Dissertations / Theses: 'Gender and engineering'

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Hodgkinson, Elizabeth Anne. "Images of engineering : an investigation of gender and attitudes towards engineering." Thesis, University of Plymouth, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/1637.

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The research presented in this thesis used a mixed method approach to investigate the attitudes of sixth-form students in two British cities, towards engineering as a career, with the aim of finding out which factors encourage or discourage young people from becoming engineers, and whether these differ for males and females. The study can be set in the context of the declining popularity of engineering as a career choice for males and the continuing under-representation of females, for whom engineering is a non-traditional career choice. The principal research hypothesis was that negative images of engineering discourage girls and many boys from considering it as a career, with a particular focus on whether engineering and the school subjects closely related to it, are considered to be more appropriate for males than for females. The study was informed by a social science realist framework, in which 'attitudes' were not accorded the status of fixed attributes of individuals, but were understood as indicators of the underiying social construction of meanings and ideologies. It was found that the students in this study had made subject and career choices that conform to traditional gender patterns. The intention to pursue engineering as a career was highly dependent upon sex, with males being almost seven times as likely to consider it as a career than females. Although the students did not consciously subscribe to sexstereotyped views of subjects and occupations, these were inadvertently reproduced through the students' constructions of meaning. Initiatives to increase female participation in engineering have been based on overly voluntaristic conceptions of choice, whereby women are seen to straightforwardly reject the masculine image of engineering. However, this research suggests that understandings of both gender and engineering can be better understood as less intentionally constituted in 'discourses', which reinforce the association between engineering and specific forms of masculine identity, to exclude most women and many men.

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Shields, Katin L. (Katin Lee) 1977. "Gender differences in learning." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/44588.

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Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, June 1999.
A study was conducted in order to identify the gender differences in learning. Case studies were prepared on nine undergraduate students who were enrolled in Design and Manufacturing I. Through informal meetings with the students and their professors, information was collected on the learning styles of the students. The factors that affect these different learning styles were then evaluated. The conclusions drawn are specific to the students studied, but the recommendations made can be applied to most educational environments. There is a large correlation between a student's experience and his/her ability to learn in a specific subject. The level of exposure that a student has had affects his/her confidence, which further affect his/her problem solving approaches. In order to be more effective, educators must continually evaluate the progress of their students, as individuals. Further, experimental teaching situations should be considered.
by Katin L. Shields.
S.B.

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Zetterberg, Pär. "Engineering equality? : assessing the multiple impacts of electoral gender quotas /." Uppsala : Uppsala Universitet, 2009. http://opac.nebis.ch/cgi-bin/showAbstract.pl?u20=9789150620740.

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Zetterberg, Pär. "Engineering Equality? : Assessing the Multiple Impacts of Electoral Gender Quotas." Doctoral thesis, Uppsala universitet, Statsvetenskapliga institutionen, 2009. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-100822.

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The driving question of this compilation thesis is whether quotas for political assemblies represent an effective tool for breaking down gender inequality in the political sphere. To put it differently, focus is on the possibilities for policy-makers to engineer equality. As a response to persistent patterns of male dominance in political decision-making, approximately 100 countries, both democratic and authoritarian, have adopted these affirmative action measures. The introductory section presents an argument as to why we should focus on certain impacts in order to be able to answer the question about the effectiveness of quotas. It suggests that the point of departure for empirical assessments of quota policies should be the normative arguments for supporting the reform, and the effects that normative theorists and quota advocates expect from these measures. The three studies that make up the core of the thesis build on previous empirical research on quotas, and examine some of their possible effects at both the elite level and mass level. Study I theoretically scrutinizes how the procedures for selecting women to political office shape these women's legislative autonomy, and thereby their possibilities to substantively represent women. The study identifies mainly two factors as important: a large body selecting the candidates and a rule-bound and thus bureaucratized selection procedure. Study II empirically tests the claim that women elected through quotas are more likely to suffer from institutional constraints in the legislature, and thereby have a harder time working for the benefit of women, than other female representatives. By conducting a comparative case-study of two Mexican state legislatures, no support is found for this hypothesis. Quotas have also been justified because of their likely impacts on female citizens' perceptions about politics. Study III addresses this issue by performing a statistical analysis on the impacts of quotas on Latin American women's political attitudes and behavior. In contrast to previous research on the topic, the study finds little proof of positive impacts of quotas on women's political engagement. Taken together, the thesis does not provide a clear-cut answer to the question as to whether it is possible to engineer equality within politics. However, it sheds new light on the complexities of quota impacts, and it qualifies and nuances the picture for those who expect quotas to be an overall solution for problems of gender inequality.

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Nasr, Maroun. "Gendered Game: Gender and gender imbalance in the gaming industry : How is the gender imbalance created and explained the Swedish Gaming firms?" Thesis, KTH, Skolan för industriell teknik och management (ITM), 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-279613.

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The low levels of gender diversity is an characteristic that is directly associated with the gaming industry. The gaming industry is multi-dollar business with huge influence on technological advancement and possesses a great power and influence over its users. It is in a position to shape how users view the world and how they interact with it. Studies within the field of gaming have previously showed that gaming can have a significant impact on children and adolescents’ behavior. Therefore, it becomes of great interest to examine how gender imbalance is created and how it is explained by the gaming firms. The study will examine these questions through a Swedish perspective. The methodology of this research paper can be divided into two main section. Firstly, a literature review was conducted to gather information about relevant theories, concepts and previous research. Thereafter, ten individuals working for different Swedish gaming companies were interviewed to gather their perspective and view on the topic. The results showed that the gaming firms explained the gender imbalance and how it is created through gender and societal norms. However, when discussing the structure of the company, culture and other practices, results indicated that the gaming firms play a larger contributing role to the imbalance through; male-dominated gender structures and cultures that makes it difficult for women to progress and feel belonged in the company, establishing requirements that exclude certain candidates, and by having a confused perceptive regarding the situation.
Den låga könsmångfalden är något som är direkt associerat med spelindustrin. Spelindustrin är en enorm industri som har stort inflyttande på teknisk utveckling samt har stort inflyttande över sina användare och kan forma hur de ser på världen och interagerar med den. Studier inom spelområdet har tidigare visat att spel kan ha en inflytande på barn och ungdomars beteende. Därför har det blivit ett stort intresse att undersöka hur könsubalans skapas och hur det förklaras av spelbolagen. Denna studie kommer att undersöka dessa frågor ur ett svenskt perspektiv. Metodiken för denna forskningsrapport kan delas in i två huvudavsnitt. Först genomfördes en litteraturstudie för att samla information om relevanta teorier, begrepp och tidigare forskning. Därefter intervjuades tio personer som arbetar inom svenska gaming bolag för att samla in deras perspektiv och syn på ämnet. Resultaten visade att spelföretagen förklarade obalansen mellan könen och hur det skapas genom köns- och samhällsnormer. Men när man diskuterade företagets struktur, kultur och andra aspekter, visade resultaten att spel bolagen har en större bidragande roll till obalansen än vad de själva tror. Dessa företag utformas av mansdominerade köns strukturer och kulturer som gör det svårt för kvinnor att utvecklas och känna sig del av företaget, formar krav som exkluderar vissa kandidater och så vidare som bidrar till en låg könsmångfald inom branschen.

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Xu, Kathleen L. "Getting to gender parity in the Mechanical Engineering Department at MIT." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/105654.

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Thesis: S.B., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Mechanical Engineering, 2016.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 90-95).
Consistently ranked as home to one of the world's top engineering programs, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is often seen as a model for its undergraduate education programs and research output. But MIT leads in another important way: the Institute also boasts one of the most gender-balanced STEM-oriented undergraduate student bodies in the world. The purpose of the study was to help illuminate how the Mechanical Engineering Department in particular has reached near parity in its female undergraduate population: in 2015, females composed 46.4% of declared mechanical engineering majors. This study's approach was twofold: first, the gender enrollments in the largest mechanical engineering elective classes over the past 15 years were analyzed to determine differences, if any, in the subfields that female and male students choose to devote further study to. Second, a cross section of mechanical engineering faculty and staff were interviewed to evaluate how the department has changed over a similar timespan to make the place a much more welcoming place for women now. The data analysis revealed that a larger fraction of undergraduate males in the department take the robotics and the controls classes than females do, but an increasing fraction of females in the department have taken the robotics class over time. The interview analysis presented several factors that contributed to the gender parity in the department over time, including changed hiring practices, role modeling, and careful attention to classroom dynamics. Ultimately, it is hoped that the findings in this thesis can help both the department and other institutions continue their paths to greater gender balance in their engineering programs.
by Kathleen L. Xu.
S.B.

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Hunter, Kathleen Allison. "Gender and science in twentieth-century British engineering : an interdisciplinary analysis." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.669883.

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Shoger, Suzanne Grassel. "Engaging the Gatekeepers: Empowering Male Collegians to Promote Gender Equity in Engineering." The Ohio State University, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1524234416029571.

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Gibson, Amanda Kate Nam. "Gender differences in the social networks of science and engineering graduate students." Thesis, Boston University, 2012. https://hdl.handle.net/2144/31559.

