Towards-a-Gender-Lens-in-Engineering

Toward a Gender Lens in Civil Engineering for Cities Tiffany Lam & Ellie Cosgrave t.lam@ucl.ac.uk, e.cosgrave@ucl.ac.uk Science, Technology, Engineering & Public Policy STEaPP Universit

Toward a Gender Lens in (Civil) Engineering for Cities

Tiffany Lam & Ellie Cosgrave t.lam@ucl.ac.uk, e.cosgrave@ucl.ac.uk Science, Technology, Engineering & Public Policy (STEaPP)

University College London (UCL) 36-37 Fitzroy Square (2 nd Floor)

London W1T 6EY

Keywords: Gender, Engineering, Infrastructure, Cities, Smart Cities, Sustainability

Towards a Gender Lens in (Civil) Engineering for Cities

Abstract

This paper identifies the absence of a gender lens in engineering education and professional

engineering practice as an issue that produces detrimental and disparate outcomes for urban

citizens, particularly with respect to mobility As the two male-dominated worlds of digital

innovation and infrastructure planning combine in the smart city, the risk of perpetuating and

compounding gender blindness becomes increasingly relevant The binary thinking prevalent

in both of these industries reflects an implicit androcentric bias that fails to acknowledge and

engage with the realities of unequal, gendered experiences of cities In order to overcome this,

we must challenge power and knowledge structures that produce and reproduce systemic bias

We argue for a transition from the current state of engineering education and professional

practice to include a more social justice oriented approach that incorporates a gender lens that

values women’s experiences in order to build more inclusive cities Further work is necessary

to build a knowledge base to develop an intersectional gender lens that acknowledges how

gender intersects with other socially constructed categories of identity (such as race, class,

sexuality, etc.) One way to start developing this knowledge base is by examining the lifecycle

of an engineer’s academic and professional development as well as the lifecycle of engineering

projects We call for further work that can translate theory into practice and codify a gender

lens in both engineering education and practice

Keywords: Gender, Engineering, Infrastructure, Cities, Smart Cities, Sustainability

Table of Contents

Abstract 1

Methods 4

(ii) Engineering Paradigms, Cultures and Design Processes 5

Gender Binary and Implicit Androcentric Bias 5

Public and Private Space 7

Technical/Social Dichotomy 7

Engineering Education 8

(ii) Design Outcomes of Engineering Practice 10

Reproducing inequalities 10

Impact of binary thinking on engineering artefacts 14

(iii) Future Outlook, Integrating a Gender Lens 16

In Theory 16

In Practice 17

Challenging power structures 18

Evolving a constructive debate 20

Motivations for pursuing engineering 22

Sustainability codes as an inroad 24

Conclusion and Further Work 25

Introduction

From a young age, females are taught to avoid walking on certain streets after certain hours, being alone in certain parts of the city, and dressing a certain way, all of which insinuate that cities are unsafe for women This message is repeatedly reinforced in the media and from family and friends, even if often out of kindness and concern Violence against women, ranging from seemingly benign verbal sexual harassment on city streets to physical acts of violence in the intimacy of the home, constricts female access to, and mobility and freedom in public urban space Yet, when engineers and planners are designing and constructing cities, buildings and other infrastructure, an understanding of this gendered experience is markedly absent

Much of the appeal of city living is having access to a diverse range of opportunities, people, events, and activities However, there are gendered differences in the way we experience cities While the everyday sexism that women face in cities: sexual harassment on the street and on public transportation, having to wait longer for the toilet in public restrooms, feeling the need

to alter one’s route or modify one’s behaviour or clothing to avoid perceived threats, struggling

to board public transportation with a pram and shopping bags may seem innocuous and taken for granted as normal, but they accumulate to enable and reinforce systemic sexism

