A Literature Review on Challenges and Opportunities for Women in Engineering

Women are generally under-represented in engineering profession beginning from the classroom to the workplace and even in leadership positions in engineering societies and organisations. This could be due to challenges such as gender discrimination, gender stereotype, socio-cultural limitations, employment discrimination, and sexual harassment, to mention, but a few. This challenges and many more have limited the level of participation and retention of women in engineering in most countries. Therefore, there is need to address these challenges nationally, regionally, continentally and globally so that more female young career seekers can pursue a career in any engineering field of their choice, and those in the career can be retained in the profession until retirement. This paper presents the challenges women are facing in engineering profession. Furthermore, opportunities and recommendations are presented that can help to improve the participation and retention of women in engineering until retirement.