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University
PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you.
U.S. women have obtained advanced science and engineering degrees with increasing frequency, yet have not achieved promotions at rates comparable to men's. Men may advance more expeditiously than women due to more supportive professional networks, which can improve access to information and opportunities. Few studies have examined social networks in the context of advanced graduate programs, yet graduate programs are where many scientists develop important relationships helpful in advancing careers. This study addressed the extent to which graduate students' networks (primary advisors, mentors, peers, and family) are associated with academic indicators (i.e., grade-point average, academic progress, student satisfaction, and career commitment); the extent to which these network and academic variables vary by gender; the extent to which network characteristics mediate associations between gender and academic variables; and the extent to which gender match or mismatch of the student and primary advisor is associated with network characteristics and academic variables. Two hundred and thirty-nine doctoral students (58% women, 42% male; mean age 28 years; 29% non-Caucasian) from 18 science and engineering departments at a large research university completed a brief internet survey about their network relationships and academic indicators. Graduate women reported significantly less satisfaction and more negative perceptions of academic progress than did graduate men. Female students with female primary advisors were significantly less satisfied with their graduate experience than were students in other gender pairings. Male students were more likely than female students to have primary advisors who had significant funding, directed a graduate program, and directed a research center. Male students also reported greater satisfaction overall with their mentors. Female students reported larger mentor networks and more emotional support resources received from mentors and peers. Gender differences in overall student satisfaction were partially explained by male students feeling significantly more overall satisfaction with their mentors and a sense of apprenticeship with their advisors as compared to female students. These findings illuminate some important differences between male and female student networks, especially in advising and mentoring relationships, which may be contributing to dissatisfaction and the perception of less academic progress among female students.
2031-01-01

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Hoeffel, Elizabeth Marie. "Gender Bias in Engineering: Does More Contact with Female Engineers Reduce Bias?" Thesis, Virginia Tech, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/31846.

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Status Characteristics Theory and Contact Theory are tested to measure gender bias in engineering students, and to determine if contact with female engineers helps reduce gender bias. To assess this, two versions of a resume, one with a femaleâ s name and one with a maleâ s name, were given to senior mechanical engineering students (n=225) to establish if they would rate the male applicant better than the female applicant. Respondents were asked how qualified they thought the respondent was, how much they would want the respondent on their team, and whether or not they would hire the applicant. Respondents were also questioned about contact with female engineering faculty, having female engineers in the family, and having female engineering co-workers. Results showed that all of the effects that were expected to occur were not significant, except one. The interaction between having a female engineer in the family and the applicant sex of the resume significantly impacted malesâ desire to have the applicant on their senior design team. Therefore, overall there is very little support for Status Characteristics Theory and Contact Theory. Only one result supports both Status Characteristics Theory and Contact Theory â having a female engineer in the family seems to reduce gender bias toward team members among males.
Master of Science

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Chu, Hyejin. "Being a female engineer: identity construction and resistance of women in engineering schools." Texas A&M University, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/4364.

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Compared to other professions, women's representation in engineering professions is considerably lower than men's, and this particular situated-ness or locality makes women experience a unique process of identity construction. Using qualitative methods - two focus group meetings, nineteen autobiographical essays, and twenty two individual interviews, this research focuses on what women learn from their experiences in engineering school, and how they respond to their perceived experiences. This study proposes to delineate (a) the dynamic interaction between women and the social structure of engineering school; (b) women's perception and conceptualization of the social structure they practice; and (c) women's strategic responses to the structure leading to identity construction. Becoming an engineer is problematic for women because the identity of "engineer" is based upon hegemonic ideas developed by previous generations of engineers - men. This research explores how women, standing in the borderline of being women and being engineers, account and construct their identities as women engineers. Sometimes women are subtly or not subtly coerced; sometimes they embrace dominant ideas; sometimes they creatively resist dominant approaches.

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Ratnakar, Aniket. "Gender detection from hand signatures using MyRIO FPGA." Thesis, California State University, Long Beach, 2015. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=1597787.

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The goal of this project is to use pattern recognition techniques for the detection of a person's gender, using the hand signature of the person. The gender detection algorithm utilizes image processing methodologies to identify and evaluate certain parameters, such as the number of intersection points and amount curvature in the trace of the hand signature. The image of the signature is captured in real time from a webcam using LabVIEW (Laboratory Virtual Instrument Engineering Workshop) and the MyRIO FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) platform from National Instruments. It is subsequently processed in MatLab (Matrix Laboratory) using a combination of various filters. The system can be used to improve security of activities or transactions where a hand signature is required.

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Charity-Leeke, Pamela. "Women In Engineering: A Phenomenological Analysis of Sociocultural Contextual Meaning of Gender Roles." Cleveland State University / OhioLINK, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=csu1346784795.

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Lim, Kirsten Beatrice. "Understanding the gender differences in factors affecting the decision to study engineering t MIT." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/98779.

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Thesis: S.B., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Mechanical Engineering, 2015.
Page 52 blank. Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 50-51).
The National Science Foundation has found that the percentage of women studying engineering has stabilized, indicating a need to find methods to encourage women to become engineers. The purpose of this study is to identify factors that women who choose engineering indicate were important to their choice and determine which factors are more appealing to women than men. In order to identify these factors, an electronic survey was developed to collect information from the current MIT student population. Analysis of the survey data identified a series of factors ranging from mentorship to academic confidence that differed between women more than men. By identifying and understanding the implications of these factors, we hope to help establish new programs to encourage more women to study engineering.
by Kirsten Beatrice Lim.
S.B.

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Rukmangadhan, Saranya. "Changing gender narratives using inclusive design." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2019. https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/123421.

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This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.
Thesis: S.M. in Engineering and Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2019
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 87-90).
With the shifting landscape of gender and the blurring gender identities, we are living in the time of a gender revolution. This thesis explores the interrelations of gender and the design of solutions - two of the most fundamental components of the cultural framework which holds together our sense of social identity. Studies show that human brains use correspondence bias - the purported basis of gender stereotypes - to group people and thereby assume behavioral traits based on their activities. This thesis aims to understand whether gender-inclusive design would allow users from all genders to participate in the task at equal capacity. The implication is that equal participation would reduce the gender stereotypes associated with the task. The thesis uses "cooking at home," which is traditionally been associated as a woman's activity, as the case to understand this issue and further extends the analysis to understand whether the design of "meal kit services" is gender-inclusive and how that affects the participation among genders. The research showed that though more men are entering the kitchen, cooking still remained a woman's domain. The inherent needs of men and women were different across different stages of the process of preparing a meal and their perception of cooking also varied. An interplay of existing social constructs related to gender behavior was reflected in these needs and perceptions. Findings from this thesis show that the chosen meal kit service did not cater to the needs of either gender fully, and the service did not alter the levels of cooking participation between the genders.
by Saranya Rukmangadhan.
S.M. in Engineering and Management
S.M.inEngineeringandManagement Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program

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Norio, Sofia. "Gender Based Perception of Safety : An exploratory among Stockholm residents." Thesis, KTH, Urbana och regionala studier, 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-230760.

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A city is considered to be safe when people can move freely, without being concerned about being subjected to any crime. CPTED is a way to work with crime prevention in the society. Although safety and security are two distinct concepts, they can interact with each other in the work towards a more sustainable society. This bachelor essay explores how the perception of safety, regarding common anxiety, is distributed between men and women in Stockholm City. Furthermore, the perception of safety within the female group is examined in terms of age. This has been conducted in the form of a quantitative analysis, based on data from Stockholm’s safety survey in 2014. The results showed that the perceived safety, in a general sense, is very low among the Stockholm residents. In all but one of the cases, the proportion of women who claimed to be unsafe was bigger than the proportion of men. Most women, who felt unsafe in the neighborhood or transit environment, were between the ages of 25 and 44 years. The results were analyzed in a more qualitative form, by an assessment of its reasonableness and feedback with relevant theory that has been presented. This led to the conclusion that there are differences in people’s perceived safety, which can be explained by its individual characteristics like gender and age.
En stad anses vara trygg när människor kan röra sig fritt utan att vara rädda att utsättas för brott av något slag. CPTED är ett sätt att jobba med brottsprevention i samhället. Trots att trygghet och säkerhet är två säregna begrepp, kan de samverka med varandra vid arbetet mot ett mer hållbart samhälle. Denna kandidatuppsats undersöker huruvida människors upplevda trygghet, rörande allmän oro, är fördelad mellan män och kvinnor i Stockholm. Vidare undersöks också trygghetskänslan inom den kvinnliga könsgruppen, med avseende på ålder. Denna undersökning har genomförts i form av en kvantitativ analys, vilken baserades på data från Stockholms trygghetsmätning år 2014. Resultaten visade att den upplevda tryggheten generellt sett var väldigt låg hos invånarna i Stockholm. Vid alla utom ett av de undersökta fallen, var andelen kvinnor som uppgett sig vara otrygga större än andelen män. De flesta kvinnor som kände sig otrygga i bostadsområdet respektive transit miljön var mellan 25-44 år. Resultaten analyserades i form av en mer kvalitativ karaktär, genom utförandet av en rimlighetsbedömning och återkoppling till relevant teori om trygghet. Detta ledde till slutsatsen att det finns skillnader i människors upplevda trygghet, som kan förklaras av dess individuella egenskaper såsom kön och ålder.

