The article highlights the urgency of the problem of training engineering and technical professionals, taking into account the development of technology and social challenges of the market economy. Emphasis is placed on the need to ensure gender equality in the choice of engineering professions, equal opportunities for men and women. The essence of the concepts: “gender”, “gender pedagogy”, “gender culture”, “gender socialization”, “gender stereotypes”, “gender competence”, “gender education”, “gender inequality”, “gender roles” and others are substantiated. It is determined that gender studies are of great interest for pedagogical and psychological science, as they relate to the gender-role socialization of a person, his/her personal and professional development. The results of an empirical study on gender stereotypes in occupational choice among students of Ivano-Frankivsk National Technical University of Oil and Gas are presented (110 people took part in the survey). It has been revealed that gender is not the prerogative of many young people in engineering profession choice, however, such stereotypes still exist in the society. It was proven that for future professionals in this field, gender discrimination took place in their lives (28.4% of respondents) and it is mostly female who acquire technical professions. One third of students (32%) admitted that they had faced cases of unequal wages to men and women. It has been proven that negative gender stereotypes are more subjective than objective, which gives hope for a fundamental possibility of overcoming them in the training of specialists at the Technical University.

The article highlights the urgency of training highly qualified and competitive engineers in the labor market under the requirements of the world economy, the level of technological development, and taking into account societal demands for the quality of educational services. International experience of training future specialists and directions of improving the skills of engineering and technical personnel are analyzed. The results of the study of educational programs for the training of future engineers in the institution of higher technical education are presented.  The necessity of updating the content of education based on professional and creative training of specialists in the field of engineering has been proved, considering it as a holistic process of personal and professional development of the graduate. The pedagogical potential of social sciences and humanities about the professional development of engineering and technical specialists is presented. Interdisciplinary courses are offered, which are aimed at philosophical understanding of the socio-economic situation in the country and the world, the development of critical thinking and abilities to organize one's own business, management skills, and more. Several methodological aspects of the implementation of pedagogical innovations in higher education are substantiated, including business and role-playing games, Problem Based Learning, Project-Based Learning, Oxford Debates, group work, interactive training, and workshops. The importance of professional communication as a complex socio-psychological formation is associated with the process of training future engineers and characterizes the level of formation of integrative knowledge, professional skills, and abilities. Emphasis is placed on the necessity to develop highly qualified specialists’ creative thinking, the initiative in decision-making, the ability to work in a team on solving philosophical issues, etc. The author has proven convincingly the urgency for preventing various forms of discrimination against people with special educational needs, as well as avoiding gender stereotypes and ideas in the institution of engineering and technical profile.

The article highlights the importance of the social and humanitarian disciplines, related to the spiritual and moral aspects of a young person’s life to face the challenge of preserving the individual’s integrity and spiritual growth in modern conditions of stressful, emotional, and psychological overload. It is impossible to implement it in practice without introducing new and improving existing paradigms of spiritual and moral upbringing in educational institutions, which is carried out precisely in the process of teaching social and humanitarian disciplines. The problem of spiritual and moral education of the individual has always been one of the relevant ones, and in the current conditions of the coronavirus pandemic, russia’s military aggression and Ukraine’s struggle for peace, and the European values of democracy, it acquires special importance. After all, in the process of radical socio-political, economic, and cultural reforms of society, the challenge of increasing the role of future specialists training concerning the demands of modern social development and humanization of the educational process generally requires scientists and teachers’ significant attention. The article outlines the main ideals and educational guidelines of Ukrainian society, as they embody the real revival and further development of the Ukrainian nation. The authors emphasize the fact that instability and inconsistency of the moral atmosphere in Ukrainian society resulted in the spiritual and moral education of the young generation becoming particularly acute. This process encourages the revival of tradition and the search for innovative means of spiritual and moral education for Ukrainian youth. The key conditions regarding the importance of spiritual and moral education of future specialists are given.