Exploring The Variation In Gender Balance On Undergraduate Engineering Courses In UK Universities

The underrepresentation of women in engineering remains a persistent issue despite efforts to attract more female students. The percentage of UK engineering undergraduates who are female is published annually, however no institutional breakdown is given. This scoping study aims to inform the direction of future research by investigating the nature and possible causes of the distribution of female engineering undergraduates across the UK HE-sector. Student data gathered from UK universities by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) for 2019/20 is explored using Tableau. Overall, 16% of UK engineering undergraduates are female but this varies from 5% to 36% for individual universities, with more prestigious institutions generally having a higher percentage. The findings suggest some association between gender balance and the level of qualifications prior to university: in general, the higher the academic achievement on entry to a university the better the gender balance at that institution while the percentage of women appears to be independent of the number of engineering undergraduates at a university. The HESA data also confirm that certain disciplines attract more women and consequently the subject areas offered by a university can influence its gender balance in undergraduate engineering. The literature offers several possible explanations for these findings, but further study is needed to investigate the differences in female representation at a more granular level, acknowledging the agency and individuality of both the universities and the students.