Participatory design of STEM initiatives with gender equity for public policies

Abstract

The Gender equality and women ́s empowerment is one of the global challenges defined by the United Nations. As institutions of higher education, we have made a commitment to these objectives and to promote gender equity in engineering, science and technology programs, where the gap is one of the most evident, both in terms of vocations, students and professionals in companies. As a way of ratifying this commitment, the OAS invites organizations to generate proposals that can be presented at meetings where Latin American representatives make decisions for the benefit of our communities. The design of participatory processes with clear objectives, with logistics and facilitators, from organizations committed to fostering a culture of gender equity and increasing women's participation in STEM areas, frame this research. The objective is to share the participatory process of designing initiatives as a case study, where people from universities in LATAM are involved with hybrid sessions (digital and face-to-face). A common design, and a particular development by work table according to the line of interest of the proposals, allow to observe and provide recommendations for similar future exercises.The results allow to consider common elements such as: the passion and commitment of the participants in the subject, the difficulty of mixing the type of interaction, mixing face-to-face with digital environments, and the clear identification of common projects, which arose from different people, and when they shared their proposals was seen how they were aligned to a common goal.