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Sheh, Alexander. "The effect of gender on Helicobacter pylori and gastric cancer." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/67072.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Biological Engineering, 2011.
This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.
Cataloged from student submitted PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references.
Gastric cancer is the 2nd leading cause of cancer death worldwide and the 4th most commonly diagnosed cancer worldwide. Helicobacter pylori infection is the major risk factor of gastric cancer, and as such, this bacterium has been classified as a type 1, or definite, carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. H. pylori infects the gastric mucosa of more than half of the world's population and promotes gastric carcinogenesis by inducing chronic inflammation. Over decades of persistent H. pylori infection and chronic inflammation, the stomach goes through a well characterized pathological progression involving chronic gastritis, atrophy, intestinal metaplasia, dysplasia, and ultimately cancer. Interestingly, there are strong gender differences in the development of gastric cancer, as men are twice as likely to develop the disease than women. Given the importance of H. pylori and chronic inflammation in gastric carcinogenesis, this thesis investigated the role of gender in modulating host immune responses to H. pylori. The aims of this thesis explored 1) the effect of gender on H. pylori's ability to induce mutations and 2) the effect of estrogen and the anti-estrogen, Tamoxifen, on H. pyloriinduced gastric cancer. For the first aim, the gpt delta mouse model, a murine mutational analysis model, was used to study chronic infection with H. pylori. Increased frequency of point mutations was observed in infected female mice at 12 months post infection. These mutations were not observed in infected male mice. Further analysis revealed that H. pylori induced a greater immune response in female mice in this model, as measured by increased severity of gastric lesions, decreased bacterial counts and the higher levels of Th1 antibodies for H. pylori. The spectra of mutations pointed towards oxidative damage as the underlying cause of induction. This study revealed that gender differences in mutagenesis were mediated by the severity and duration of the immune response. In the second aim, 17[beta]-estradiol prevented the formation of gastric cancer in the INSGAS mouse model, which develops gastric cancer in a male-predominant manner. Unexpectedly, this study led to the discovery that Tamoxifen may act as an agonist in this model of gastric cancer, as it was able to prevent gastric cancer using mechanisms similar to 17[beta]- estradiol. Both compounds downregulated pathways associated with cellular movement and cancer. CXCL1, a murine homolog of IL-8, was downregulated by treatment at both local and systemic levels, which led to a decreased neutrophilic infiltrate. 17[beta]-estradiol and Tamoxifen mediated the disruption of a positive feedback loop coupling CXCL1 secretion with neutrophil recruitment, which dampened the activation of proinflammatory and oncogenic pathways, leading to protection against gastric cancer. In conclusion, these studies provide further insight into the role of gender modulation of host immune response in H. pylori-induced mutagenesis and carcinogenesis.
by Alexander Sheh.
Ph.D.

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AlMofawez, Meshail. "Oppression of Women in the Islamic World and Gender Inequality in Saudi Arabia." Digital Commons at Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School, 2016. https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/etd/347.

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The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is considered an advanced, developed, and industrialized nation. It is the only Arab nation that is a member of the G20, a group from the world's top 20 industrialized nations. Despite economic advancement, social progress has been stagnant. Saudi women do not enjoy equal rights to men, and gender-based discrimination and mistreatment is integrated into KSA's social, political and economic systems. KSA is the only country in the world which bans women from driving. Additionally, KSA's laws reinforce subservient status of women, such as the "male guardian" legal requirement, which deprives women of autonomy in personal decisions, including the freedom to travel without the company of a man. On the other hand, Saudi women have high literacy rates and education levels by international comparison - more than 57% of Saudi women possess a college degree. In stark contrast, female labor participation rates are among the lowest of any developed nation. There is a glimmer of hope that society is making progress. In 2011, King Abdullah granted women the right to vote and take part in local politics as of the year 2015. This project aims to build momentum and capitalize on KSA's recent societal progress by proposing a comprehensive solution using a system's approach to address gender inequity and women's rights issues in the KSA labor market. Systems Engineering (SE) guides this project's stages and activities. This starts with exploratory research, then defines the problem, identifies key stakeholders and documents requirements. This information will provide the basis for the system concept solution's requirements and architecture. The result of this project is a proposed system solution - a comprehensive program implemented and operated by the KSA government, which has undergone verification and validation to ensure that this system is both "built right" and that "the right system was built."

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Chen, Yuying 1976. "A pattern recognition system for recognizing gender from silhouettes." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/46213.

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Thesis (S.B. and M.Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1998.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 60).
by Yuying Chen.
S.B.and M.Eng.

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Perry, Paula Christine. "Influences on Visual Spatial Rotation| Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Experiences, Age, and Gender." Thesis, Notre Dame of Maryland University, 2013. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3557721.

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Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education curriculum is designed to strengthen students’ science and math achievement through project based learning activities. As part of a STEM initiative, SeaPerch was developed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. SeaPerch is an innovative underwater robotics program that instructs students in how to build an underwater Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) following a STEM curriculum, including spatial thinking and rotation ability. This research study investigated if the students’ SeaPerch program and its spatial experience and training gave the opportunity to develop strategies not only in manipulating three dimensional objects but in strengthening mathematical ability (e.g. spatial thinking) in elementary, middle, and high school students with specific focus on gender and age.

This research study sample consisted of two groups of students: one that participated in the after-school SeaPerch program and the other that did not participate in the after-school SeaPerch program for the 2011–2012 school year. Both groups comprised students in similar grade levels and the MRT preassessment scores.

To measure students’ spatial rotation, the researcher used the Vandenberg and Kuse Mental Rotation Test (MRT). An independent samples t test was conducted to determine the effect of the SeaPerch program on MRT scores. The SeaPerch students (M = 1.35, SD = 2.21) scored significantly higher gains than the Non-SeaPerch students ( M = −.03, SD = 1.72), t (737) = 8.27, p = <.001. The effect size as measured by Cohen’s d = .697, indicated a medium practical significance. At each school level, MRT post assessment scores for students in the SeaPerch program increased significantly more than scores for students in the non-SeaPerch program.

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Thunström, Klara. "Serious games contributing to competence development on gender equality in organizations." Thesis, KTH, Produkt- och tjänstedesign, 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-290693.

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A serious game is a game which aims at enabling the player to acquire new knowledge and competence, while at the same time being engaged and entertained. Gender equality in organizations is a field with unexplored connections to serious games. It is a very topical subject and having an equal organization can, for example, lead to higher revenue and is a part of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. The purpose of this study is to contribute to gender equality in organizations with the help of serious games, as serious games can be used to gain and maintain interest in a topic. This study aims at contributing both to practice and theory. The theoretical aimi s to contribute with new knowledge on serious games related to the fields of gender equality and experiential learning. The practical aim is to create and visualize a scenario that can be used as content in a game aimed at creating competence on gender equality issues. The study behind the thesis follows the Double Diamond process, with the study consisting of a user study, with interviews and trigger material testing, as well as a literature study, which focused on existing knowledge in the areas of serious games, game elements, scenarios, organization and gender, competence development and experiential learning. Six interviews were conducted to find connections between the competence development process in the studied organizations and gender equality. It led to the insight that qualitative gender equality work is neglected in most of the organizations. The qualitative perspective on gender equality covers the norms and values in the organization. A second loop of user interactions was conducted with the help of trigger material, which was then followed by interview questions. The aim was to investigate in what situations gender inequalities occurred. Nine trigger material tests led to twenty-one different situations, locations, characters and experiences. Out of the twenty-one situations, the majority were connected to language and communication in the organization or sexual harassments. These two types of situations were therefore used when creating the scenario. To conclude, the theory of experiential learning could potentially contribute with learning aspects to the field of serious games. Adding reflective observation and abstract conceptualization to the serious games enables the player to go through all four stages of the experiential learning cycle, and consequently learn more efficiently. A scenario could be created with the help of the new game elements, which was a combination of game elements, properties for learning and with the added theory of experiential learning.
Ett serious game är ett spel med syftet att lära spelaren ny kunskap och kompetens, och samtidigt vara underhållande och engagerande. Ett område som saknar koppling till serious games är jämställdhet i organisationer. Det är ett ämne som också är aktuellt i organisationer inte minst då det, bland annat, bidrar till högre avkastning men även är en del av de globala målen i Agenda 2030. Syftet med den här studien är att bidra till jämställda organisationer med hjälp av serious games. Studiens avsikt är att bidra med både praktisk och teoretisk kunskap. Det teoretiska målet är att bidra med ny kunskap om serious games relaterat till jämställdhet och teori om experiential learning. Det praktiska målet med studien är att skapa och visualisera ett scenario som sedan kan användas i handlingen till spel om jämställdhet i organisationer. Projektet har följt tjänstedesignprocessens Double Diamond, med en användarstudie, bestående av intervjuer och test av triggermaterial, och en litteraturstudie, där befintlig kunskap inom serious games, spelelement,scenarion, organisation och kön, experiential learning och kompetensutveckling undersökts.Sex intervjuer genomfördes för att undersöka kopplingen mellan kompetensutveckling och jämställdhet i organisationer. Analysen av intervjudatan ledde till insikten att kvalitativt jämställdhetsarbete (arbete med normer och värderingar) försummas i de flesta av de studerade organisationerna. Det gjordes därefter ytterligare en användarundersökning för att få förståelse kring de situationer där kulturella ojämställdheter sker. I denna användarstudie agerades de olika situationerna ut med hjälp av triggermaterial varefter intervjufrågor ställdes. Detta ledde till 21 olika beskrivningar av situationer om ojämställdhet och om kränkningar. Dessa analyserades, och det visade sig att de vanligaste typerna av ojämställdheter var kopplade till härskartekniker och sexuella trakasserier där en senior, manlig kollega använde teknikerna på en kvinnlig kollega. Slutsatserna av studien blev att teori om experiential learning potentiellt kan bidra med lärandeaspekter i serious games. Om reflective observation och abstract conceptualization i Kolbs inlärningscykel integreras i spelet, går spelaren igenom alla fyra steg i cykeln, och kan därmed lära sig mer effektivt. Ett scenario kan skapas med hjälp av spelelement, som kombinerar egenskaper för lärande och experiential learning, och situationerna om ojämställdhet från användarstudien.

