Challenges and Opportunities for Sustainable Engineering: Products, Services, Technologies, and Social Inclusivity with a Gender Approach

Abstract

Today, sustainable engineering faces challenges, highlighting the need to develop sustainable technologies and systems to support these new engineering projects and services. These sustainable engineering challenges aim to achieve a balance between people and the planet. To this end, 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets have been formulated, constituting the internationally accepted global sustainability aspirations for 2030. To address this issue, it is necessary to characterize its product life cycle; if there are models for the integration of sustainable engineering in policies, strategies, and programs of public and private institutions, what would be its impact at economic and social levels and its sustainable social engineering, and how would the gender approach impact these areas since it is an inclusive part of the SDG 2030 and plays a relevant role? This research analyzes models of social inclusiveness, engineering products and services for sustainability, and integration into sustainable development goals of engineering products and technology, reviewing whether gender equality or equity is present in their application and development. This study highlights relevant initiatives and the most used technological tools. The PRISMA protocol directed this study, which identified 252 pertinent articles for analysis and suggested effective practices for employing products, services, and technologies to advance sustainable engineering in the near term.