The potential for harassment is exacerbated in a world where smart devices expand the potential for non-consensual photo taking through apps designed for locating and stalking strangers For example, the app “Girls Around Me” scrapes data from social media platforms such as Foursquare and Facebook, allowing users to see pictures of women, their location, and even message them (Cosgrave, 2018) The normalisation of such micro-level instances of sexism lays the foundation for the normalisation of macro-level structural sexism and violence against women Engineers must develop an ability to design for, and take seriously, gendered

experience at both the macro and micro level This includes, for example, an ability to critique the number of male versus female toilet cubicles in a given development, as well as an understanding of how variations in street lighting and layouts affect people’s feelings of safety

Gendered experiences of the city do not currently enter engineering discourse in education or professional practice As a result, engineering artefacts and infrastructure contribute to the reproduction of unequal urban experiences The historic legacy of male dominance in engineering knowledge production and professional practice coupled with the present reality that in the UK 91% of engineering professionals are male (IET skills survey, 2015, p 22) means it is unlikely that the female experience is adequately incorporated into engineering problem structuring and decision-making Our engineering practice is unable to account for the diversity of the populations it is intended to serve

Cities must be designed in ways that acknowledge and validate women’s lives and experiences

As a sector, we lack the knowledge base and toolbox that can adequately interpret and incorporate an understanding of gendered urban experiences Again, as smart technologies enter the fray, we are seeing smart applications such as Safetipin, which helps to audit public spaces for safety with gendered needs in mind.i However, from a built environment perspective, the dearth of attention to and research on gendered perceptions of safety in urban public space

in both academia and professional practice is a critical problem This paper aims to begin to fill that void We start from the premise that in order to make change, we must be able to identify the problem; comprehend its nature, magnitude, scope, and impact; and understand how it is reinforced and reproduced

In this research we explore and make explicit the ways and the extent to which gender, as a complex category that intersects with other socially constructed categories of identity (such as race, class, gender, sexuality, migrant status, religion, and physical ability/disability), is accounted for in engineering design/thinking processes and how the application of a gender lens could enhance social justice outcomes We aim to challenge professional engineering practice by developing an intersectional gender lens both in theory and in practice, as we believe theory must be codified into engineering education and professional practice in order

to be transformative A gender lens is akin to “ putting on spectacles Out of one lens of the spectacles, you see the participation, needs and realities of women Out of the other lens, you see the participation, needs and realities of men Your sight or vision is the combination of what each eye sees” (Gender in Education Network in Asia, 2006, p 3)

Dominance functions by remaining invisible and unexamined Central to any feminist analysis

is making implicit assumptions explicit, highlighting how they reinforce power dynamics, and challenging them in order to achieve more equitable and socially just outcomes Since the built environment and its form and functions are the result of someone’s conscious intention, infrastructure reflects, reinforces, and reproduces gender and other such power inequalities in society (Ehrnberger et al., 2012, p 85)

The literature on engineering and gender emphasises the need to critically examine engineering epistemology, as neither engineering knowledge nor practice occur in a vacuum Macro socioeconomic inequalities get embedded and reproduced, whether advertently or not, in the processes of engineering knowledge production that then translate into unequal raced, classed, gendered, etc outcomes on the ground As such, this work adopts a radical and intersectional

feminist perspective on engineering practice that confronts the status quo and demands more emancipatory and equitable alternatives

Methods

This paper is the first phase of a longer-term project to develop a gender lens that could be applied to different facets of engineering in order to create more inclusive cities We anticipate that a gender lens will not be monolithic and therefore there is no singular gender lens that is uniformly applicable to every stage of engineering Instead, we envision a gender lens

“toolbox,” which could be interpreted for different parts of the engineering process in order to respond to specific challenges that arise within certain contexts

In order begin to develop a gender lens toolbox, which can support our critique of engineering practice, we have constructed three avenues of investigation that we will explore in this paper (i) ENGINEERING PARADIGMS CULTURES AND DESIGN PROCESSES: How

is gender present, or otherwise, in the engineering design processes? For whom, by who, and for what are engineering artefacts and infrastructure designed? To what extent do engineers consider gender and other socially constructed categories of identity, i.e., race, sexuality, class, ability/disability, etc., in the process of designing engineering artefacts and infrastructure?

