Guidance and support of women in engineering programs at Universidad Tecnologica de Bolivar

Gender equality is one of the sustainable development goals. In STEM areas, it is a requirement to expand and improve women's careers. To increase the participation of women in STEM it is not enough to attract more young women to these programs. It is necessary to provide orientation during the academic programs and ensure safe and rewarding environments so that women can succeed in their studies. The Faculty of Engineering of Universidad Tecnológica de Bolívar has gender gaps in most of its programs and several strategies are being implemented to overcome this situation. This paper analyzes five factors to guide and support women in engineering programs: academic success, protection of women, scholarships and financial assistance, international mobility, and leadership. We present several activities and strategies developed in the last three years in these five factors. The impacts of these strategies cannot be evaluated yet, but we expect that they can improve the well-being of women in engineering and contribute to the reduction of the gender gaps. © 2023 IEEE

A model for the development of programming courses to promote the participation of young women in STEM

There is a gender gap in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and this is a global problem that affects society. However, it is worth pointing out that the gap is not uniform in all STEM fields. Women’s underrepresentation is more marked in physics, engineering, and computer science fields. Nowadays, the labor market is becoming more competitive, technology-based and demands a diverse workforce. Therefore, it is important to continue promoting the participation of women in STEM, and the universities play a leading role in it. Previous research has shown that early learning experiences in STEM can show female students that they can succeed in this fields. This paper describes a model for developing programming courses for pre-university students to promote the participation of young women in STEM programs. The course was developed in one week, 25 students (16 girls and 9 boys) participated. The instructors of the course were four female professors. The programming language was Python, and the methodology used case-based learning. Both instructors and students gave positive comments on their experience in the course. The proposed model, including instruments, learning resources, and methodology, can be replicated and adapted to be used even in other learning field

Towards gender equality in engineering programs : A case study

The low participation of women in STEM fields is considered a critical issue in our society. We analyzed the student population by gender of the school of engineering at Universidad TecnolÓgica de Bolívar. We found that the share of female first-time students shows a decreasing trend since 2015 and was only 24% in 2020. Gender gaps are wider in electrical, electronic, systems, mechanic, and mechatronic engineering. We also observed that females have lower access to engineering programs, especially in the last three years. The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have been observed as a reduction of the share of enrolled students vs applicants. In order to increase the participation of women in the programs with higher gender gaps, we developed several activities in 2020 specially designed for secondary students with the participation of female instructors as role models