EDI seminar - Gender & Social-Economic Equality in Mechanical Engineering - The Past & The Future.

Despite the heavy emphasis on engaging women in STEM in recent years, the proportion of female students enrolled in Mechanical Engineering has been at a steady 10% for decades. While research on women in STEM has revealed factors such as self-efficacy in mathematics, socio-economic status, and science capital to all play a role in women's choice of STEM careers, there are few studies available comparing engagement in specific disciplines within engineering. In collaboration with Nile University (Egypt), we seek to take a longitudinal, multi-cultural view and to extricate the universal factors in two different societal contexts, the Scotland and Egypt in the face of the evolving context of the short- medium- and long-timescales. In addition, some observations will be shared and discussed on how social-economic factors, particularly those relevant in Scottish education, could affect the school pupils and their choice in higher education and careers.