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ADDRESSING THE GENDER GAP 739

to interviewing “allowed for gathering rich, detailed students strongly agreeing with each of the statements
data directly” from InvenTeam students to help us was significantly higher than male students. Our
generate insights and empirical evidence for making attempts to find a reason for the difference led us to
warranted claims in relation to the research questions a deeper investigation of another survey question
(17). Students were invited to select their own pseud- in which students were given a set of descriptors
onyms. Interviews were recorded, transcribed in a that could potentially be used to describe themselves
pragmatic way to match the content-focused research and were asked to mark all terms with which they
purpose (18), and analyzed using ethnographic identified. There was no significant gender-based
research methods, including semantic analysis (19). difference in the students who identified as inventors,
The tracing of the three young women’s perspectives as 21 females (34.4%) identified as inventors, com-
and experiences afforded opportunities to uncover pared to 26 males (32.9%). However, a gender-based
changes in their ways of thinking attributed to their comparison of InvenTeam participants’ selections of
InvenTeam experience and factors that supported other types of descriptions of self revealed a differ-
and constrained their work. ence between female and male participants. Table 3
shows that “leader” and “innovator” were the two
ANALYSES top choices for females, garnering response rates
that exceeded 50%. “Engineer” was the only term
Gender-Based Differences in Survey Responses garnering a response rate of 50% or greater by males.
We utilized the most recent (2017) end-of-year Like their female counterparts, a high percentage of
survey to examine the first research question focusing males identified as leaders.
on how InvenTeam members represent their expe- The survey responses indicating greater agreement
riences and whether there were differences in the in the “strongly agree” category for “learning from
self-reported experiences of young women and young failure,” “developing self-confidence,” “persistence,”
men. The 2017 survey, in which 73% of the students and inscriptions of self as innovators and leaders by
responded, showed 81% of total respondents (n = more than 50% of the females—versus the males’
126) agreed or strongly agreed that “working on our choice of engineer—hinted at gender-oriented dif-
InvenTeam project taught me to learn from failure,” ferences among the experiences students brought to,
84% of respondents (n = 124) agreed or strongly developed, and then took away from their InvenTeams
agreed that “I developed self-confidence in my abil- work. However, survey data alone was not sufficient to
ity to solve problems,” and 84% of respondents (n help us understand why differences existed between
= 126) agreed or strongly agreed that “working on female and male students. The differences led us to
an InvenTeam taught me to be persistent.” Table 2 the second and third research questions, focusing
demonstrates that significant differences emerged on what experiences among young women had led
between female and male “strongly agree” responses to particular kinds of self-identification and what
to the three questions. supported and constrained the work of the young
Based on these descriptive statistics, we were women as they invented. We explored these questions
not able to determine why the percentage of female by interviewing three female InvenTeam participants.

Table 2. Significant Differences in Male and Female Students’ Agreement Responses

2017 End-of-Year Survey Questions Female/Strongly Agree Male/Strongly Agree P
(n = 54)
(n = 72)
Learn from failure 59.3% 34.7% 0.019
Self-condence in ability to 49.1% 29.6% 0.039
solve problems
Persistence 55.6% 31.9% 0.019