Eventos Anais de eventos
COBEM 2023
27th International Congress of Mechanical Engineering
Harpias - Stimulating women to enter and stay in engineering in Brazilian Amazon
Submission Author:
Marina Weyl Costa , PA
Co-Authors:
Marina Weyl Costa, Ivanete Pereira Lima, Lorrayne Sampaio
Presenter: Marina Weyl Costa
doi://10.26678/ABCM.COBEM2023.COB2023-1694
Abstract
Programs stimulating women to enter and permanence in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) areas are fundamental to reduce the gender gap in those fields. Besides social justice, more women in STEM may also create more innovations if gender issues are considered. Gendered Innovations is a methodology to consider sex and gender in all the steps of technology development. This paper describes actions made by Harpias, an extension program developed at Universidade Federal do Sul e Sudeste do Pará (UNIFESSPA), a university located in the Brazilian Amazon. The project is based on five goals: 1) Create a support network between female students; 2) Promote a professional network between students and women working in industry and academia; 3) Introduce UNIFESSPA to public high school students and encouraging girls to study engineering; 4) Disseminate knowledge about gender innovations; 5) Engage secondary and higher education students in the development of technologies aimed at society. The project is built by a female coordinator professor of the Mechanical Engineering Faculty and nine volunteer female students of different engineering courses. Most of the volunteers are black women who entered the university with affirmative actions. Two of them are mothers. Harpias meet once a week. The activities developed in the first semester of 2023 were: 1) A visit to a public school. A presentation of UNIFESSPA and pamphlets were developed to stimulate the students to take the national exam used to ingress Brazilian colleges. High school students were invited to answer a questionary, which unveiled that they enjoyed the presentation. Many did not know that UNIFESSPA was free before it. 2) A guided visit of the high school students to UNIFESSPA. Harpias contacted several university laboratories and invited high school students to meet them. Although boys and girls were both invited, only girls went to the visit. The activity was also relevant to the Harpias' volunteers because many have not been in some of the visited laboratories before because they are used only in other engineering courses. 3) Online lecture with the first woman to graduate in mechanical engineering at UNICAMP. 4) Online meeting with STEAMS-UFPA, an extension project situated in Belém, the capital of the state of Pará. The objective was to share experiences and start building a state network. Ongoing Harpia's activity is weekly meetings of high school and college students to learn about gendered innovations and to develop a project aimed at society.
Keywords
Women in engineering, university extension, STEM in high school education
