Work in Progress: The Intersection of two Underrepresented Groups in Engineering in Brazil

Abstract

The question of underrepresentation of women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and specifically in Engineering is a studied and well know question in the field. To deal with this question IEEE has the WIE (Women in Engineering) to support women in Engineering. In Brazil there is a unique situation, as many countries, women are about 50% of population, but there is also another group that compose about 50% of the population, this group is the African American and they are 54% of the population. These two groups are independent and each one is close to 50% of population, with this composition is possible to understand how distinct factors act to prevent these groups to enter Engineering courses, resulting in the underrepresentation in Engineering of groups that compose half of the population. In this research we propose to study the effect of these two distinct factors acting together and how this result in the underrepresentation of African American Women in Engineering.