Impact of Women Empowerment on Career Advancement of Female Engineers

Abstract

The importance of women in national development cannot be understated, and women's empowerment is still a topic of discussion on a global scale. The attainment of gender parity and the empowerment of women have been considered essential to the accomplishment of sustainable development objectives. As a result, the participation of women is becoming more prevalent in a variety of areas, including engineering. In addition to providing excellent service, women in this field have debunked the myth that engineering is a male-dominated profession. Organizations that employ female engineers report high levels of satisfaction with the outcomes attained, and this inspires more women to join the field. Even though more women are graduating from engineering programs, very few of them remain in the workforce, and of those who do, very few move up the corporate ladder. This raises the question of whether empowerment alone will be sufficient to keep female engineers on track and guarantee their career advancement. In light of the aforementioned, this study examined the impact of women's empowerment on the career advancement of female engineers. The study employed a descriptive survey research design to investigate how female engineers' career advancement is influenced by promotion, inclusion, continuous professional development, and recognition. 30 respondents made up the target population of female engineers across all cadres. Data was gathered online using a self-administered questionnaire with the help of Google Forms. The questionnaire items were highly appropriate for data collection, as evidenced by the Cronbach's alpha value of 0.97. The relationship between the independent and dependent variables was investigated using inferential statistics. All of the independent variables (promotion, r=0.922, p<0.01), continuous professional development, r=.935, p<0.05, recognition, r=0.897, p<0.01, inclusion, and r=.939, p<0.05) showed a strong positive correlation with the dependent variable, career advancement of female engineers. The study's findings indicated that female engineers' career advancement was significantly impacted by inclusion. The findings also revealed that continuous professional development was essential to the advancement of female engineers in their careers. The study recommended inclusion of female engineers in technical matters, equal pay for equal work, continuous training, and mentorship to ensure career advancement and to keep more female engineers on board.