Seeking clues to promote the participation of women in electrical engineering studies

Ana V. Alejos, Manuel García Sánchez

Dept. Teoria de la Señal y Comunicación

E.T.S.E.Telecomunicación, Universidad de Vigo 36310 Vigo, Spain

{analejos, manuel.garciasanchez}@uvigo.es

Falcone, Antonio López Martín Dept. Tecnología Eléctrica y

Electrónica Universidad Pública de Navarra

Pamplona, Spain {francisco.falcone,

alopez}@unavarra.es

Maria Pilar Milagros Dept. Writing Program

Koç University 34450 Istanbul, Turkey mmilagros@ku.edu.tr

Introduction- In this contribution we discuss the need to analyze the problem of the scarcity of women in electrical engineering studies. We describe an ongoing survey to investigate the factors of gender segregation in this career. It also intends to transfer to classroom measures that encourage the presence of women in electrical engineering.

Keywords- Gender, Diversity, European Higher Education Area (EHEA), recruitment and retention.

I. INTRODUCTION Whilst labor demand in the ICT sector continues to rise,

women’s presence at both student and professional levels has begun to show a decline compared to the growing trend observed and strengthened during the last decade. An analysis by the Association of Telecommunication Engineers (COIT 2013) notes that, in Spain, 15.4% of engineers are women, while this percentage reaches 21.8% among engineering students.

The IEEE Women in Engineering association [1] issued a report on the 20th anniversary of its foundation in which it is stated that, globally, women’s presence in technical jobs does not surpass 10%. Consequently, it is necessary to enquire into the data to begin to understand the possible causes for that decreasing and/or stagnation of the growing trend in order to integrate women in the ICT sector.

The decline trend has been detected in recent years in countries such as the United States [2], wherein the percentage of female presence in undergraduate engineering studies dropped from 21% in 1982 to 17.4% in 2006. Besides, only 2.7% of the latter aspired to pursue a master’s degree versus 15.7% of male students [2].

In the Spanish case, [3] noted that only 13% of the female engineers perceive their profession as good or very good, compared with 32% in the case of male engineers; both wage discrepancies (up to 15,500€) and management responsibility in strategic positions differences (3.1% for women versus 12.5% for men in 2012) by gender are notable.

Because of the continuous quest for improvement in higher education, the academic sector should not ignore minority issues such as gender differences and diversity. The low percentage of women’s presence in engineering careers has been extensively studied and analyzed [2,4-6]; however it is not a widely discussed topic yet, and, many times, research outcomes are only reported at the academic level, which does not reach the general public. The results of these studies should be delivered to the affected community, and specific solutions should be promoted by both academia and national institutions to project short and long term actions that aim to remedy observed deficiencies.

In the following sections we analyze some of the studies performed by the universities. We also introduce our research work consisting of an online survey design and data analysis.

II. EQUALITY UNITS AT THE UNIVERSITY In Spain, in order to comply with the March 22nd 3/2007

Organic Law for effective equality of women and men, universities have created the Equality Unit, whose main purpose is to diagnose gender segregation. Generally speaking, universities have collected statistics and surveys, but the affected sector has not participated or been informed about those results.

It is noteworthy that those surveys assume as a matter of topics to explain the causes of women’s limited integration in the engineering world; however, their analysis and specific corrective action approaches are vague and inconsistent with academic community and institutional practices. Generally speaking, in the case of Spain, it is observed the lack of clear promotion policies within the educational system, from primary school to the university levels.

In the data collected and analyzed by the Gender Equality Units of the universities of Galicia [7-9], Northwestern region of Spain, as shown in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2, it is observed a clear segregation of gender in relation to the percentage of women in engineering careers remains constant over time (Fig. 3 and Table I). There is one exception to this rule, and it is the case of Agricultural Engineering studies.

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Figure 1. Distribution of graduated students per field. Source: [1].

Figure 2. Percentage of distribution for female students for different campuses and careers. Source: [1].

Figure 3. Distribution of graduated students per fied. Source: [1].

For the University of Vigo and in the case of the technological studies, there is also a slight decline in the trend of the percentage of female presence that extends from the students in first cycle to the number of doctorates obtained, although it does not exist a balance in any other field.

For the Public University of Navarra, the data show similar results. Thus we find that during 2007/2008, men in engineering represent a percentage of 70.6%, and in the 2005/06 academic year women in electrical engineering reached 33.3% of the enrolled students.

