While we prepared the second Theme Issue, in Germany for the first time ever the elections for government became a lesson on Gender Studies on its own: Woman and man ran for the chancellorship. Immediately a public discussion started about gender self-marketing, roles of the male and the female candidate, the used political language, their professional outcomes, their private situations—but only her hairstyle and only her childlessness were from public interest. It is obvious that the results of these elections show that in Germany it is still nearly impossible for a woman with a political profession to become chancellor of Germany. But what happens to the other professions, women are not used to?
In this second Theme Issue on Gender Studies in Engineering we will have a very good overview about some projects: In the first two articles results are presented of a EU project called “WOMENG”. In “Masculinities on Organisational Cultures in Engineering Education in Europe” Felicitas Sagebiel and Jennifer Dahmen discuss about the engineering organisational culture and the structures in higher education. They figure out the situation of female students. The paper “The Benefits of Comparing Grapefruits and Tangerines” of Anne-Sophie Godfroy-Genin and Cloe Pinault present a Toolbox for European Cross-Cultural Comparison in Engineering Education and they demonstrate this Toolbox on gendered images of Engineering students.
In the paper of Yiang-Yun Du, “Gendered practices of constructing identity in a PBL study environment” the author presents a problem based and project oriented learning environment (PBL) at a Danish university in electrical and electronics engineering. The combination of learning theories and gender theories show us that the more traditional learning sessions are based on male interests, while this project respects gender difference in identifying with the subjects.
The last paper “Gender equity in Higher Education: Why and how? A case study of gender issues in a science faculty” of Susanne Viefers, Michael Christie and Fariba Ferdos reports this case study at a physics faculty in Sweden and discusses why the disproportion between female and male teachers still exists and how this disproportion influences the physics but also the physicists.
Finally I would like to thank all the authors for their very good work and support while preparing this issue. With this issue we have made a next step to link the gender issues into the engineering education. And this will be the only way to integrate not only more women into engineering science and professions but also their views and opinions into the engineering culture.
Susanne Ihsen
Susanne Ihsen, member of the Editorial Board of the European Journal for Engineering Education (EJEE) is professor for Gender studies in Engineering at the Technical University of Münich. Main parts of her research are diversity management in university and enterprises, the systemic changing processes in traditional organisations and concepts to advance the situation of female engineers in studies and career. She is also very active in teaching necessary key qualifications to students in electrical and mechanical engineering as well as in information technology.