Women-only engineering education – a promising Austrian model initiative (original) (raw)
Related papers
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 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 ...
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.
Creating Cultures of Success for Women Engineers
Proceedings of Final International Workshop of …, 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.
Special session: Re-Imagining engineering education: Feminist visions for transforming the field
Frontiers In Education …, 2007
The goal of this special session is to explore what engineering education might be like if it were done from a feminist perspective, and how this new vision might influence the profession and society. Feminist perspectives are understood broadly to recognize the connectedness of all forms of social injustice. Thus feminist visions of engineering might address a broad set of concerns such as militarism, racism, and global economic inequality as well as sexism and heterosexism. Outcomes include concrete ideas for future research and institutional transformation, collaboration and mutual support of one another's efforts.
André Béraud et al (dir.) Gender and Interdisciplinary Education for Engineers, pp 1-10., 2012
How can we make studying engineering and technology a more attractive option to young people? How can we attract more women and therefore improve the balance between male and female engineers in society? These are the two questions this conference intends to address. Among the solutions, the organizers of the Helena conference have chosen to focus on engineering education as a means of solving two “problems”: firstly the underrepresentation of women in engineering; and secondly the lack of interest expressed by young people in science and technology – and the shortage of graduate engineers for business companies in the future.
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.
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.
Initiatives and Strategies to Encourage Women Into Engineering
IEEE Revista Iberoamericana de Tecnologias del Aprendizaje, 2017
this study deals with the problem of the small number of women who enroll in technical studies or work in technological enterprises. Although we have focused on initiatives that have been launched in Spain, we have also included several studies from around the world which try to encourage women into engineering. Once we have reviewed these proposals and confirmed they have not resulted in a growth of women in technologies, we suggest other proposals and actions such as empathic co-creation from primary education which could improve this situation and thus provide the benefits of reducing this gender gap.
A Review of ‘Gender Inclusive Engineering Education’
The first few chapters of this book go over well trodden paths, summarising the extensive research on the under-representation of women in engineering in university education and in the workplace, but this is just the necessary scene setting for the more practical aim of the book-to influence university engineering departments to change their curricula. In the introduction the authors talk about 'the elephant in the classroom', the unspoken issue of gender in recent reports and books on engineering education. Equally, current concerns about technical skills shortages also ignore the issue of gender and the underrepresentation of women. The authors tellingly point out that in the 76 pages of a 2006 Australian government audit of skills shortages in science, engineering and technology there was not one single mention of 'women' or 'female', though they hasten to add that this omission was later acknowledged and redressed in a subsequent report by the Australian Council of Engineering Deans. In the introduction the authors also point out that in the many articles, reports and books on the under-representation of women in engineering, in both education and in the workplace, the issue of the engineering curriculum is rarely addressed.