The influence of personal skills development and coping self efficacy on the affective occupational commitment of womenin STEMfields

Abstract

Purpose– Despite continuing under-representation of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, the literature still falls short on identifying and explaining the factors that could contribute to women’s persistence and commitment. The purpose of this research is to identify cognitive and behavioral factors that will support the occupational commitment of women in STEM. Design/methodology/approach– Quantitative analysis is based on a questionnaire survey of 375 women workinginSTEMintheMiddleEastregion.Multipleregressionandbootstrappingmethodswereemployedin the analysis of the data. Findings– The results support the following hypotheses: personal skills development has a positive impact on affective occupational commitment and coping self-efficacy, and coping self-efficacy mediates the relationship between personal skills development and affective occupational commitment. Originality/value– Thisstudyadds insightson the dynamic approachesadoptedby womeninSTEMfields to overcome occupational career challenges by testing several internal drivers, coping self-efficacy and personal learning.