(ii) DESIGN OUTCOMES: How do engineering artefacts and infrastructures produce

disparate gendered outcomes and what are their implications?

(iii) FUTURE OUTLOOK, INTEGRATING A GENDER LENS: How could a gender

lens be integrated into engineering education and practice in order to enhance equity and social justice outcomes?

To address these questions, our data collection consisted of a systematic literature review on each of the above lines of investigation In July 2016 we convened a focus group of fourteen engineering practitioners and academics, feminist activists, and urban planners, in which we presented our initial findings from the literature review and sought insight on how it resonated with their experiences In the subsequent month we followed up and did semi-structured interviews with select focus group participants to further excavate some of the themes that emerged in the focus group This paper presents the key themes raised in our literature review, focus group, and semi-structured interviews It sets the stage for further work on how to develop and incorporate a gender lens in engineering

Engineering Paradigms, Cultures and Design Processes

Gender Binary and Implicit Androcentric Bias

The gender binary, in which the masculine is constructed in opposition to the feminine, is one

of many oppositional, either/or binaries endemic in Western philosophy (Grosz 2000, 212) Far from reflecting the nuances and complexities of actual human behaviour, the gender binary hinges upon socially constructed differences between women and men These differences are constructed as mutually exclusive, positioned in a hierarchy, then implicitly gendered where that which is gendered masculine is privileged over that which is gendered feminine The gender binary organises people’s identities, daily lives, and relationships with others politically, socially, economically, and spatially (Law, 1999; Faulkner, 2000, p 783; Ehrnberger et al., 2012, p 87)

In engineering, binary thinking is prevalent, too, and manifests as focussed, technical/social, rational/emotional, and hard/soft These dualisms are also then

focussed/people-positioned in a hierarchy whereby the technical is privileged over the social, a focus is privileged over a people-focus, the rational is privileged over the emotional, the objective is privileged over the subjective, and the tangible, concrete, and “hard” are privileged over the immaterial, abstract, and “soft.” Once positioned in such a hierarchy, these dualistic categories are then implicitly gendered: The former categories (technology-focussed, technical, rational, hard, etc.) are gendered masculine and presumed superior, while the latter (people-focussed, social, emotional, soft, etc.) are gendered feminine and presumed inferior

technology-Binary thinking in engineering results in an implicit androcentric bias in engineering knowledge production, skill development, and skill valuation, in which the masculine is privileged at the expense of the feminine (Reimer, 2015) This reflects patriarchal ideology whereby knowledge is produced and reproduced based on the experiences and lives of men and assumed to be universally applicable Not only does this inscribe and normalise an implicit androcentric bias, it also produces gender blindness in engineering Gender and other identity social categories are dismissed as irrelevant At most, they are thought as mere demographic facts or variables The absence of a critical lens on this binary also means that not only are the needs of women dismissed, but so are the broader social impacts of engineering Questions about how accessible engineering infrastructure is to different populations, or whose needs engineering infrastructure actually fulfils, do not enter into engineering thinking or discourse Adopting a gender lens, therefore, has positive impacts for a variety of social justice goals by acknowledging and incorporating the perspectives and experiences of a broader, more diverse range of people

Public and Private Space

Binary thinking is present in urban theory, primarily in the dichotomy between public and private space, and also apparent in mainstream economics in the dichotomy between production and reproduction Private space is the site of home, family, care and (largely unpaid) reproductive labour; public space is the site of work, professionalism and politics, (paid) productive labour Feminist geographers problematise the false and gendered dichotomy between public space and private space, the masculinisation of public space that associates it with men, politics, and production, and the feminisation of private space that associates it with women, consumption, and reproduction (Levy, 2015, p 137)

