05/13/2026
By Sarah Kostanski

The Manning School of Business, Department of Management, invites you to attend a doctoral dissertation defense by Sarah Kostanski on “How Gender Representation Shapes Women’s Experiences in Men-Majority Contexts: A Comparative Study of Meaning Making and Identity-Action Patterns in Two Engineering Subfields."

Candidate Name: Sarah Kostanski
Degree: Doctoral
Defense Date: Friday, May 29, 2026
Time: 10 a.m.-noon
Location: Pulichino Tong Business Center 205 (Dean’s Conference Room), North Campus

Thesis/Dissertation Title: “How Gender Representation Shapes Women’s Experiences in Men-Majority Contexts: A Comparative Study of Meaning Making and Identity-Action Patterns in Two Engineering Subfields"

Committee:

  • Advisor: Elana Feldman, Ph.D., Department of Management, Manning School of Business, UMass Lowell
  • Beth Humberd, Ph.D., Department of Management, Manning School of Business, UMass Lowell
  • Kathleen McGinn, Ph.D., Baker Foundation Professor Cahners-Rabb Professor of Business Administration, Emerita, Harvard Business School

Brief Abstract:

Building on research on gendered occupations, this dissertation asks: Do differences in the degree of gender underrepresentation matter for women’s experiences at work and, if so, how? Prior research shows that gender representation shapes exposure to bias, visibility, and belonging, but pays less attention to whether differences in representation influence how women interpret these experiences across contexts. To address this question, I conducted an inductive, qualitative comparative study of two subfields within a men-majority occupation—mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering—that differ in gender representation (with women relatively more underrepresented in mechanical engineering) but share similar skills, knowledge, and core work activities.

Drawing on 47 semi-structured interviews with engineers, former engineers, and subfield experts, I found that gender representation mattered not by changing the types of work challenges women encountered, but by shaping how they interpreted those challenges. Although women in both subfields reported similar occupational identity challenges related to credibility, legitimacy, and inclusion, they differed in how they made sense of them. Whereas women in mechanical engineering interpreted occupational identity challenges through a contested framing, women in biomedical engineering did so through a normalized framing. These framing differences were associated with distinct identity-action patterns—i.e., how women understood themselves as engineers and responded to work challenges: women in mechanical engineering displayed identity endurance, while women in biomedical engineering exhibited identity confidence with vigilance. In addition, I found that these patterns were shaped by distinct subfield competence archetypes, or locally shared evaluative standards. Overall, this study contributes to research on gender representation, identity, and occupational logics by showing that representation shapes how work challenges are interpreted within evaluative contexts, with implications for women’s identity and action.