Lecture: Gender Studies in Engineering
The lecture gives an overview about the categories “sex” and “gender” focussing on science and technology.
The lecture gives an overview about the categories “sex” and “gender” focussing on science and technology.
We carried out a case study, titled “The situation of independent women engineers in Austria”, that deals with the issue of independent work by women in the technical-engineering field. The survey commissioned by FFG (Austrian Research Promotion Agency) approaches the situation of independent female engineers in Austria from various angles. This included questions on the engineers’ specific areas of activity, their everyday work, as well as their specific experiences in starting up businesses and motives for doing so.
Gender into Teaching was the first project in Austria to develop strategies, how to implement gender topics into two fields, physics and electrical
engineering at a Technical University. The faculties’ motivation to participate is to increase the number of female study beginners (number of female students: electrical engineering: 7%, physics: 15%) as well as to change their public image, which they feel is negatively connoted and biased in favour of men. The total number of beginners is decreasing. One possible reason for this is the recent rise of so called Fachhochschulen (universities of applied sciences) which offer more focussed and shorter programs of study for various engineering fields.
Within the Leonardo-da-Vinci Project
“Eco Stands For – Quality standards of Vocational Training for European Eco-Counselling” we took the role of the gender expert and were responsible for gender awareness raising measures like gender training as a part of the vocational training course. We also served as gender consultants for the project team and the working groups.
B-NK specialises in applying a gender-oriented view to apparently gender-neutral fields such as urban, landscape and traffic planning, mobility research as well as other areas of technology and engineering. Through its methods of developing strategies of participation and gender perspectives into areas of environmental, technological and sustainability research as well as planning and communication processes, B-NK has proven experience and expertise.
When developing action-orientated results in the form of recommendations and guidelines, B-NK often applies participatory methods, such as stakeholder-dialogues, process-facilitations and interactive workshops.
Within its research projects, B-NK applies qualitative and quantitative methods, such as focus groups, expert interviews, and online surveys. B-NK often evaluates gathered data by means of analysis programmes (Atlas TI and SPSS 17.0) and is also familiar with planning and designing methods, such as analysing social space and community work participation in the context of urban and transport planning.
On the whole, the primary services of B-NK cover:
Büro für nachhaltige Kompetenz (Consultancy for Sustainable Competence) B-NK GmbH is engaged in research and consulting processes within the ecological, economic and social dimensions of sustainability. Its fields of interests and experience include the integration of gender and diversity perspectives into apparently gender-neutral fields such as science, engineering, technology, urban, transport and landscape planning, mobility research, as well as sustainable development. To this extent, B-NK points out the relevance of gender and diversity aspects within planning and communication processes as well as in technology research and development projects, and develops action-oriented solutions towards achieving these goals. Additionally, B-NK consults clients in areas such as diversity management, gender mainstreaming and education programs in sustainable development. The expert knowledge B-NK possess in the fields of planning and technical science is supplemented by its systematic approaches and well-established scientific research.
Assistent, project assistent
Gender inequality in male-dominated fields like engineering is still an often debated phenomenon. But how is the situation in the diverse field of environmental studies? The project “Green jobs – up-to-date and diverse” examines the gender differences in environmental education programmes.
Integrating gender inclusive and gender neutral terminology makes an important contribution to equality between women and men since the use of language reflects the reality of a particular society. To acknowledge the differences in its students, scientists and employees TU Graz has set a good example and launched a guideline for using gender inclusive language in speech and writing. Regarding the great proportion of international academics and employees at TU Graz, the guideline also contains a section for gender inclusive language translated to English.