Female civil engineers of the Autonomous University of Aguascalientes, 1973-2018: Women against the current?

Abstract

The insertion of women in higher education in the world has been a silent and slow process that has taken place over almost two centuries. However, the entry of women into careers considered “masculine” such as Civil Engineering has been full of adversities, such as the resistances of their families and social circle, those of their male professors and male classmates at the university, as all of them question their decision to enter into a profession considered “for men”, as well as their struggles to find spaces in the field of construction. Different studies about women and Civil Engineering in several universities in Mexico have shown that women's registration in this major continues to be low to this day. Therefore, through interviews with six women civil engineers graduated from different generations of the Autonomous University of Aguascalientes (1973-2018), this paper examines concepts such as inclusion, exclusion, resistances and their strategies for permanence in the career they have chosen, experiences in which they have been immersed as part of cultural models in which gender discourse continues to define the appropriate spaces for women and those that are proper to men.