Abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to address the challenge to get to practice gender mainstreaming in university degrees, presenting reflections and the analysis of a real experience, developed in the framework of the project Gender Dimension in Teaching, at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya-BarcelonaTech (UPC), part of the III Gender Equality Plan at the UPC ( GEECCO project; European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme). Main goal was to promote the debate on gender related issues at higher education institutions, especially in engineering and technological disciplines (STEM) usually not so related with social sciences. The study was carried out with a group of students of ICT Systems, mostly boys, at Escola Politècnica Superior d’Enginyeria de Manresa (EPSEM), through the subject: Statistics.

The plan was to creatively transform activities that could be specific to the subject, such that meanwhile students learn content and skills, a positive contribution to gender dimension could be added. Two directions to be considered: on the one hand, promoting awareness and debate; on the other hand, giving tools to be used by students in evaluation of gender issues. In addition, in the current context, we need to be aware that some people are tired of so much pressure or talking on this topic, to avoid reticent or negative attitudes.

The work describes the design of the activity, some hypothesis, the objectives and the definition of indicators to measure them. Then the activity is valued, based on the analysis of the projects developed by the students, questionnaires, and personal interviews an taking also in account critical thinking and other skills.
The findings in this study show that the proposal to put at the same level the gender dimension, the sustainability and other topics of interest, was positive. Main point is also that the activity, proved to be significant, can be extrapolated to be carried out in different degrees and educational levels.

Keywords:

STEM, gender dimension, social skills, statistics, critical thinking.