Feminism, Women's Studies, and Engineering: Opportunities and Challenges

Subramaniam, Banu; Ginorio, Angela B.; Yee, Shirley J.

doi:10.1615/jwomenminorscieneng.v5.i4.30

Cited by 9 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…Future research should examine whether the context itself shapes rejection of feminism. Unreasonable representations of feminism may be more prevalent in masculinized contexts like engineering courses—where gendered stereotypes, norms, and rules are operationalized (Subramaniam et al, 1998). It is therefore essential that those teaching in these fields place special emphasis on discussing feminist theories (Lord et al, 2005).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparing social representations of feminism among education and engineering majors: Insights for developing feminist pedagogies

Rotaeche

Mondragón

Jaureguizar

2022

Feminism & Psychology

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The present study uses Social Representation Theory to explore students’ representations of feminism with a view to informing principles for developing feminist pedagogies that can help foster egalitarian values among college students. The aim is to identify how Spanish students (n = 366) represent feminism and how these representations are shaped by participants’ gender, identification with feminism, or by studying feminized or masculinized disciplines. Students from Education ( n = 192), a feminized qualification, and Engineering ( n = 174), a masculinized qualification, completed a free association task using the Grid Elaboration Method to collect representations of feminism. A lexical analysis was conducted using the Reinert method. The results showed that a positive representation of feminism was the broadest (75.8%), with feminist-identified students defining feminism as a struggle for freedom. Feminist women emphasized the importance of achieving equality, and education students emphasized the importance of education in the process of women's empowerment. In contrast, 24.2% represented feminism negatively, as an extreme movement, especially engineering, non-feminist, and male students. These findings suggest that efforts aimed at developing feminist principles among students consider not only gender and feminist identification but also the context of feminized or masculinized disciplines as key spaces of gendered socialization. The study was carried out in the Basque country, Spain.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparing social representations of feminism among education and engineering majors: Insights for developing feminist pedagogies

Rotaeche

Mondragón

Jaureguizar

2022

Feminism & Psychology

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“…In particular, feminist science studies offer new theoretical frameworks to analyze women's longtime underrepresentation 2,3 in engineering and the physical and biological sciences in the United States. 4 While substantial advances have been made overall, progress has begun to stagnate over the last decade. A new approach, involving an existing body of literature that engineering education has heretofore overlooked, might provide a more nuanced understanding of this disproportionality, and might allow for more effective solutions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Feminist Engineering Classroom: A Vision For Future Educational Interventions

Pawley¹

2004 Annual Conference Proceedings

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In the quest for the gender equalization of the engineering profession, a variety of strategies are being developed and used in daily engineering education practice. Colleges and universities are recruiting girls and women in increasing numbers into the so-called "engineering pipeline" by using camps, special classes, printed and internet-based advertising, and/or "girl-power" media programming to make engineering's image more appealing -for example, as fun, socially useful, and multidisciplinary. Concurrently, engineering instructors and faculty are redesigning engineering education using different classroom techniques more congruent with current managerial trends found in industry. These lean towards a focus on group work and interdisciplinarity, which have the added advantage through their political and material reputation as being purportedly more "women-friendly" than traditional methods. These different interventions are crucial in the nation-wide quest to have men and women more proportionately represented in engineering. Arguably, the last bastion is to address the content of engineering courses, which has changed only superficially. This is despite considerable theoretical and practical critiques of science and engineering practice in academia that have been made by feminist researchers and educators. This paper introduces the field of feminist science studies to engineering educators, discusses various explicitly feminist approaches to changing content in engineering, and challenges engineering educators to consider what a "feminist engineering classroom" might consist of with respect to content.

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“…Feminist pedagogy provides another framework for engineering educators to evaluate and improve their teaching strategies. Others outside of engineering education have encouraged engineering to incorporate this approach [1] [5] however, most engineering educators are not aware of feminist pedagogy. This paper, along with others [6] [7] further develop ideas presented in the FIE 2004 Special Session: Feminist Frontiers [8], which received the Helen Plants Award for the most innovative session.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Incorporating feminist pedagogy into the engineering learning experience

Eschenbach

Cashman²,

Waller³

et al. 2005

Proceedings Frontiers in Education 35th Annual Conference

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A framework is presented for implementing feminist pedagogy along with demonstrative examples from engineering curricula.The framework for incorporating the values of feminism into the learning experience focuses on three aspects: 1) learning management strategies, 2) assessment and evaluation strategies and 3) strategies for critiquing existing power structures and the engineering process. Feminist pedagogy strategies suggested by others include cooperative learning, providing students a voice in classroom management decisions, structuring student interactions to facilitate all students' participation, having students participate in designing evaluation rubrics and assigning projects that require more than technical skills. A unique feature which feminist pedagogy offers to engineering education is the critique of power structures in relation to the engineering process. For example, the following questions can be addressed: How are engineering processes influenced by the historical frameworks of their development? How are decisions made? Who makes decisions? Who benefits from the decisions? What values do they reflect?

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Feminism, Women's Studies, and Engineering: Opportunities and Challenges

Cited by 9 publications

References 0 publications

Comparing social representations of feminism among education and engineering majors: Insights for developing feminist pedagogies

Comparing social representations of feminism among education and engineering majors: Insights for developing feminist pedagogies

The Feminist Engineering Classroom: A Vision For Future Educational Interventions

Incorporating feminist pedagogy into the engineering learning experience

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