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Weijand, Sasha. "AUTOMATED GENDER CLASSIFICATION IN WIKIPEDIA BIOGRAPHIESa cross-lingual comparison." Thesis, Umeå universitet, Institutionen för datavetenskap, 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-163371.

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The written word plays an important role in the reinforcement of gender stereotypes, especially in texts of a more formal character. Wikipedia biographies have a lot of information about famous people, but do they describe men and women with different kinds of words? This thesis aims to evaluate and explore a method for gender classification of text. In this study, two machine learning classifiers, Random Forest (RF) and Support Vector Machine (SVM), are applied to the gender classification of Wikipedia biographies in two languages, English and French. Their performance is evaluated and compared. The 500 most important words (features) are listed for each of the classifiers.A short review is given on the theoretic foundations of text classification, and a detailed description on how the datasets are built, what tools are used, and why. The datasets used are built from the first 5 paragraphs in each biography, with only nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs remaining. Feature ranking is also applied, where the top tenth of the features are kept.Performance is measured using the F0:5-score. The comparison shows that the RF and SVM classifiers' performance are close to each other, but that the classifiers perform worse on the French set than on the English. Initial performance scores range from 0.82 to 0.86, but they drop drastically when the most important features are removed from the set. A majority of the top most important features are nouns related to career and family roles, in both languages.The results show that there are indeed some semantic differences in language depending on the gender of the person described. Whether these depend on the writers' biased views, an unequal gender distribution of real world contexts, such as careers, or if these differences depend on how the datasets were built, is not clear.

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23

Godfrey, Janett Elizabeth. "The culture of engineering education and its interaction with gender : a case study of a New Zealand University." Thesis, Curtin University, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/423.

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This study focused on the culture of engineering education, a culture which has been characterised internationally as reflecting masculine attitudes, values and norms of behaviour, thereby reinforcing the current under-representation of women. The goal of the study was to define the dimensions of the culture and the associated processes of enculturation, highlighting the interaction of these with gender. Following a review of relevant literature, research questions were formulated. These were addressed through an interpretive case study undertaken at a multidisciplinary School of Engineering in a New Zealand university. The study used predominantly ethnographic methods of data collection. To guide the analysis, a model was developed based on Schein's (1985) theoretical framework. The first level of the model involved the identification of observable manifestations of the culture (grouped as Artefacts, Practices and Behaviours). At the second level, shared values and cultural norms were induced from the observable manifestations. At the third level, the essence of the engineering education culture was distilled from these values and norms, in the form of seven cultural dimensions. At each level of the analysis the explicit and tacit processes of enculturation, especially in relation to gender, were considered. This research exposed the masculinity of the basic beliefs and assumptions at the core of the disciplinary culture, revealing the source of enduring cultural norms and their manifestations in behaviours and practices. Diverse forms of masculinity were evident, especially within sub-disciplinary subcultures, but all were constructed in opposition to perceptions of femininity. Participants in the study (whether male, female, students or staff) perceived women in engineering as different, not only to men, but to other women.The women students appeared to construct for themselves a dual identity. They selectively incorporated in this identity both stereotypically masculine and stereotypically feminine qualities, in accordance with their perceptions of simultaneously "doing woman" and "doing engineer". The theoretical significance of this study lies in its provision of an accessible framework for cultural analysis by engineering educators and equity advocates. The framework facilitates exposure of the source of observable behaviours and practices in the unconsciously held beliefs and assumptions at the core of the culture of an institution or discipline. The practical significance lies in its potential to provide a base for developing strategies for cultural change advantageous to the participation of women. The findings of this thesis strongly suggest that such strategies must focus on disrupting the current dualities in language and discourse which implicitly construct women as different, deficient and therefore disadvantaged in engineering education. In particular strategies need to expose behaviours and practices to critical reflection by staff and students, making explicit the values and assumptions which underpin them. Further, while maintaining those features which are the strength of engineering education, there is a need to also include and value ways of knowing and learning styles from outside the current disciplinary and gendered boundaries.

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24

Rangel, Pamela J. "A Quantitative Examination of Gender Bias and Language Paradigm in the Evaluation of Source Code." Thesis, Northcentral University, 2018. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10784617.

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Women represent 16% of the software development workforce in the United States. Simultaneously, organizations are unable to meet the increasing demands of software development and maintenance due to a lack of personnel. Gender bias influences female departure from STEM, but for software engineering the problem is possibly exacerbated by disregarded preferences for programming paradigms which impact self-efficacy. The purpose of this study examining gender bias in STEM was to determine if software source code developed by female and male software engineers is evaluated differently, to determine if code developed under structured and object oriented paradigms is evaluated differently, and to determine if there is an interaction effect between developer gender and programing paradigm. This study was framed by Social Cognitive Career Theory, which encompasses perspectives of career choice, occupational roles, and gender bias, and their impact on self-efficacy. Respondents were asked to score source code written by a fictive male or female developer, and written in an object oriented or structured programming language, for readability, quality and organization. The independent variables, gender of code author and software language paradigm, provided the basis for 2 x 2 between subjects experimental analyses examining main effects related to readability, quality, and organization, and any interaction effect. The target population for this study was software developers or students in the United States, sought via an online survey. Participants were randomly assigned one of four code examples. No interaction effect was demonstrated, but there were significant main effects related to gender of code author and quality, and related to code paradigm and readability. The overall trend suggested the fictive female author was scored higher than the fictive male author. These unexpected results support the need for further understanding of the complexities of gender related to software engineering, and should not provide a foundation for complacency in regard to improving female participation in software engineering. This extension of Social Cognitive Career Theory to software engineering may serve to influence stakeholders in understanding why female persistence and participation in software engineering remains minimal.

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Rodman, Richard. "Connected knowledge in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education." Thesis, California State University, Long Beach, 2015. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3705635.

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This study investigated the learning preferences of female students enrolled in pre-requisite math classes that are gateway to chemistry, engineering, and physics majors at a 4-year public university in southern California. A gender gap exists in certain Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) disciplines; this gap may be exacerbated by pedagogies that favor males and make learning more difficult for females. STEM-related jobs were forecast to increase 22% from 2004 to 2014. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau, only 18.8% of industrial engineers are female. From 2006 - 2011, at the institution where this study took place, the percentage of females who graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering was 16.63%. According to the National Science Foundation, in 2010 there were 1.569 million “Engineering Occupations” in the U.S., of which only 200,000 (12.7%) were held by females. STEM professions are highly paid and prestigious; those members of society who hold these positions enjoy a secure financial and societal place.

This study uses the Women’s Ways of Knowing, Procedural Knowledge: Separate and Connected Knowing theoretical framework. A modified version of the Attitudes Toward Thinking and Learning Survey was used to assess student’s pedagogical preference. Approximately 700 math students were surveyed; there were 486 respondents. The majority of the respondents (n=366; 75.3%) were STEM students. This study did not find a statistically significant relationship between gender and student success; however, there was a statistically significant difference between the learning preferences of females and males. Additionally, there was a statistically significant result between the predictor variables gender and pedagogy on the dependent variable student self-reported grade. If Connected Knowledge pedagogies can be demonstrated to provide a significant increase in student learning, and if the current U.S. educational system is unable to produce sufficient graduates in these majors, then it seems reasonable that STEM teachers would be willing to consider best practices to enhance learning for females so long as male students’ learning is not devalued or diminished.

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Odell, Jordan E. "Ergonomics Analysis of Touchscreen Utilization as a Function of Preferred Hand and Gender." DigitalCommons@CalPoly, 2015. https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/theses/1506.

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The growth of touchscreen technology has changed the way users interface with a wide range of computing and communication products and systems. Examples range from personal tablets and laptops to industrial applications such as process control, point-of-sales, and ticketing kiosk systems. An important area of application is the automobile industry which is designing cars with touchscreen control panels to replace the previously designed mechanical knobs and buttons. However, interacting with touchscreens does not provide the same tactile feedback as physical mechanisms, therefore they require more precise movement and visual attention, which distracts the user from the primary task. The purpose of this thesis was to investigate the optimal location of small touchscreen devices with respect to the user and her/his ability to perform secondary touchscreen tasks. Specifically, the goal was to see if there is a significant interaction between the user's gender and utilization of the touch pad by her/his preferred versus non-preferred hand. A randomized, between-subject experiment was designed and tested using five independent two-way ANOVAs. Each ANOVA tested a different type of touchscreen interaction; button clicking, dragging and typing, with typing further broken down into three two-way ANOVAs based on word length. Results indicate that in typical tasks such as navigation and selecting thumbnails there are no significant interaction or main effects with hand dominance and gender as the factors. There was a significant interaction for dragging tasks (p-value = .056) with females performing better with their dominant hand, whereas males performed better with their non-dominant hand. There was also a significant main effect for typing three letter words. Gender was the source of variability (p-value=.066) with females completing the task faster than males. Four and five letter words had no significant interaction or main effects. However, with a larger sample size there is a possibility for more significant findings. Qualitative results also revealed some important patterns which complimented the quantitative results and should be taken into consideration by designers of these systems. This study examined a small sample of different factors that may affect the use of touchscreens, and simulates just one application. There are still questions that should be answered in order to best utilize touchscreen technology. Future research in relation to touchscreens in automobiles could include testing effects of car speed, driving conditions and ideal height, angle and distance placement of screen.

