Gender, engineering, and professional technical education

Abstract

This paper provides insights on gender inequalities in engineering, technical education, and professions and how these fields are identified as masculine. Building on data about women’s participation in other professional fields, empirical studies about the institutional climate in engineering schools in various countries, and ethnographical research in Mexico City about professional career paths of women in “masculine” occupations, we applied the idea of “doing gender” (West & Zimmerman, 1987) as a conceptual tool for the sociological analysis of the sexual division of labor in the technical professions.