The bifurcation between public and private space is decaying as more women have been entering the formal labour market and participating in public life Moreover, as public urban space increasingly gets privatised, public and private space increasingly blurs This underscores the relevance of asking: For whom, by whom, and for what purposes are engineering knowledge and infrastructure projects designed? For example, are the ways that civil engineers design infrastructure for cities reflective of the changing nature of the labour market and the differential travel patterns this may entail?

practice must integrate the technical and non-technical (social, cultural, economic, political) as they are mutually reinforcing (Faulkner, 2000, p 763)

Engineering artefacts and infrastructures do not exist in a vacuum – They are created in particular social, cultural, economic, and political contexts Far from being value-neutral and objective, engineering has cultural, social, spatial, political, and economic implications After all, engineering is not just the final product of material infrastructure; it is a social process that mediates relations between the user, the infrastructural artefact, and society at large (Ehrnberger et al., 2012, p 96) Through engineering, cultural and political values as well as social norms materialise in the built environment (Chilvers, 2014, p 30-2) These three-dimensional manifestations of societal values cannot be taken for granted as mere technicalities

Engineering Education

This paradigm that privileges that which is technical and “hard” over that which is social and

‘soft’ has dominated engineering training, identities, and practice in the twentieth century, a legacy that remains ingrained in 21st century engineering practice This begins in education, where the favouring of presumed “masculine” styles of emotional detachment, concrete knowledge, and pure objectivity in engineering is detrimental to female entry and retention (Faulkner, 2000, p 773) The underrepresentation of women in engineering is well-documented and the framing of the field as a technical, “hard” science with a masculine culture makes it difficult to recruit and retain more women

Design has been and remains imbued with social constructions of masculinity and certain knowledge and skillsets, particularly relating to engineering and technology, are implicitly

coded as masculine (Reimer, 2015, p 1035) Engineering and technology are typically linked

to machines, problem-solving, and performance, which are gendered masculine (Ehrnberger et al., 2012, p 90) Not only does the equation of core tasks in engineering as masculine inscribe

an implicit androcentric bias in knowledge production and skill valuation in engineering (Reimer, 2015, p 1039), it also constructs the engineering subject as masculine, which excludes women (Reimer, 2015; Paulitz, 2009; ScienceGrrl ,2014)

Our focus group participants discussed how lists of the most notable engineers rarely feature any women Such lists also tend to celebrate the engineering structure or technology rather than its impact on society, which perpetuates the notion that engineering infrastructures are stand-alone, isolated entities that mostly men create This, then, feeds the idea that engineering is an objective, technical, “hard” science and a masculine field, which makes it difficult to meaningfully inject issues around gender, diversity, and inclusion

This creates a masculinist culture in engineering, in which even women subscribe to the notion that engineering is a technical, “hard” science that is unconcerned with social relations and impact One of our focus group participants, Lena Ciric, a lecturer in Engineering at University College London (UCL) shared the following anecdote:

One of the most common questions female students attending the UCL

Engineering open days is, “How many girls are there in the year?” At UCL,

female students comprise 30% of the student body, which is low but still

significant for engineering In order to increase recruitment of female students,

the UCL Engineering faculty has eliminated any specific A-level prerequisite

for the degree This means that more girls who are passionate about engineering

but didn’t necessarily do maths and physics apply and attend, and usually can

catch up quickly on the maths and physics if the passion is there Female

engineering students are just as dismissive of the “soft” subjects, possibly

because they are trying to fit in or many because they want to prove that they

can do the difficult technical “masculine” stuff (Ciric, email message to authors,

15 August 2016)

Ciric is part of the teaching team for a core module on the social processes and impact of engineering She further reflects on how both women and men internalise the hegemony of the gender binary and binary thinking, with respect to their interest in this particular module:

As the term progressed, attendance dwindled and students’ lack of interest was

very apparent Within the department, other lecturers, mostly male, looked

disparagingly upon this module and spoke of it dismissively in front of both

staff and students, thereby reinforcing the idea that the social and ‘soft’ are

insignificant, irrelevant and unworthy of study (Ciric, email message to authors,