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Bremberg, Ulrika, Liv Cederin, Gabriel Lindgren, and Filip Pagliaro. "Classifying Age and Gender on Historical Photographs using Convolutional Neural Networks." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för informationsteknologi, 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-445914.

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This project intends to classify faces in historical photographs into age and gender. The goal was to demonstrate an algorithm specialized on classifying historical images, as well as an interface where users can insert pictures for analysis. This project aims to facilitate historical research by contributing with new tools for image analysis. The algorithm is developed in the programming language Python and uses Convolution Neural Networks (CNN) to classify age and gender. The user interface is developed in the JavaScript framework React.js and communicates with the Python algorithm via a Node.js server. The main results are that the gender classification algorithm has an accuracy of 96\% and the age detection algorithm has a mean age error of 4.3 years. The results also indicated that our algorithms perform better on historical images than commonly used state-of-the-art classification models.
Detta projekt ämnar att klassificera kön och ålder i historiska fotografier. Målet var att demonstrera en algoritm som är specialinriktad på historiska bilder, samt ett gränssnitt där användare kan ladda upp bilder och få dem klassificerade. Projektet syftar till att underlätta historisk forskning genom att bidra med nya verktyg för bildanalys. Algoritmen är utvecklad i programmeringsspråket Python och använder Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) för att klassificera kön och ålder. Användargränsnittet är utvecklat i JavaScript ramverket React.js och kommunicerar med Python algoritmen via en Node.js server. De huvudsakliga resultaten är att noggrannheten för klassificeringsalgoritmen för kön ligger på 96\%, medan klassificeringsalgoritmen för ålder har ett medelfel på 4.3 år. Resultaten indikerar även att våra algoritmer presterar bättre på historiska bilder än redan befintliga välkända klassificeringsmodeller.

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Belichesky, Jennifer. "Living Learning Communities| An Intervention in Keeping Women Strong in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics." Thesis, Loyola Marymount University, 2013. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3595015.

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The purpose of this study was to expand on the current research pertaining to women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors, better understand the experiences of undergraduate women in the sciences, identify barriers to female persistence in their intended STEM majors, and understand the impact of the STEM co-educational Living Learning Community (LLC) model on female persistence. This study employed a mixed-methods approach that was grounded in standpoint methodology. The qualitative data were collected through focus groups and one-on-one interviews with the female participants and was analyzed through a critical feminist lens utilizing standpoint methodology and coded utilizing inductive analysis. The quantitative data were collected and analyzed utilizing a simple statistical analysis of key academic variables indicative of student success: cumulative high school GPAs, SAT scores, first year cumulative GPAs, freshman persistence patterns in the intended major, and freshman retention patterns at the university. The findings of this study illustrated that the co-educational LLC model created an inclusive academic and social environment that positively impacted the female participants' experiences and persistence in STEM. The findings also found the inclusion of men in the community aided in the demystification of male superiority in the sciences for the female participants. This study also highlighted the significance of social identity in the decision making process to join a science LLC.

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KARÉGAR, ARMAN. "Gender differences in debt collection." Thesis, KTH, Skolan för industriell teknik och management (ITM), 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-300432.

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From the perspective of debt collectors, the goal of debt collection processes is to maximize the chances of a debt being repaid, while minimizing the time to repayment taking place. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate what measure that is most commonly leading to debt being repaid within 30 days. Against a background of males being overrepresented among debtors in terms of the share of the population in Sweden, the purpose has also been to use data analytics methods to explore whether the measures from debt collection companies affect males and females differently and how they affect them. Finally, the purpose has furthermore been to explore whether existing data provided by the debt collection company Visma can be used to optimize the debt collection process so that the debtors' time in it becomes as short as possible. The report has found that invoicing seems to be the measure most strongly associated with debt resolvance, suggesting that this measure is an important tool for debt collection agencies. The report has found that the measures affect males and females differently, which may be related to gender differences in attitudes to financial risk. Furthermore, it has been shown that it presumably is possible to create prediction models to know which debtors will be able to pay their debt. These models should be divided by gender as males, tend to take more risks. Lastly, machine learning and other modern tools, such as Open banking, should be used to optimize the debt collection process.
För ett inkassoföretag är målsättningen med varje indrivningsprocess att uppnå full återbetalning av skulden så snabbt som möjligt. Syftet med denna uppsats har varit att undersöka vilken åtgärd oftast som leder till att skulder återbetalas inom 30 dagar. Då män är överrepresenterade bland gäldenärer, sett till andel av befolkningen, har ett vidare syfte varit att använda dataanalysmetoder för att undersöka om åtgärderna från inkassoföretag påverkar män och kvinnor annorlunda och hur de påverkar dem. Slutligen är syftet också att se om det finns en möjlighet att använda befintliga data tillhandahålla av inkassoföretaget Visma för att optimera inkassoprocessen så att gäldenärernas tid i den blir så kort som möjligt. Rapporten har funnit att fakturering verkar vara den mest effektiva sista åtgärden som inkassobolagen har att tillgå idag. Rapporten har funnit att åtgärderna påverkar män och kvinnor annorlunda. Vidare har det visats att det förmodligen går att skapa predikteringsmodeller för att veta vilka gäldenärer som kommer att kunna betala sin skuld. Dessa modeller bör vara uppdelade på kön då män, är mer riskbenägna. Slutligen bör maskininlärning och även andra moderna redskap, såsom Open banking användas för att optimera inkassoprocessen.

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Tsakalou, Eleni. "Why are women underrepresented in engineering management? : the case of Asea Brown Boveri (ABB)." Thesis, Högskolan i Gävle, Företagsekonomi, 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-23373.

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Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the factors that influence the underrepresentation of women in managerial positions in engineering sector. The study is based on the fact that there are less female leaders both in management and in engineering. Design/Methodology/Approach: The method used in order to accomplish this research is a qualitative approach. The primary data was collecting by semi-structured interviews with employees of the case company (ABB). The sample consists of ten employees, males and females, who hold different positions in the company. Findings: The empirical findings and the analysis show the factors regarding the underrepresentation of women in managerial positions. The study indicates that glass ceiling, gender stereotyping, engineering culture and balancing professional and family life, are major obstacles in women‘s career today. Limitations: I limited my study to only one engineering company therefore the results cannot be generalized for the whole engineering industry. Also, even though this study examines why women are underrepresented in engineering industry, I interviewed both male and female employees in order to illustrate both perspectives about the issue. Contribution: This study confirms the existing theories regarding the affect of underrepresentation of women in engineering industry and highlights the facts that delay women‘s advancement. Engineering culture does not encourage mentoring towards women and women are seen as outsiders in networking activities. Thus, this study gives the opportunity to managers in engineering to consider the reality about females in the sector in order to improve the current situation.

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NORBERG, MARIA. "Gender Equality across Global Organizations: Towards a Framework for Increasing Gender Equality." Thesis, KTH, Industriell ekonomi och organisation (Inst.), 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-240672.

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The main purpose of this thesis is to analyze how Global Organizations work with Gender Equality, what type of challenges they experience and how they can be addressed. Secondarily, it addresses how Global Organizations can create an international Gender Equality strategy and how Gender Equality work differs among four countries. Earlier research has focused on gender equality as a stand-alone topic, and few models exist to incorporate such work in global organizations that efficiently manages to address the complexity of gender equality across varying cultures and business units. By surveying current research in gender equality, change management, and cultural management, this thesis proposes a framework for change that more adequately manages the inherently subjective nature of gender, together with the cross-cultural complexities of global organizations. The results, analysis, and discussion are based on a literature review enumerating the components of the synthesized framework and on interviews with two Swedish multinational companies, one construction company, and a mining company. Countries of interest are Czech Republic, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States. Analyzed through this framework, the results indicate an increasing gap between different business units across the organizations, despite an overall increase of Gender Equality in total. The framework suggests that informal systems need to be addressed more explicitly and that centralized initiatives need to better account for geopolitical contexts to stay relevant when educating, informing and dictating change initiatives. The nature of the problem suggests it be managed by a shaping type of strategy with an emphasis on international networks dedicated to the issue. The similarities between Gender equality-specific models, selected change-models and cultural descriptive models indicate that there is possible to amalgamate insights from different academic fields more coherently. Utilizing the definition of gender and confirming the subjective nature of Gender Equalityissues leads to strategy models and cultural descriptions that - independent of Gender Equality work - confirm and strengthens the key takeaways from each model. The research shows that there are overlapping interests and areas of interest between academia and the industry, which is something that can be further developed.
Huvudsyftet med denna masteruppsats är att analysera hur globala organisationer arbetar med jämställdhet, vilken typ av utmaningar de upplever och hur de kan hanteras. Den behandlar även hur globala organisationer kan skapa en internationell jämställdhetsstrategi och hur jämställdhetsarbetet skiljer sig mellan fyra länder. Tidigare forskning har fokuserat på jämställdhet som ett fristående ämne och det finns få modeller som adresserar jämställdhetsarbete i globala organisationer och som effektivt hanterar jämställdhetens komplexitet över olika kulturer och affärsenheter. Genom att kartlägga aktuell forskning inom jämställdhet, förändringsledning och kulturhantering, föreslår denna uppsats ett ramverk för förändring som hanterar könens inherent subjektiva karaktär tillsammans med de globala organisationernas tvärkulturella komplexitet. Resultaten, analysen och diskussionen baseras på en litteraturöversikt som sammanfattar komponenterna i ramverket och intervjuer med två svenska multinationella företag, ett byggföretag och ett gruvbolag. De länder som analyseras är: Tjeckien, Sverige, Storbritannien och USA. Genom en analys utifrån ramverket indikerar resultaten ett ökande gap mellan olika affärsenheter i hela organisationen, trots en total ökning av jämställdheten inom organisationerna. Ramverket tyder på att informella system måste adresseras tydligare och att centraliserade initiativ behöver anpassas bättre utifrån geopolitiska sammanhang för att kunna förändringen ska vara relevant för de olika enheterna. Problemets karaktär tyder på att det hanteras av en formgivande typ av strategi med tonvikt på internationella nätverk som är avsedda för frågan. Likheterna mellan jämställdhetsspecifika modeller, utvalda förändringsmodeller och kulturella beskrivande modeller visar att det är möjligt att sammanfoga insikter från olika akademiska områden till att bli mer sammanhängande. Att utnyttja definitionen av kön och bekräfta den subjektiva karaktären av jämställdhet leder till strategimodeller och kulturella beskrivningar som - oberoende av jämställdhetsarbete - bekräftar och stärker de viktigaste delarna från varje modell. Forskningen visar att det finns överlappande intressen och intresseområden mellan akademin och industrin, vilket är något som kan vidareutvecklas.

