The engineering social role conception promoted in the engineering courses’ advertising: looking from the point of view of women

Despite the efforts carry out in the past 30 years to attract more women into engineering courses, the percentage of women enrolled in these courses has been decreasing. In addition, many of the women that graduated engineering have given up on their engineering professional careers. Amongst the many reasons justifying this situation, this paper focuses on one specific issue: women prefer courses and professions with potential for socio-humanitarian intervention. Bearing this in mind, this study aims to analyse the image on the engineering social role and its intervention potential as stated in the online texts publicising engineering courses. It was possible to conclude that the majority of the texts do not emphasise engineering's potential for socio-humanitarian intervention, therefore missing indicators that attract the attention of women and match their expectations and conceptions of engineering action. However, the engineering areas that value the engineering eco-social intervention potential are the ones with higher percentage of women enrolled in the courses. So, the absence of different conceptions of the engineering social role translates into a form of discrimination in the recruitment phase of applicants for engineering courses, but it also constitutes a clear impoverishment of the engineering social role.