The Impact of Socio-cultural Factors in Qatar on Females in Engineering

Abstract

This paper provides a detailed insight into the Arab culture, specifically, the perceptions of Qatari culture on women in engineering. The Qatari culture greatly discourage and limit females from entering engineering fields, which is mainly due to Qatari's culture mentality. In addition, this paper will show how the socio-cultural factors in Qatar plays a main role in hindering females from pursuing engineering. The three main factors are gender roles, female education, female in mixed workplace. These factors unfortunately depriving women from their rights of independence, education, and choice of career.

“This is a Very Male Job”: Challenges Encountered by Females During Recruitment and Hiring for Engineering Jobs in Qatar

“…Given Qatar's significant focus on "enhancing women's role and empowerment through education and job creation" [3] and the importance of Qatar's construction, oil, and gas industry sectors, "the nurturing of female engineers is a task of high importance" [9, p. 7] to the State. However, the experiences of female engineers in Qatar have been only marginally researched [9][10][11] and the experiences of new female graduates during the recruitment and hiring stage has not been given true consideration. It is important to understand women's introductory experiences with industry in order to understand more broadly how attractive the engineering field is for women in Qatar.…”