupational commitment, especially for women operating in male dominated industries. Most of the research done on this topic so far has tackled environmental antecedents of occupational commitment. The intention of this study is to attempt to contribute to the research on dispositional aspects where less focus has been offered (Erdheim et al. 2006).
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