Engineering Society: The Role Of Intersectional Gender And Diversity Studies For A Sustainable Transformation On The Case Of Interdisciplinary Engineering Education

Technological innovations are impacting societies in manifold ways and can accelerate a transformation toward sustainability. To enable a sustainable transformation through engineering, engineers educated to create technological solutions for global challenges must be educated in sustainability principles as postulated under ‘Education for Sustainable Development’ (ESD) in the Agenda for Sustainable Development. In technological fields, the ecological, as well as the economical perspective of sustainability, are often addressed, but as recent research has highlighted, sustainability needs to be addressed holistically; this means including the social dimension to a greater degree and applying an intersectional understanding of gender and diversity throughout all spheres of sustainability. It is therefore imperative for engineering students to learn and understand where gender and diversity are necessary for sustainability, how diversity dimensions intersect, and which intersections are particularly relevant for novel technologies and societal development. Accordingly, this paper sketches an interdisciplinary approach for applying intersectional gender and diversity studies in the context of a sustainable transformation of engineering education. We draw on our experience of having educated engineers accordingly for a decade at the GDI (Gender and Diversity in Engineering) at RWTH Aachen University. Selected examples from our teaching practice are presented and six general maxims are deduced that can make engineering education more sustainability-oriented, inclusive, and diverse. As we will conclude, fostering innovative and inclusive engineering education needs interdisciplinary teams adhering to our proposed six maxims to accelerate a genderand diversity-sensitive sustainable transformation.