TABLE I. EVOLUTION OF THE PERCENTAGE OF FEMALE STUDENTS PER CAREER IN THE TECHNOLOGICAL FIELD

Year Automat

ic eng. Mining

eng. Industrial eng.

Electrical eng.

Computer eng.

Industrial eng.

Agriculture eng.

Forestry eng.

1997/98 20.70 27.00 24.55 62.81 41.13

1998/99 22.47 26.49 25.61 60.80 41.37

1999/2000 22.75 25.91 25.68 25.56 61.34 40.89

2000/2001 24.11 26.36 32.69 25.60 59.22 39.66

2001/2002 25.89 28.52 37.70 26.23 59.06 40.96

2002/2003 26.81 28.28 29.91 26.22 58.18 40.59

2003/2004 27.59 28.84 36.13 26.95 58.01 44.07

2004/2005 28.06 28.59 36.93 26.33 58.45 43.29

2005/2006 35.71 29.25 30.00 29.69 38.66 26.25 56.27 44.53

2006/2007 30.00 30.22 27.03 29.68 34.72 26.43 56.76 41.39

2007/2008 41.18 29.79 25.00 30.00 27.91 26.43 55.65 39.02

III. RESEARCH WORK: ONLINE SURVEY AND COLLECTED DATA ANALYSIS

In order to investigate the causes of gender segregation as observed in electrical engineering degrees, we designed a survey that focused on investigating problems, prejudices and misconceptions about the role of women in engineering.

This survey aims to measure the Modern Sexism Scale indicator [6] based on the quantification of different topics revolving around female presence in careers that have been traditionally associated with males. In order to create the survey questions, the descriptors used to develop the Modern Sexism Scale [6] were considered but were updated to the current socio-cultural context.

We opted for an online survey, which allows us the possibility of conducting an international survey to expand the analysis to other socio-cultural scenarios. The online platform also facilitates filtering and processing the collected responses.

In Table II we show a sample of the questions included in the survey.

IV. CONCLUSIONS We have identified some general ideas as plausible actions

to be implemented at both university and pre-college level:

- The image of the profession and the institution must be jointly improved.

- Design and implement stimulus plans in pre-university studies.

- Training of teachers: from language to the curriculum and also via the images, it should be avoided the idea of masculinization of any discipline and, therefore, the profession.

- Provide information to students about the history of women in engineering.

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- Designing introductory courses to accomplish writing tasks regarding values assertion [5] in which students discuss and inquire about stereotypes, like the survey outlined here, in two phases – at the beginning and at end of course – in order to make them see their personal evolution and help them overcome their doubts.

- Mentoring and scholarship program.

REFERENCES [1] WIE, IEEE Women in Engineering, http://www.ieee.org/wie, 2013. [2] P. Gore, A. A. Bergerson, C. M. Furse, “Women in engineering:

Statistical analysis of ACT data and proposed procedure to reverse trend”, IEEE Intern. Symposium on Antennas and Propagation, 3-8 July, Spokane (USA), 2011.

[3] R. De Sádaba, “Las TIC y las mujeres. Mujeres y Cia”, online available: http://www.mujeresycia.com/index.php?x=imprimir/5759, 2009

[4] S. J. Ceci, W. M. Williams, “Understanding current causes of women’s underrepresentation in science”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, pp.108-8, 2011

[5] S. Lauer, J. Momsen, E. Offerdahl, M. Kryjevskaia, W. Christensen, L. Montplaisir, “Stereotyped: Investigating Gender in Introductory Science Courses”, Life Science in Education, vol. 12, no. 1, 2013.

[6] J. K. Swim, K. J. Aikin, W. S. Hall, B. A. Hunter, “Sexism and racism: Old-fashioned and modern prejudices”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 68, no. 2, 1995.

[7] A. Traba Díaz, L. Varela Caruncho, “Informe diagnose da igualdade na Universidade de Vigo”, Universidade de Vigo, 2012.

[8] Universidade da Coruña, “Informe sobre o diagnóstico de igualdade 2012”, 2012.

[9] Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, “Diagnóstico sobre a igualdade na USC”, 2012.

TABLE II. EVOLUTION OF THE PERCENTAGE OF FEMALE STUDENTS PER CAREER IN THE TECHNOLOGICAL FIELD

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