Factors Affecting Women’s Choice of Learning Engineering and Technology Education in Ethiopia

Addissie Melak,Seema Singh

doi:10.1109/access.2021.3087548

Addissie Melak, Seema Singh

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1109/access.2021.3087548

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Abstract

Recently, women in engineering and technology education have been given due importance in academic studies. In this background, the study has been carried out with two objectives. The first is to compare women's participation in engineering and technology vis-à-vis other STEM subjects. It has been done based on secondary data of enrollment, and the second one is to discuss the factors affecting their choice of pursuing engineering and technology. The average registration of women in engineering and technology is 24%, lower than any other study field. The second objective has been analyzed based on primary data collected from 384 women students learning engineering and technology and other science subjects (i.e., chemistry, biology, mathematics, statistics, physics). The result of Logit regression on factors affecting women's choice of learning engineering and technology reveals that expected salary is the most influencing factor. Other factors, high school education performance (results of grade 12 exam), the presence of an engineer and technologist in the family, access to role models, and the family's annual income, positively affect women's choice of learning engineering and technology education. All stakeholders, such as the government, teaching institutions, and associations dealing with women in engineering and technology education, must have appropriate measures for making role models more visible.

Highlights

A CHIEVING gender equality and empowering women through education is one of the primary objectives of Sustainable Development Goal five (SDGs)
Education is crucial for empowering women because it enables them to survive the challenges, have better access and opportunities in the workforce, reduce economic dependency on others, and the best investment for the country’s development
The finding of Melak and Singh [2] confirms this low participation of women in Ethiopia

Summary

Introduction

A CHIEVING gender equality and empowering women through education is one of the primary objectives of Sustainable Development Goal five (SDGs). Even though women are highly respected in the community, girls’ social solid and cultural pressures for early marriage. Because of various problems such as harassment, violence, and natural phenomena of adolescence age, they drop out of school This situation leads to low education and professional employment participation in national development. Women’s involvement increases in education and employability in various positions. They are still small in engineering and technology fields. Egne [3] were indicated, women students are highly underrepresented in the science field of higher education in Ethiopia. Increasing women students’ participation is one of the present policy objectives of higher institutions in a country [4]

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