Students perception on gender equality at the Politehnica University of Bucharest.

Suciu, Marta-Christina ; Neagu, Ana-Maria ; Ivanovici, Mina 等

1. INTRODUCTION

The issue of equal chances in the era of the knowledge-based society and economy represents a challenge for achieving human progress, respect and recognition of human rights.

The study proposed aims at reflecting the gender equality perception of engineering students in their university and at a personal level of understanding.

There has always been a disparity between men's and women's decisions to pursue engineering studies in all countries and at all times.

Equal opportunities is a widely accepted principle of distributive justice, and educational systems play an important role in promoting and training students for respecting principles such as tolerance, solidarity and respect for others.

There is a wide literature dealing with the issue of gender equality in general and some studies regarding gender equality in education and in technical education in particular. The results of this literature are mainly axiomatic characterizations clarifying the conflicts and interdependencies of different ethical principles and their different axiomatic representations.

At a global level there are concerns for equal chances in education. Thus, the Millennium Development Goal for gender equality has been criticized for its grandiose ambition.

There are several research papers suggesting that (Unterhalter, 2005; 2008) gender inequality is deeply imbued in the norms of institutions saying that equal opportunities cannot be achieved unless policies are promoted a global level.

Some quantitative approaches have been suggested (Lopez, 2009) using several logit models that reflect the impact of socioeconomic factors such as family income, number of siblings and parents' education on child decision to attend tertiary education. The main results of such studies show that family income is a main determinant in participation to education. Female children do not have the same opportunities as male children.

It is not only the economic determinants that influence children's decision to enroll and graduate tertiary education, but also parents' educational background. The gender equality issue has also gathered much attention in our country, and students' perception on equal chances has been tested (Tudorel et al., 2006). The authors also proposed a questionnaire within another important university in Romania with the purpose to determine students' perception on gender equality in life. The main findings were: young female students perceive gender inequality more than male students do in education and entrepreneurial spirit and both genders perceive inequality in life chances in general.

We addressed a questionnaire that had as main objective the determination of engineering students' perception on the equality issue. Gender equality in engineering universities has always been a dilemma due the differences that exist among enrolments per gender at such universities.

Although in our country there is no tradition regarding the promotion of equality principles at a university level we proposed this study in order to reveal the influence of decision factors upon students' enrolment in engineering studies. The method proposed was a Gender Proofing (Bocioc et al., 2004) comprised of direct questions, open questions, and multiple choice questions.

The main findings of the study were that students enrolled in engineering perceive an unequal climate of education and both male and female students feel to some extent gender discrimination reporting to the classroom teaching, university curricula and institutional decisions.

In order to improve students' perception it is necessary that all universities adopt measures for balancing the educational environment, promoting equal chances at all levels and paying more attention to ensure gender equality in all policies adopted.

2. OVERVIEW OF THE QUESTIONNAIRE RESULTS

The questionnaire was distributed in five faculties in Politehnica University: Electronics, Power Engineering; Biotechnical Systems; Engineering and Management of Technological Systems; Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications and Information Technology. The questionnaire was addressed to 118 students of different ages and levels of study so that our data is relevant for the educational experience.

The structure of the questionnaire was twofold: the first one required personal information from students such as: gender, nationality, parents' education and field of employment; the second part was composed of a set of open questions and multiple choice questions on the issue of equality perception. The main objectives of this questionnaire were to explore students' perception on gender equality in their university and to demonstrate that there are some particularities in the field of engineering studies.

The study is not unique in this field of research but is most relevant for our university because, as far as we know it has never been analyzed from this standpoint before.

Students' age ranges between 19 and 24 years old and the majority is 22 years old, all of them being of Romanian nationality as shown in Fig 1.

We started our survey by asking them what it is that causes unequal opportunities between male and female students. Students said that preconceived opinions (37%) are the most obvious source, then different perception on things (36%), education (20%) religion, race, and language.

Asked about the area in which they thought unequal opportunities arise, they mentioned: politics in the first place, then the business environment, labor market, education and culture.

