Gendered by Design: The Socialization of Women in Engineering School (original) (raw)
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Previous research on gender and engineering education has often tended to work with limited understanding of technology and gender. For instance, the gender equality approach relies on liberal discourses and incorporates a deficit model of women. In the early nineties a paradigm shift took place and post-modern approaches received more attention. But empiricism has often become trapped in comparing women with men. As a result, most studies continue to be reductive and contribute to confirming gender stereotypes. Recently, there have been some attempts to find new ways to transgress such general and dichotomous characterizations of gender. This paper also concerns the methodology of feminist research on gender and technology. The empirical material is based on a data collection of 859 first-semester students studying engineering in higher education in Germany. In this paper their attitudes and interests concerning computers and technology will be analyzed.
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Demographic trends predict a shortage of engineers with women being one group being targeted to fill this gap. While the percentage of engineering degrees attained by women has increased, there has not been an equal increase in the number of women working in the industry. This means women are either leaving the industry after they enter or not entering at all. The purpose of this study is to identify what can be done in the education of female engineering students to better prepare them for the engineering workforce reality and culture. A survey was conducted to collected information from female architectural engineering students about their perception of the industry. The results were then compared to the actual conditions of the workforce. The goal is to identify areas of discrepancy between perception and reality so that these areas can be addressed before students enter the workforce. The hope is with a better understanding of their career environment, women will be better prepared to deal with the issues that may cause them to leave the industry.
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There has been a significant amount of research into the culture of engineering faculties at Australian Universities and it is clear that it remains dominated by masculine values and attitudes. If this is the case in the environment of faculties then what is happening in the classroom? Engineering has been the domain of men since its inception and thus as would be expected their perspectives and paradigms have dominated its practices. Yet today even if unintentionally, the promotion of masculine values, experiences and interests within the engineering education system has left women feeling uncomfortable and different.
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Although a balance has been achieved in the overall numbers of female and male students in higher education in the industrialized countries, vertical sex segregation has remained high as male academics and students continued to outnumber their female counterparts internationally. Gender representation is only one façade of gendered disadvantage in engineering, as complex forms of gendered disadvantage occur in social, cultural, psychological and economic layers of life, where women engineering students find themselves swimming against the tide of prejudice. This article draws on comparative and historical data, and a qualitative study with interviews and a questionnaire survey which generated 603 completed responses from female and male engineering students in Turkey. It seeks to reveal the complex and layered nature of gendered prejudice levelled against female engineering students. The findings suggest that linear formulations of gendered prejudice and disadvantage in engineering study are insufficient to account for the complexity of influences on career choice and their concomitant gendered outcomes.
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