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32

Godfrey, Janett Elizabeth. "The culture of engineering education and its interaction with gender : a case study of a New Zealand University." Curtin University of Technology, Science and Mathematics Education Centre, 2003. http://espace.library.curtin.edu.au:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=14178.

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This study focused on the culture of engineering education, a culture which has been characterised internationally as reflecting masculine attitudes, values and norms of behaviour, thereby reinforcing the current under-representation of women. The goal of the study was to define the dimensions of the culture and the associated processes of enculturation, highlighting the interaction of these with gender. Following a review of relevant literature, research questions were formulated. These were addressed through an interpretive case study undertaken at a multidisciplinary School of Engineering in a New Zealand university. The study used predominantly ethnographic methods of data collection. To guide the analysis, a model was developed based on Schein's (1985) theoretical framework. The first level of the model involved the identification of observable manifestations of the culture (grouped as Artefacts, Practices and Behaviours). At the second level, shared values and cultural norms were induced from the observable manifestations. At the third level, the essence of the engineering education culture was distilled from these values and norms, in the form of seven cultural dimensions. At each level of the analysis the explicit and tacit processes of enculturation, especially in relation to gender, were considered. This research exposed the masculinity of the basic beliefs and assumptions at the core of the disciplinary culture, revealing the source of enduring cultural norms and their manifestations in behaviours and practices. Diverse forms of masculinity were evident, especially within sub-disciplinary subcultures, but all were constructed in opposition to perceptions of femininity. Participants in the study (whether male, female, students or staff) perceived women in engineering as different, not only to men, but to other women.
The women students appeared to construct for themselves a dual identity. They selectively incorporated in this identity both stereotypically masculine and stereotypically feminine qualities, in accordance with their perceptions of simultaneously "doing woman" and "doing engineer". The theoretical significance of this study lies in its provision of an accessible framework for cultural analysis by engineering educators and equity advocates. The framework facilitates exposure of the source of observable behaviours and practices in the unconsciously held beliefs and assumptions at the core of the culture of an institution or discipline. The practical significance lies in its potential to provide a base for developing strategies for cultural change advantageous to the participation of women. The findings of this thesis strongly suggest that such strategies must focus on disrupting the current dualities in language and discourse which implicitly construct women as different, deficient and therefore disadvantaged in engineering education. In particular strategies need to expose behaviours and practices to critical reflection by staff and students, making explicit the values and assumptions which underpin them. Further, while maintaining those features which are the strength of engineering education, there is a need to also include and value ways of knowing and learning styles from outside the current disciplinary and gendered boundaries.

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33

Starobin, Soko Suzuki. "Gender differences in college choice, aspirations, and self-concept among community college students in science, mathematics, and engineering." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2004. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5553/.

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Educational researchers, practitioners, and policy makers have long expressed their concern that gender disparity of academic performance and participation in science and mathematics education continues to increase with educational progress of students through the pipeline. Educational and occupational aspirations, high school experience, external support from family members and significant others appear to be influential factors that develop strong self-concept among female students who aspire to study science and mathematics. Using a national sample of aspirants in science, mathematics, and engineering majors in public community colleges, that participated in the 1996 Cooperative Institutional Research Program American Freshman Survey, this study investigated the influences of students' pre-college experiences on their college choice, aspirations, and self-concept by examining three theoretical structural models. In addition, gender differences were tested by using multiple group analysis. The findings from the multiple group analysis revealed that there was no statistically significant gender difference in predicting college choice, aspirations, and self-concept. The results from the descriptive analysis indicated that the female students were already underrepresented in science, mathematics, and engineering majors. Taken together, the findings challenge researchers, practitioners, and policy makers to examine why the persistent fall off, and how can community colleges support and retain these students who already enrolled. The results from the model fit analysis revealed that the encouragement from family and others played as a contributing factor in predicting students' college choice, aspirations, and self-concept. This study confirmed that the development of self-concept among community college students in science, mathematics, and engineering is complex and unique. Several recommendations that are pertaining to policy implications, improvement of practice, and future research to increase the representations of female students in science, mathematics, and engineering in the post-secondary education were developed from the findings of this study. The results of this study contribute to the research literature by providing new theoretical models and a comprehensive understanding of aspirants in science, mathematics, and engineering at community college as well as their surrounding environment.

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Greenhalgh, Scott D. "Measuring the Differences in Spatial Ability Between a Face-to-face and a Synchronous Distance Education Undergraduate Engineering Graphics Course." DigitalCommons@USU, 2011. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/1125.

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Distance education is growing at colleges and universities throughout the United States. Engineering graphics laboratory courses are unique in their focus on skills and design with an emphasis on a hands-on approach when compared to many subjects that focus on mastering information. Most studies in the literature focus on how distance learning has impacted traditionally lecture-based curricular approach and not on classrooms that are traditionally laboratory based as would be typically found in many engineering graphics courses. This study measured and compared spatial ability as it is an essential component to engineering graphics, and has a highly correlated measure of success in engineering and other science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines. This study’s purpose was to measure and compare a face-to-face engineering graphics course with a synchronous distance education engineering graphics course by identifying the impact of the teacher’s physical presence on students’ spatial ability. The differences found in the change of spatial ability between students taking an engineering graphics course by means of synchronous distance education and face-to-face courses were found in students with a low beginning spatial ability. Students with a low beginning spatial ability showed greater improvement in spatial ability in the face-to-face courses (m = 3.50, SD = 1.93), than in the synchronous distance education courses (m = 1.39, SD = 2.25).

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Alcorn, Aaron L. "Modeling Behavior: Boyhood, Engineering, and the Model Airplane in American Culture." Case Western Reserve University School of Graduate Studies / OhioLINK, 2008. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1220640446.

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Soni, Jasminkumar B. "Determining The Effect Of Speaker's Gender And Speech Synthesis On Callsign Acquisition Test (CAT) Results." Wright State University / OhioLINK, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=wright1240637777.

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Thomas, Michaelyn. "Exploring the Advancement of Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Executive Management Positions in the Aerospace Industry| Strategies Identified by Women That Enable Success." Thesis, University of La Verne, 2017. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10619430.

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Purpose. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to identify barriers for women to advance into executive management positions in STEM professions, and to identify strategies deemed to be effective for women to advance into STEM executive management positions, by women currently in STEM executive management positions in the aerospace industry.

Conceptual Framework. The conceptual framework included 3 concepts: (a) cultural and societal factors; (b) mentorship, sponsorship, and networking; and (c) motivation and power levels. These concepts are connected to barriers women face when entering leadership and efforts to empower women entering leadership in the aerospace industry.

Methodology. This was a qualitative case study utilizing the transformative framework. The participants were 7 women in STEM executive management position in the aerospace industry. The participants responded to 8 open-ended questions designed to reveal barriers women in STEM executive management positions face and to highlight strategies deemed to be effective for women to advance into STEM executive management positions in the aerospace industry.

Findings. Through data collection and analysis, the data indicated major themes consisting of work performance, big picture, strong work ethic, underrepresentation, and trusted networks. Other themes emerged such as diversity of thought, advocacy, mentorship, credibility, no plan for executive management, and unfavorable perception.

Conclusions and Recommendations. The findings revealed that 5 major themes emerged from the data analysis pertaining to barriers women face to career advancement and effective strategies used by successful women in STEM executive management positions in the aerospace industry. It is recommended that this qualitative case study be replicated with a larger sample population. Additionally, future studies could explore other populations that would directly benefit from women in STEM executive management positions, such as men, millennials, aspiring women leaders, and other key stakeholders in the aerospace industry.

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Jose, Neenu. "SPEAKER AND GENDER IDENTIFICATION USING BIOACOUSTIC DATA SETS." UKnowledge, 2018. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/ece_etds/120.

