IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jchals/v13y2022i1p27-d839896.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Investigating the Status of Women Engineers in Education and Employment during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Seema Singh

    (Department of Humanities, Delhi Technological University, Delhi 110042, India)

Abstract

Engineering is traditionally considered a male domain with lower female participation despite various affirmative actions taken in recent decades. There is evidence of greater gender equality as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and precautionary lockdown measures. With this in mind, this paper investigates whether women engineers in India were more adversely affected than their male counterparts by the COVID-19 pandemic. Such an impact may be explained by ‘intersectional stigma’, expanded upon in the literature on discrimination. The impact of such stigma varies in different countries based on socio-cultural factors. Through the use of ethnographic and statistical research methods on secondary and primary data from a sample of 384 engineers, this paper shows that the impact of COVID-19 is not significantly different between genders in engineering education and employment. This may be due to the high demand for digital engineering skills, and strong family support in Indian society. Engineering branch may play a relatively more important role than gender in terms of impact. This finding has repercussions for continuing engineering education (CEE) programs and regulatory bodies in India in terms of enhancing course content and the results may be used in developing affirmative programs in other regions.

Suggested Citation

  • Seema Singh, 2022. "Investigating the Status of Women Engineers in Education and Employment during the COVID-19 Pandemic," Challenges, MDPI, vol. 13(1), pages 1-14, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jchals:v:13:y:2022:i:1:p:27-:d:839896
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2078-1547/13/1/27/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2078-1547/13/1/27/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alakh N. Sharma, 2022. "Youth Employment and Unemployment in India: Issues and Challenges," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 65(2), pages 237-267, June.
    2. Giuliana Viglione, 2020. "Are women publishing less during the pandemic? Here’s what the data say," Nature, Nature, vol. 581(7809), pages 365-366, May.
    3. Philipa Birago Akuoko & Vincent Aggrey & Jennifer Dokbila Mengba, 2021. "Mothering with a career during a pandemic; the case of the Ghanaian woman," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(S2), pages 277-288, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Satu Kalliola & Tuula Heiskanen, 2022. "Challenges in Work and Employment during the COVID-19 Pandemic," Challenges, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-5, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wenxuan Shi & Renli Wu, 2024. "Women’s strength in science: exploring the influence of female participation on research impact and innovation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 129(7), pages 4529-4551, July.
    2. Marta Peña & Noelia Olmedo-Torre & Olga Alcaraz & Juan A. Chavez-Dominguez & José López & Luis Eduardo Mujica, 2022. "Impact of the Pandemic on the Teaching and Research Staff at a Technological University in Spain: Deepening the Gender Gap," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(11), pages 1-26, May.
    3. Brad M. Barber & Wei Jiang & Adair Morse & Manju Puri & Heather Tookes & Ingrid M. Werner, 2021. "What Explains Differences in Finance Research Productivity during the Pandemic?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 76(4), pages 1655-1697, August.
    4. Hartshorn, Jessica A. & Brockerhoff, Eckehard G. & Klapwijk, Maartje J. & Marzano, Mariella & Ganley, Rebecca J. & Darr, Molly N., 2023. "Attracting and retaining women in forest entomology and forest pathology," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    5. Jayan Jose Thomas, 2023. "Employment Growth and Industrial Policy: The Challenge for Indian States," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 66(1), pages 113-129, March.
    6. Liu, Meijun & Zhang, Ning & Hu, Xiao & Jaiswal, Ajay & Xu, Jian & Chen, Hong & Ding, Ying & Bu, Yi, 2022. "Further divided gender gaps in research productivity and collaboration during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from coronavirus-related literature," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2).
    7. Xiao Liu & Cathy Ping Xie, 2023. "How Person–Organization Fit Impacts Work Performance: Evidence from Researchers in Ten Countries during the COVID-19," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(13), pages 1-18, June.
    8. Lucas Rodriguez Forti & Luiz A. Solino & Judit K. Szabo, 2021. "Trade-off between urgency and reduced editorial capacity affect publication speed in ecological and medical journals during 2020," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 8(1), pages 1-9, December.
    9. Marta Jiménez Carrillo & Unai Martín & Amaia Bacigalupe, 2023. "Gender Inequalities in Publications about COVID-19 in Spain: Authorship and Sex-Disaggregated Data," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(3), pages 1-10, January.
    10. Kwon, Eunrang & Yun, Jinhyuk & Kang, Jeong-han, 2023. "The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on gendered research productivity and its correlates," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1).
    11. Shradha Kundra & Naman Sreen & Rohit Dwivedi, 2023. "Impact of Work from Home and Family Support on Indian Women’s Work Productivity During COVID-19," Vikalpa: The Journal for Decision Makers, , vol. 48(1), pages 39-53, March.
    12. Thereza Raquel Sales de Aguiar & Shamima Haque & Keith A. Bender, 2022. "Athena SWAN gender equality plans and the gendered impact of COVID‐19," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(2), pages 591-608, March.
    13. S. Mahendra Dev, 2024. "Regional Dimensions in India: Economic Growth, Inclusive and Sustainable Development," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 22(2), pages 245-296, June.
    14. Guerrero, Maribel & Pugh, Rhiannon, 2022. "Entrepreneurial universities’ metamorphosis: Encountering technological and emotional disruptions in the COVID-19 ERA," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    15. Ketoki Mazumdar & Sneha Parekh & Isha Sen, 2023. "Mothering load: Underlying realities of professionally engaged Indian mothers during a global crisis," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(3), pages 1080-1103, May.
    16. Maria do Mar Pereira, 2021. "Researching gender inequalities in academic labor during the COVID‐19 pandemic: Avoiding common problems and asking different questions," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(S2), pages 498-509, July.
    17. Cao, Yihui & Sickles, Robin C. & Triebs, Thomas P. & Tumlinson, Justin, 2024. "Linguistic distance to English impedes research performance," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(4).
    18. Aleem, Majid & Sufyan, Muhammad & Ameer, Irfan & Mustak, Mekhail, 2023. "Remote work and the COVID-19 pandemic: An artificial intelligence-based topic modeling and a future agenda," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    19. María Agostina Zulli & Francesco Giovanni Angeli & Alejandro Danon & Ana Carolina Ortega Masagué, 2021. "The leaky pipeline problem, COVID-19 & big data: The impact of the pandemic on the gender gap in research production," Asociación Argentina de Economía Política: Working Papers 4532, Asociación Argentina de Economía Política.
    20. Asiya Islam, 2021. "“Two hours extra for working from home”: Reporting on gender, space, and time from the Covid‐field of Delhi, India," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(S2), pages 405-414, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jchals:v:13:y:2022:i:1:p:27-:d:839896. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.