Estrategias para aumentar la diversidad de género en la Educación Superior CTIM

Resum

The number of female students enrolled in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) related disciplines has been decreasing over the last twenty years, especially in the area of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), as many recent studies have shown. Consequently, women find addi- tional barriers and challenges in their professional ca- reer both in the industry or academia. In this paper, we present a program that started in 2011 in the School of Engineering at the University of Valencia (ETSE-UV) that builds around 4 main actions: 1) to provide insti- tutional encouragement and support, 2) to increase the professional support network, 3) to promote and sup- port the leadership, and 4) to increase the visibility of female role models. This program has allowed, in part, an increase in the number of graduated female students compared to the Spanish baseline, as well as an increa- se in the number of leadership positions ran by female faculty staff. In addition, in the paper, we propose some basic recommendations for practice that can be easily applied by other higher education Institutions.