[Download] "Obstacles to Gender Parity in Engineering Education." by Forum on Public Policy: A Journal of the Oxford Round Table " eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Obstacles to Gender Parity in Engineering Education.
- Author : Forum on Public Policy: A Journal of the Oxford Round Table
- Release Date : January 22, 2007
- Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 311 KB
Description
Introduction Traditionally low enrolment rates of women in engineering programs in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and the European Union have been accounted for by what can be termed a Western women in engineering meta-narrative. Borrowing and paraphrasing Englund and Leach's (2000:126) definition growing out of the critique of modernity as a basis for the interpretation of local meanings, a meta-narrative constitutes a set of assumptions about a given phenomenon only some of which may be enunciated in a given context. Numerous studies of women in engineering programs in the West thus imply all elements of this meta-narrative while perhaps foregrounding one or two. A cornerstone of this discourse is the assumption of the male-female duality and the identification of engineering as a 'masculine profession' as a result of the identification of technology itself as masculine. A further dichotomy of a female orientation of caring and social involvement and a complementary male orientation of abstract and instrumental thought leads to a concern with the importance of gender in engineering pedagogy and an inevitable 'chilly' social climate for women in engineering programs. The solution to this disadvantaged position for women is seen as an increase in the proportion of women in the profession. Early literature talks about a 'critical mass' set at a particular percentage that would allow women to reshape their position and experience fewer career obstacles, although more recent writing has been more cautious (Etzkowitz et al 1994; 2000). Kantor's (1977; Gupta and Sharma 2003) concept of 'tokenism' seems to embody many of the features of the Western women in engineering meta-narrative.