Creating Cultures of Success for Women Engineers (original) (raw)
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To succeed or not succeed, that is the woman engineer's question
Creating Cultures of Success for Women Engineers, 2005
Although engineering studies are equally open for men and women in highly industrialized western countries like Germany, the number of women participating in engineering programs and practising a related profession is extremely low and only slowly increasing. In the last decade many programs and initiatives have been implemented in order to change this situation. The results were disappointing.
Proceedings of the Joint International IGIP- …, 2010
The first Austrian mono-educational program in engineering, a technical college course in Graz, was implemented in autumn of 2008 and is training women who graduated from high school, in mechanical engineering. In order to record the efficacy of this education and to intervene during the project, the authors of this paper have been entrusted with a process evaluation by the Public Employment Service Austria (AMS). Now the first results are ready to be presented. Women-only education seems to be a paradoxical approach to gain gender equality in engineering education. However these single-sex educational measures can support learning aloof from gender hierarchies, especially in en-gendered fields like technology. In gender segregated learning groups gender as a differentiating category is deconstructed by the absence of "the opposite" gender. Educational institutions offering women-only learning settings or even mono-educational degree courses focus on the objective to increase the share of women in special fieldsin this case engineering. Experience from other single-sex degree courses as well as results from international studies speak for themselves. In various studies critical aspects of single-sex (engineering) educational programs have been identified, such as: different interests and expectations of participating organizations, lack of social recognition of single-sex educational programs, the insular situation of monoeducational initiatives for women amidst a male dominated field of engineering education, risk of conflicts due to group dynamics, faculty culture as a hindering factor for learning success, and public relations that present female students as the "new elite". In the presentation of the paper first results of the process evaluation of the single-sex pilot project in Graz will be analyzed against the background of critical and promising factors of women-only engineering degree courses in Germany and the tradition of US-American women"s colleges.
The Technische Universität München (furthermore: TUM) is about to change its organizational culture in a gender and diversity oriented way. The goal of becoming the most appealing Technical University for women has been on the TUM agenda for 20 years. It was enforced by its Steering Committee in 2004[1]. Thus the university initiated and intensified several measures to reach that goal. These processes will be described in this paper. The overall aim is to reach gender equality in the career opportunities of scientists and engineers. This will cause a paradigm change in engineering education and engineering culture. Crucial points are the integration of gender issues throughout education and in all fields of research. Furthermore, TUM strives at increasing the numbers of female engineering scientists.
European Journal of Engineering Education, 2006
The paper describes elements of engineering organizational cultures and structures in higher engineering education from the European project WomEng. Hypotheses, based on state of the art, refer to: women friendly presentation, attractiveness of interdisciplinary teaching methods, single sex education, perceptions of minority status, feelings of isolation, existing discrimination and coping strategies of female students. Quantitative and qualitative methodologies, asking questions of and observing students and faculty are completed by website analyses. The results show that special recruitment and a welcome for women do not exist everywhere and, furthermore, are denied by faculty of some countries. General welcome events are appreciated. Among interdisciplinary subjects, languages and soft skills are preferred, along with people-oriented teaching. Attitudes towards single sex education are controversial. The general male engineering image is combined with negative attitudes and discrimination practices in only some countries. More latent discrimination, like prejudice, jokes and stories, lead to self-confidence coping strategies by female students. The results are reflected on the basis of feminist and men's studies. The conclusions refer to inherent dilemmas in research on masculinities in engineering education.
The status of women in engineering education
International Journal of Engineering Education, 2000
The participation of women in engineering education has been a subject of many engineering education studies. This paper presents an investigation into the status and participation of females in engineering courses in the Faculty of Engineering at Monash ...
International Journal of Engineering Education 35/4, 2019
This study explores the hidden curriculum of gender in engineering by focusing on an engineering faculty as an example in Turkey. Numerical existence of women engineers in Turkey, do not represent for qualitative information about gendered culture of this profession. Participants in this study, reported to face with gendered expectations, jokes, ignorance, and exclusion from social networks throughout university education. Mentioned conditions in engineering education are examined, where not only students but also faculty members learn to not notice the production and reproduction of gender differences in engineering education. The engineering faculty is thus perceived as an environment in which to learn how to become an engineer in the sense that the graduate will both fulfill the academic requirements and adopt the gendered social roles learned in engineering education. The findings of this research revealed that women experience several disadvantages because institutional structures value certain roles while individuals in engineering education learn to ignore the presence of such perceptions that tend to favor the dominant ideal types.
2003
Nowadays, because of the women rights to seek equal opportunities in the workplace, more and more young female population in the age range to study in the higher education apply for the professional courses that a few decades ago was for male population such as in civil engineering courses. This paper intends to present the strategic plan being carried out in an Academic Institution that offers the Production Engineering Course with effort in Civil Engineering. The survey carried out among over 300 associates showed the needs to improve the acceptance of female engineers in the civil engineering, whereby the preference for male engineers is around 8 out of 10. The number of female students in the engineering has experienced an increase in last decade reaching the ratio nearly one to one. Thus, in the near future, the female graduates in engineering will face difficulties for the job placement. The proactive action should be devised by the academic institutions and the associations concerned to work towards an adequate information strategy to explain about the achievement of skill sets by female engineers to perform professional tasks properly, as much as a male engineers. To reinforce the studies towards this issue, the results of survey was compared to those obtained by similar institution in Germany. Distinct methodology was used, but as the survey was for the same purpose, results can be compared and discussed for further consideration to devise the policy towards the issue of women into engineering.
Women Engineering Education: Trends and Challenges
India is the second most populous country in the world and 48.5% of the general populations of India are women. But still Engineering is a male dominated field in India. The scarcity of women in engineering is a matter of concern. The Government of India in partnership with State Governments has intended different strategies, involvement, schemes and programmes with definite objectives that enforce on girls' education. Some programmes and interactions have begun to revolutionize the face of India. Out of the total population in India, 61% is literate. And Men dominate the numbers of those enrolled in higher educational degrees.
Being a Female Engineering Student: Lessons from the Industrial Engineering
The increasing of women engineers' participation in a profession established as mascul ine, changes the traditional understanding of engineering. In Portugal, the available data refers that only 4% of female students are enrolling in engineering courses, representing no more than 19% of total engineering students, suggesting the existence of the largest g ender imbalance of all the university degree level. The Industrial Engineering course of the University of Minho is an exception: 44% of female graduates during the last 30 years. Knowing that this course has a primary fo cus in the Portuguese manufacturing industry, with a strong male culture, how these female engineers face and respond to their career challenges? This paper inte nds to explore the main variables that influence career progression of Portuguese female industrial enginee rs. A questionnaire was developed to identify the paths o f career progression of these professionals. Then, so me interviews to female indust...