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Acoustic analysis of animal vocalizations has been widely used to identify the presence of individual species, classify vocalizations, identify individuals, and determine gender. In this work automatic identification of speaker and gender of mice from ultrasonic vocalizations and speaker identification of meerkats from their Close calls is investigated. Feature extraction was implemented using Greenwood Function Cepstral Coefficients (GFCC), designed exclusively for extracting features from animal vocalizations. Mice ultrasonic vocalizations were analyzed using Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM) which yielded an accuracy of 78.3% for speaker identification and 93.2% for gender identification. Meerkat speaker identification with Close calls was implemented using Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM) and Hidden Markov Models (HMM), with an accuracy of 90.8% and 94.4% respectively. The results obtained shows these methods indicate the presence of gender and identity information in vocalizations and support the possibility of robust gender identification and individual identification using bioacoustic data sets.

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Malmqvist, Amanda. "Glimpsing into the Gender Gap: : Perceptions of gender inequality among women in the tech startup industry." Thesis, KTH, Skolan för industriell teknik och management (ITM), 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-264048.

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There is a massive gender gap in the tech startup industry. 1% of the CTOs at venture-backed companies in Europe are women and only 1% of the venture capital in Sweden is given to all-female founding teams. The author believes that gender equality should improve because of the fundamental right to have equal opportunities, but also because it could benefit the industry. Research indicates that gender equality, for example, can lead to increased profitability. This thesis is a qualitative study aiming to understand the effects of the industry gender gap by investigating how women in the industry perceive gender inequality. The study will answer to what extent gender equality is seen as a problem, what barriers female tech entrepreneurs face and present some explanations for the gender gap. The foundation for the results and discussion sections is a literature review on entrepreneurship and gender and semi-structured qualitative interviews. The interviews were carried out with women who had worked in the tech startup industry in Stockholm. A total of 12 respondents with various professions and degrees of technical skills were interviewed. They worked or had worked as founders, investors or at incubators. Throughout the analysis, two distinct views on the extent of the problem were identified. Some women perceived the gender gap as mainly unproblematic and their gender as beneficial yet insignificant. These respondents have been labeled the Positive Gender Neutral (PGN) group. They stated that their gender was more advantageous than impeding. Being a minority makes one stand out, which can be beneficial. The other group of respondents raised that this visibility can be both advantageous and tiring. This group has been labeled the Structure Acknowledging (SA) group. They expressed that there are layers of gender inequality in addition to the gender discrepancy. They stated that there are significant barriers to female entrepreneurs and wished to decrease gender inequality. Both groups expressed that there are certain barriers to women, although the PGN group tended to view the barriers as relating to individual women and the SA group to structures in the industry and society. Some expressed that women have internal barriers such as a lack of confidence and unwillingness to take risk. Some structural barriers expressed were the male entrepreneurial norm and male domination of the industry, including a ”bro culture” and homosociality. The two distinct views on gender inequality can be seen as coping strategies for succeeding in a male-dominated environment. That could be an indication that there is a strong male norm in the industry. Many raised rhetoric such as master suppression techniques or excluding entrepreneurial language as barriers. The respondents furthermore also often explained the gender gap with women being attracted to other industries or lacked tech entrepreneur role models. Finally, comparing the results to previous research, all respondents have a high gender awareness level, in particular, the respondents in the SA group. Gender awareness can lead to change. Thus, hopefully, there is a positive trend of gender awareness in the industry, which this thesis hopes to contribute to.
Det finns ett stort könsgap i tech startup-industrin. 1% av CTOs på företag backade av riskkapital i Europa är kvinnor och endast 1% av riskkapitalet i Sverige ges till helt kvinnliga grundarteam. Författaren anser att jämställdheten bör förbättras dels på grund av den grundläggande rättigheten att ha lika möjligheter, dels för att det kan gynna industrin. Forskning tyder på att jämställdhet till exempel kan leda till ökad lönsamhet. Denna avhandling är en kvalitativ studie som syftar till att förstå effekterna av industrins könsdiskrepans genom att undersöka hur kvinnor i branschen upplever ojämställdhet. Studien ämnar besvara till vilken utsträckning jämställdhet ses som ett problem, vilka hinder som kvinnliga teknikföretagare står inför och presenterar några förklaringar för könsskillnaden. Grunden för resultaten och diskussionen är en litteraturstudie om entreprenörskap och kön samt halvstrukturerade kvalitativa intervjuer. Intervjuerna genomfördes med kvinnor som arbetat i tech startup-industrin i Stockholm. Sammanlagt tolv respondenter med olika yrken och grader av tekniska färdigheter intervjuades. De arbetade eller hade arbetat som grundare, investerare eller på inkubatorer. I analysen identifierades två olika synsätt på problemets omfattning. Vissa kvinnor upplevde könsskillnaden som huvudsakligen oproblematisk och deras kön som fördelaktigt men likväl obetydligt. Dessa respondenter har benämnts den positiva könsneutrala gruppen (PGN). Att vara en minoritet gör att man sticker ut, vilket kan vara fördelaktigt. Den andra gruppen av svarande hävdade att denna synlighet kan vara både fördelaktig och tröttsam. Denna grupp har benämnts den strukturerkännande gruppen (SA). De uttryckte att det finns ojämställdhet utöver könsgapet. De uppgav att det finns betydande hinder för kvinnliga entreprenörer och att de ville minska könens ojämlikhet. Båda grupperna gav uttryck för att det finns vissa hinder för kvinnor, även om PGN-gruppen tenderade att se hindren i relation till andra kvinnor medan SA-gruppen nämnde samhälleliga strukturer. Några uttryckte att kvinnor har interna hinder som brist på självförtroende och ovillighet att ta risk. Några strukturella hinder som uttrycktes var den manliga entreprenörsnormen och den manliga dominansen i branschen, inklusive en "grabbig” kultur och homosocialitet. De två distinkta föreställningarna om jämställdhet mellan könen kan ses som strategier för att lyckas i en manligt dominerad miljö, vilket kan kopplas till att det finns en stark manlig norm i branschen. Andra hinder som lyftes var härskartekniker, manligt entreprenörsspråk och brist på förebilder. Slutligen visar en jämförelse av resultaten med tidigare forskning att respondenterna har en hög könsmedvetenhetsnivå, i synnerhet SA-gruppen. Könsmedvetenhet kan leda till förändring. Således finns det förhoppningsvis en positiv utveckling av könsmedvetenhet inom branschen, som denna avhandling hoppas bidra till.

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Joukar, Amin. "Gender Specific Sacroiliac Joint Biomechanics: A Finite Element Study." University of Toledo / OhioLINK, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=toledo1503595542705189.

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Carr, Bruce Henry Ph D. "Examining the Relationship of Ethnicity, Gender and Social Cognitive Factors with the Academic Achievement of First-year Engineering Students." University of Dayton / OhioLINK, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=dayton1343941032.

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McGee, Marquis Cornelius. "From Roots to Star Trek| A Case Study on Successful Persistence of African American Male Engineering Majors." Thesis, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 2018. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10837215.

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The United States is competing on a global level for jobs in the STEM fields but retention and graduation rates in the engineering disciplines are lower than desired. African American males make up 5 % of the population of American colleges and universities (Strayhorn, 2010) and many of those pursuing an engineering degree often are not academically prepared for a career in engineering. There are African American males who have successfully persisted in engineering; however, limited research is provided about the success of these African American males and their experiences in engineering programs. The purpose of this study was to understand factors that impact successful persistence of African American male engineering majors at a predominantly White institution. Critical Race Theory was used as a framework to gain a broader scope of the underlying themes interwoven into the fabric of American society and a better understanding of the perceptions about African American male engineering majors. A qualitative case study was conducted to understand real-world phenomena through the experiences of successful African American male engineering majors. Using constant comparative analysis technique, two major themes were identified: Overcoming challenges and social identity. Early academic experiences, developing a positive identity, and a connection to others experiencing similar challenges were found to contribute to successful persistence.

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Erokyar, Hasan. "Age and Gender Recognition for Speech Applications based on Support Vector Machines." Scholar Commons, 2014. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/5356.

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Automatic age and gender recognition for speech applications is very important for a number of reasons. One of the reasons is that it can improve human-machine interaction. For example, the advertisements can be specialized based on the age and the gender of the person on the phone. It also can help identify suspects in criminal cases or at least it can minimize the number of suspects. Some other uses of this system can be applied for adaptation of waiting queue music where a different type of music can be played according to the person's age and gender. And also using this age and gender recognition system, the statistics about age and gender information for a specific population can be learned. Machine learning is part of artificial intelligence which aims to learn from data. Machine Learning has a long history. But due to some limitations, for ex. , the cost of computation and due to some inefficient algorithms, it was not applied to speech recognition tasks. Only for a decade, researchers started to apply these algorithms to some real world tasks, for ex., speech recognition, computer vision, finance, banking, robotics etc. In this thesis, recognition of age and gender was done using a popular machine learning algorithm and the performance of the system was compared. Also the dataset included real -life examples, so that the system is adaptable to real world applications. To remove the noise and to get the features of speech examples, some digital signal processing techniques were used. Useful speech features that were used in this work were: pitch frequency and cepstral representations. The performance of the age and gender recognition system depends on the speech features used. As the first speech feature, the fundamental frequency was selected. Fundamental frequency is the main differentiating factor between male and female speakers. Also, fundamental frequency for each age group is different. So in order to build age and gender recognition system, fundamental frequency was used. To get the fundamental frequency of speakers, harmonic to sub harmonic ratio method was used. The speech was divided into frames and fundamental frequency for each frame was calculated. In order to get the fundamental frequency of the speaker, the mean value of all the speech frames were taken. It turns out that, fundamental frequency is not only a good discriminator gender, but also it is a good discriminator of age groups simply because there is a distinction between age groups and the fundamental frequencies. Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) is a good feature for speech recognition and so it was selected. Using MFCC, the age and gender recognition accuracies were satisfactory. As an alternative to MFCC, Shifted Delta Cepstral (SDC) was used as a speech feature. SDC is extracted using MFCC and the advantage of SDC is that, it is more robust under noisy data. It captures the essential information in noisy speech better. From the experiments, it was seen that SDC did not give better recognition rates because the dataset did not contain too much noise. Lastly, a combination of pitch and MFCC was used to get even better recognition rates. The final fused system has an overall recognition value of 64.20% on ELSDSR [32] speech corpus.