15 August 2016)

As this example illustrates, both women and men in engineering are socialised to privilege the hard, rational, technical and dismiss the soft, emotional, and social A gender lens recognises that more important than challenging individual men’s and women’s attitudes and behaviour

is the need to destabilise the gender binary and challenge social constructs of masculinity and femininity After all, gender is not just about men and women, and “just adding women and stirring;” it requires a deconstruction of normative ideas about men, women, masculinity, and femininity

Design Outcomes of Engineering Practice

Reproducing inequalities

The binary thinking and implicit androcentric bias is apparent in civil engineering projects that fail to incorporate an understanding of social, human factors into design The technical/social dualism is particularly problematic because it insinuates that one cannot simultaneously be interested in technology and people When forced to “choose a side,” an overemphasis on the technical emerges at the exclusion of the social

The installation of toilets and showers in refugee camps is a prime example Too often it may

be framed as a “technical” engineering project The myopic focus on pipes, plumbing, and

“hard” infrastructure results in poorly designed and inadequate bathrooms in refugee camps Refugee camps typically have too few bathrooms, which are also mixed gendered and offer little privacy (Berger, 2016) The absence of safe, private bathrooms in refugee camps has not only increased female refugees’ vulnerability to sexual assault; it has also exacerbated health problems because women and girls may be too afraid to go to the toilet and avoid eating or drinking to minimise toilet trips at night (Berger, 2016) Here, the prioritisation the technical over the social disables women’s safe access to facilities, which has political and public health ramifications It reinforces patriarchy by endangering women’s safety, health, wellbeing, and livelihoods

The omission of social, human factors also results in spaces that seem efficient from an economic perspective, but are detrimental for people and society One of our focus group participants, Ann Thorpe, is the Master of Public Administration Programme Officer and Adjunct Teaching Fellow at the University College London’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy programme She discusses how economic forces pressure design and engineering to achieve cost efficiency, which has a social cost in and of itself She explains with an example of the standardisation of neighbourhoods as well as retail, housing and building typology:

This standardisation requires putting aside many human factors and is also true

in private developments where the physical environment is often controlled in

the belief that maintaining standardisation ‘protects’ property values Private

and economically driven interests drive the press for standardised, cheap

environments that are easily achieved by brute force, technology, and

over-engineered solutions (email message to authors, 18 August 2016)

The integration of a gender lens would shift away from a myopic focus that inevitably produces and reproduces inequalities and towards an engineering practice equipped to engage with, understand and fulfil complex human and social needs

Androcentric bias and uneven urban mobility

Daily mobility in the city is another area where the androcentric bias in engineering fails women Mobility is gendered due to gendered variations in mobility choices (travel demand, mode of transport), mobility behaviour (timing, distance, duration, route, purpose), and perceptions and experiences of mobility (Law, 1999, p 576) Factors that create these gendered variations in urban mobility patterns include the patriarchal relegation of women to the private sphere, women’s historical exclusion from (and sustained barriers in) formal labour market participation, gendered differences in access to resources (time, money, skills, technology, employment), and the asymmetrical gendered division of household labour For example, the gender pay gap and the underrepresentation of women in senior positions means that women have less disposable income to use on transportation to/from work and may rely more on public transportation rather than driving

Since daily urban mobility is gendered, seemingly neutral issues, such as snow removal, are also gendered In our focus group, journalist Caroline Criado-Perez shared the example of snow removal in the city of Karlskoga in Sweden:

‘The community development staff made jokes about how at least snow is

something the gender people won’t get involved in,” explained Bruno

Rudström, one of the city’s gender equality strategists But on reflection, they

realised that even something as seemingly neutral as snow-clearing, actually

could have a markedly different impact on men and women, due to the gender

split in travel style Women are more likely than men to walk, bike, and use

public transport, whereas men are more likely to drive By prioritising clearing

the roads, the city was prioritising the way men choose to travel, despite the fact

that walking or pushing a stroller though 10cm of snow is much harder than

driving a car through it So the city changed the order of snow-clearing to focus