There Is A Low Rate Of Women In Engineering Studies In Chile. Why?

Abstract

Higher education today is a great opportunity for personal and professional growth in the world, especially in developing countries like Chile. Higher education entities such as universities and professional institutes offer a wide and varied proposal of engineering studies with various specialties from those that are closer to people and business management, such as Commercial Engineering and Human Resources, to those more specific to technology such as Computing and Mechatronics Engineering. Given the wide range of opportunities for higher education, it is surprising that the number of women students in Engineering is absolutely lower than that of the number of men, a situation not common in other areas of study such as pedagogy, medical sciences, and law. Precisely, the main objectives of this paper are to present the results of an exploratory study of the working reality in Chile of women engineers to compare these results with the low number of women studying Engineering in Chile, and thus seek and raise the reasons for that divergence.