Leadership Development for Women Engineers in British Columbia, Canada

The purpose of the quantitative correlational study was to profile the leadership of women engineers licensed in the province of British Columbia by using the Leadership Practices Inventory to operationalize leadership and explore associations with levels of university education, executive coaching, years of engineering practice, and the location of practice as rural versus urban. The number of women leaders continues to increase in Canadian corporations while the influence of women engineer leaders is not as progressive. Growth in the fields of engineering leadership education, management education, and leadership education offered sufficient evidence to pursue research that furthered the leadership development of women engineers. In university engineering education inclusion of leadership education improved, while attention to leadership development for professional women engineers remained sparse. Findings of this study described the leadership style of women engineers and suggested the combination of education and learning approach for a program in leadership development for women engineer leaders.