The Gender Gap in Engineering Education During The COVID-19 Lockdown: A Study Case

Resumen

Higher education in Spain, especially in Madrid, was suddenly and unexpectedly shut down on March 9th 2020 because of the beginning of the COVID-19 first wave emergency. In engineering education, where practical laboratories are a relevant part of the educational process, professors followed different approaches (sometimes concurrently), designed after only three or five days of discussions. Although, globally, the obtained results are acceptable considering the situation, after informally analyzing the data and observing the post-lockdown students' profile, some collectives seem to have suffered a higher impact than other. Three research questions are analyzed. The objective of this work is to analyze if the performance of women in engineering courses, specifically in computer engineering, is different from male students. The study case is carried out at Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, particularly, in the computer engineering degree. Furthermore, if a statistically relevant difference is discovered (based on Mann-Whitney U test), the final causes of this worrying situation will be studied. Official academic results and other similar indicators were analyzed. Besides, more than one hundred surveys among students were developed. Percentage of women (participants) is above 30%. Results clearly show a deterioration in all indicators for all collectives and students, comparing the performance during the lockdown and the performance of previous years. However, this impact is not homogenous, and results also show a gender gap placing women in engineering education during the lockdown (an after) in a disadvantaged situation.