Teaching Gender in Engineering: Path-creation for Gender-Sensitive Innovation

Neglecting characteristics and requirements of women resulted in a number of products that were less safe for females than for men, including airbags, safety belts, and medical personal protective equipment. Efforts to develop gender-inclusive products need to go beyond aesthetic design features and require engineers to reflect consequences of technical product development that targets properties of male bodies only. Rather than a single course on applied ethics and gender issues, we demonstrate how a more inclusive perspective for reflecting how to define application profiles can be implemented in several courses in engineering education programmes. We present how to build on standard concepts and tools in product and service development, drawing attention to the requirements of females to enable gender-sensitive innovation including an adequate pricing strategy. While integrating inclusive innovation or gender-sensitive innovation in the learning outcomes of modules may results in stronger integration in a curriculum, there are also benefits in implementing an gender-perspective immediately.