Evidence for the persistent effects of an intervention to mitigate gender-stereotypical task allocation within student engineering teams

Left to their own devices, student project teams often divide work along gender-stereotypical lines, leading to differentiated learning experiences and, the literature suggests, differences in self-confidence and persistence. Colleagues teaching a first-semester design course previously introduced an intervention that largely mitigates gender-stereotypical task allocation in that course. In the present study, we demonstrate modest evidence that the impact of this intervention persists into subsequent coursework, suggesting that it may be possible to persistently shift student behaviors away from gender-stereotypical defaults, in turn improving self-confidence, persistence, and outcomes.