Asked if they believe that male students have more abilities than female students to exercise engineering professions and studies, the results showed that 50% of them gave a positive answer, 34% gave a negative answer, while 16% said they did not know. This is the first clue that indicated that male students feel more entitled to engage and graduate studies in the field of engineering. We went further more and asked "what are the abilities that render male students more entitled to engineering studies?" The answers were: practical sense, more technical skills, making analogies more easily, they perceive things better, have a greater curiosity for technologies and abilities to work in extreme conditions, more courage.

In our survey we were interested in male students' perception on working in mixed groups, so we asked them to answer if they are comfortable working in groups with female students. The percentage of positive answers was high (89%) and the rest were distributed as follows: no (0.84%); I don't know (3.39%) and sometimes I feel odd (6.78%). The results show that the learning environment is characterized by normality except for few divergent opinions that reflect a certain degree of reluctance. Going further, we asked if, in their opinion, students are treated equally in the following circumstances: admission, teaching methods, curriculum approach, university environment, and teaching environment at practical applications. Students' responses show that they perceive an unequal climate of education. To some extent, our respondents feel gender discrimination as concerns the classroom teaching, the way that university curricula is taught and in institutional decisions (The results are presented in Table 1).

In order to determine the role of females in assignment groups we launched the following question: "In fulfilling school assignment in a team made up of male and female students, which part of the project is dedicated/chosen by female students?" Responses are presented in the Figure 2.

The figure shows that students perceive there is equality of labor in homework projects. Nevertheless, there is a high percentage of answers indicating that most of the times female colleagues work on the theoretical part of project. Therefore, our conclusion is that there is a certain hierarchy among students in the sense that almost all the times male students feel more entitled to contribute to the more practical part of projects leaving the theoretical part on female colleagues.

Another question addressed referred to the implication of socioeconomic factors such as: family income, geographic residence, and number of family members on the decision to attend tertiary education. Most of the students' answers showed that such socioeconomic factors influence their choices more than they admitted and that they have to work in order to support themselves to complete a degree.

In closing our questionnaire we asked the students if they are informed about any rule or regulation that protects equal chances in their university. The answers were: 72% are not informed about any rules or regulations, 16% said that equality is enforced in the University by the Regulation and 14% mentioned the University Ethics Code.

3. CONCLUSIONS

The idea of our paper is founded on the authors' personal dilemmas: 'Why do girls enroll in a smaller proportion in engineering studies?' and 'What are the problems they have to face in a university where men rule?

By conducting this study we argued that equal chances are an open issue, which is always present in all fields of action, including education. The gender equality survey presented above showed that students (male and female) enrolled in engineering studies perceive that there is an unequal climate of education and they also feel gender discrimination to some extent.

4. REFERENCES

Bocioc, F.; Dimitriu, D.; Tesiu, R.; & Vaileanu, C. (2004) Gender mainstreaming, Publisher Neva, ISBN: 973-903513-2, Bucharest

Lopez, M.R. (2009). Equality of opportunities in Spanish higher education. Journal Higher Education, ISSN: 1573174X DOI10.1007/s10734-008-9194-5

Tudorel, A. Tusa E. & Herteliu, C.(2005).The Perception of Gender Discrimination at the Level of Young Educated Romanians- A Quantitative Approach. Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies, Vol. 5, No. 14, pp. 51-62

Unterhalter, E. (2005).Global inequality, capabilities, social justice: The millennium development goal for gender equality in education. International Journal of Educational Development, Vol. 25, Issue 2 pp. 111-122

Unterhalter, E. (2008) Cosmopolitanism. Global social justice and gender equality in education, A Journal of Comparative Education, Vol. 38, Issue 5, pp. 539-554, ISSN 03057925

Tab. 1. Students' opinion on gender equality in relation with
educational environment

 No. of No. of answers on
 answers gender inequalities
 on equal
 treatment

Admission 105 13
Teaching methods 105 13
Curriculum approach 104 14
University environment 84 34
Teaching environment at 77 41
 practical applications

Fig. 1. Age of respondents

Age of respondents

19 13%
20 18%
21 25%
22 35%
23 8%
24 1%

Note: Table made from pie chart.

Fig. 2. Students' participation in homework projects

Role of boys and girls in homework projects

Our colleagues girls make only the
 tehoretical part of projects 31%
The work it's equaly divided 38%
Most of the times man students make
 technical applicatons in projects 25%
On the contrary colleagues girls make
 the whole project 6%

Note: Table made from pie chart.