Subseries documents "Critical Turning Points: Women Engineers Within and Outside the Profession," a study funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) strategic grant. The study was broken up into four projects: "Women in Engineering: A Historical Overview," a project based on analyzing statistical and demographic data to establish a statistical profile of women in engineering; "The Explorers: Early Women Engineers," a project based on conducting oral histories and examining archival material to establish the reasons for early engineers choosing their careers; "Women's Exit from Engineering Studies, a project based on using semi-structured interviews to analyze reasons for women departing from their degree programs; and "Women's Exit from the Engineering Profession," a project based on open-ended unstructured interviews of former male and female engineers to analyze their reasons for leaving the profession. Ainley was a co-investigator on the study, along with the principal investigator, Peta Tancred, and co-investigators Susan Whitesides and Gillian Rejskind, and was involved in all the projects, except, "Women's Exit from Engineering Studies." Subseries consists of audio tapes and transcripts from interviews with female engineers, questionnaires from a project on Queen's University female engineering graduates by Alison Bowe, research notes, articles, conference proceedings, brochures and correspondence.