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Keen, Julia. "Retention of women architectural engineers in industry." Diss., Manhattan, Kan. : Kansas State University, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/2097/3748.

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Scales, Alice Young. "The Effect of Learning Style, Major, and Gender on Learning Computer-aided Drawing in an Introductory Engineering/Technical Graphics Course." NCSU, 2000. http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/theses/available/etd-20000321-151615.

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SCALES, ALICE YOUNG. The Effect of Learning Style, Major, and Gender on Learning Computer-aided Drawing in an Introductory Engineering/Technical Graphics Course. (Under the direction of Dewey A. Adams and Barbara M. Kirby)This correlational descriptive study examined factors that might affect students? achievement in learning computer-aided drawing and engineering/technical graphics concepts in introductory classes at North Carolina State University. The study involved 38 subjects enrolled in introductory classes that combined the teaching of computer-aided drawing and technical graphics. The three dependent variables used in the study were CAD project grade, CAD posttest score, and final course grade. The seven independent variables examined were gender, learning style, major, student classification, final exam grade, final exam with the posttest score removed, and pretest score. Subjects' learning styles were established by the Group Embedded Figures Test, which measures field-dependence and field-independence. Kendall?s Tau B correlations and multiple linear regression models were used in the analysis of the data. The alpha used for statistical significance was .05.Analysis of the data revealed that the research subjects were primarily field dependent, and exactly half of them had prior drafting experience. Subjects in the study represented 19 different majors. Eighteen students were from engineering programs and 20 from non-engineering programs. Females in the sample reported a lower level of computer experience and less prior drafting experience than males. For the total sample, statistically significant correlations were found between the project grade and the final grade with the project score removed, learning style and the final exam grade with the project score removed, computer experience and gender, and the final exam grade and gender. Correlations were found between gender and the final exam grade with the posttest score removed and between learning style and the final exam with the posttest score included. For females, a statistically significant relationship was found between prior drafting experience and the project grade; this was the strongest correlation found in the study. For males, statistically significant relationships were found between learning style and final exam grade, learning style and the final exam grade with the posttest removed, the project grade and the final grade with the project score removed, the project grade and the pretest score, and the pretest and posttest score.Three multiple linear regression models were created as part of the study, two as predictors of computer-aided drawing achievement and one as a predictor of achievement in learning the course content. Model 1 used the final project grade as its dependent variable to measure CAD achievement. The independent variables used in this model were gender, the pretest score, and major. The model?s R square was 0.31 (p = 0.005). Model 2, which used the posttest score as its dependent variable, was the second measure of CAD achievement. The independent variables used in this model were the pretest score, the Group Embedded Figures Test score, and the final exam grade with the posttest score removed. Its R square was 0.19 (p = 0.056). Model 3 used the final course grade as its dependent variable to measure achievement in learning the course content. The independent variables included in this model were gender, the Group Embedded Figures Test scores, and student classification. The R square for this model was 0.21 (p = 0.043).

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Powell, Abigail Social Policy Research Centre Faculty of Arts &amp Social Sciences UNSW. "The (Un) Balancing Act: The impact of culture on women engineering students' gendered and professional identities." Awarded by:Loughborough University, 2009. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/40097.

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This thesis examines the impact of the engineering culture on women engineering students??? gendered and professional identities. It is simultaneously focused on exploring how identity shapes, and is shaped by, women???s experiences of the engineering culture and, the relationship between gendered and professional identities. The research is set within the context of existing research on women in engineering, much of which has focused either on women???s experiences in industry or experiences of staff in academia, failing to recognise the importance of higher education (HE) as a gatekeeper to the engineering professions. Furthermore, despite numerous initiatives aimed at increasing the percentage of women entering engineering, the proportion of women studying engineering has remained stable, around fifteen percent, for the last few years. The research is grounded in an interpretivist approach, although it adopts a multimethod research design. Specifically it draws upon qualitative interviews with 43 women and 18 men engineering students, a questionnaire with responses from 656 engineering undergraduates and two focus groups with 13 women engineering students from seven departments at one university. These datasets are analysed with the aid of NVivo and SPSS to explore women engineering students??? career choices; women???s experiences of the HE engineering culture; the relationship between engineering education culture and women???s identities; whether there are cultural nuances between engineering disciplines; and, implications for strategies to attract and retain more women in engineering. Key findings from the research are that women and men make career choices based on similar factors, including the influence of socialisers, knowledge of the engineering professions, skills, ability and attributes, and career rewards. However, the extent to which each of this factors are important is gendered. The research also highlights key characteristics of the HE engineering culture, including competition, camaraderie, gendered humour, intensity, more theoretical than practical, help and support for women students and reinforcement of gender binaries. These findings all suggest that women are assimilated into the engineering culture or, at least, develop coping mechanisms for surviving in the existing culture. These strategies reveal a complex and difficult balancing act between being a woman and being an engineer by claiming a rightful place as an engineer, denying gendered experiences and becoming critical of other women. The research also tackles two key issues, rarely discussed in the extant literature. Firstly the help and support women students receive from lecturers and other staff, and the negative impact this has, and may continue to have, on women. Secondly, the analysis of discipline differences shows that design and technology is significantly different from other engineering disciplines in terms of culture(s) and women???s experiences. The thesis concludes that women???s enculturation into engineering results in their ???doing gender??? in a particular way. This means that women???s implicit and explicit devaluing and rejection of femaleness, fails to challenge the gendered cultures of engineering and, in many ways, upholds an environment which is hostile to women.

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Mortazavi, Seyedeh Atefeh. "Women Daily Living Room : Feminist Urban Planning toward Gender-Equality in Public Spaces; Case Study of Sätra, Stockholm, Sweden." Thesis, KTH, Samhällsplanering och miljö, 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-241107.

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ABSTRACT In 2014, Sweden became the world's first self-defined feminist nation and a place where gender equality has a strong ideal within the country's national identity. However, the issue of gender equity remains unaddressed in some area across Sweden. Sätra district in Stockholm located between Bredäng and Skärholmen is one of those examples that women usually suffer from inequality. By considering social equality as a fundamental principle of good urbanism, the need for feminist urbanism feels necessary in this context today. Through the lens of feminist urban planning, mainly focused on women in Sätra and tried to reflect women's voices in every urbanization policies. The study is going to examine the role of gender in public space, its socio-spatial implications and create feminist participatory strategies to empower women. In this research, Mothers considered the effective groups of women as their educational role in their family and their central role in the community awareness raising is undeniable. In this way, strengthening mothers role in urban settings can have a powerful multiplier effect on urban development. So that's what has been considered in the whole process of decision-making. This would make an inclusive and women-friendly public space for girls and women where is safe and secure and responsive to the needs of all kinds of people. So that's what has been considered in the whole process of decision-making. This would make an inclusive and women-friendly public space for girls and women where is safe and secure and responsive to the needs of all kinds of people. So that's what has been considered in the whole process of decision-making. This would make an inclusive and women-friendly public space for girls and women where is safe and secure and responsive to the needs of all kinds of people.

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Haning, Samantha L. "Exoskeletons and Women: A Laboratory Study of Usability of Passive Occupational Exoskeletons for Women." Ohio University / OhioLINK, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1574684762383073.

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TSIOUGKOU, DESPOINA. "Gender Diversity in the Workforce and New Firms'Capacity to Innovate Insights into Tech start-up teams." Thesis, KTH, Skolan för industriell teknik och management (ITM), 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-232489.

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Lavorata, PhD Dr Reagan Lorraine. "Science Technology Engineering Math (STEM) Classes and Females' Career Choices." ScholarWorks, 2017. https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/3353.

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Females have been discouraged from taking science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) classes during high school and college, resulting in limited access to high-paying STEM careers. Therefore, these females could miss opportunities for these high-paying careers. The rationale of this research was to quantify the relationship between the number of STEM classes the sampled females took, the number of female role models they had during high school and college, their career choices, and salaries. The theoretical construct was based on Erikson's social developmental theory, which postulates a relationship between earlier life events and later life events, and Acker's masculinity theory, which postulates that females in traditionally male fields may be uneasy performing functions opposite to what they naturally perform. Key questions examined the relationships between STEM classes, role models, career choices, and salaries. The sample was a stratified random sample (n = 48) of female alumnae of 4 universities, born after 1980. Data were collected from a designed online instrument, validated by a pilot. The data were analyzed with a multiple regression and an analysis of variance. The findings revealed a significant relationship between the number of STEM classes, career choices and salary. However, there was no significance found between the numbers of role models, career choices and salary The implication for social change is that by making scholars in the fields of education and management aware about the relationship between the number of STEM classes taken, career choices, and salaries, females can be more encouraged to become interested in STEM courses earlier in life, making it more likely they will choose STEM careers This can be accomplished through scholarly journals, which hopefully will improve perceptions of the STEM abilities of females.

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Gender and engineering'

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