Racial inequality in engineering education: a taxonomy of challenges faced by female engineering students in the Pacific region

Women are significantly underrepresented in engineering programs throughout the Pacific region. This paper presents a taxonomy of challenges faced by female engineering students in the Pacific region during their studies. First, a list of 46 challenges faced by students was assembled based on insight gathered from Talanoa (dialogue) with students, literature review and the authors' experiences. Next, the open card sorting (OCS) technique, involving 47 female engineering students, was used to classify these challenges. OCS is a well-established method for discovering how people understand and categorise information. Analysis of the collected OCS data produced the taxonomy of challenges. The proposed taxonomy includes five challenges: (i) unfair workplace climate and career inequity; (ii) psychological burden and self-efficacy threats; (iii) peer exclusion and marginalisation in male-dominated environments; (iv) socio-cultural role conflict; and (v) absence of female role models and mentorship. This taxonomy is expected to be particularly useful for designing and evaluating interventions aimed at mitigating the obstacles faced by female engineering students in the Pacific region. While grounded in the Pacific context, its applicability could extend internationally, particularly to regions where women remain underrepresented in engineering.