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Empowerment and Sustainability: Investigating Barriers to Women’s Transition from Higher Education to Empowerment in Brazil
Get PDFGender equality continues to be a global issue, with significant disparities in attention and action between developed and developing nations. Women, in particular, face unique challenges when transitioning from higher education (HE) to empowerment compared to their male counterparts. In many developing countries, barriers to accessing formal education are prevalent, while, in others, despite access to education, women struggle to leverage their learning for societal advancement. This paper adopts the development theory approach by exploring the role of gender equality in fostering sustainable development, emphasizing how women’s empowerment is integral to overall societal progress. This study focuses on Brazil, where, despite high levels of female educational attainment, women still encounter substantial obstacles in transforming their education into meaningful societal empowerment. These challenges include restricted freedom and mobility, deeply ingrained gender norms, violence and harassment, cultural and societal expectations, economic limitations, and family obligations. Survey data were collated from 192 students, alumni, and staff at three academic higher education (HE) institutions in Brazil, utilizing a range of descriptive and inferential statistical analyses to uncover the most significant barriers. This study concludes with policy recommendations aimed at various stakeholders, including government bodies, employers, and other organizations, to support a smoother transition for women from higher education to empowerment. These recommendations include improving workplace policies, enhancing legal protections, and promoting gender equality in leadership roles, all of which are essential to narrowing the gender gap in Brazil
Gender and Career; Exploring Transitions for Women from Higher Education to Employment in Egypt
Get PDFEgypt's workforce mostly comprises women, even though there are more female students than male students at higher education institutions, and they usually perform better than males. This exploratory study is part of a funded project investigating female students' barriers to transitioning from higher education to employment in Egypt. Several barriers were identified and categorized into family, workplace, and cultural barriers. The study is comprehensive yet limited in scope, as different regions in the country have varying dynamics and socioeconomic conditions. Hence, women face various barriers and drivers. More exploration is needed to obtain a holistic view of the country and devise a more comprehensive framework to address these issues and make the transition easier for all genders in Egypt
Knowledge Foundations, Issue 7 - July 2024
Get PDFKnowledge Foundations publication (formally the UCEM e-library e-bulletin) is a compendium of news, views, research and resources relating to the educational sector and the built environment
Knowledge Foundations, Issue 10 - October 2024
Get PDFKnowledge Foundations publication (formerly the UCEM e-library e-bulletin) is a compendium of news, views, research, and resources related to the educational sector and the built environment
Low-carbon Homes: Housing construction for the green transition
No full textThis report compiles surveyed experiences from construction industry professionals, designers, policy makers and researchers, to better understand how the systemic changes necessary might be catalysed. This process has revealed the nature of the issues hindering wide-scale adoption of low-carbon construction
Can multi-objective optimisation and generative design tools help facilitate more effective estates developments for future skills in the tertiary education sector following the SFC Coherence Review and the Scottish Government's Infrastructure Investment Plan?
Get PDFThe Scottish Funding Council’s Coherence Review of Tertiary Education, published in 2020, reflected on the financial sustainability of the sector where greater collaboration between Colleges and Universities was identified. This coupled with the Scottish College of the Future Report in 2020 identifying similar financial concerns but with that, the opportunity to rationalise regional curriculum offerings to be more meaningful and creating a greater connected educational infrastructure, prompted the author of this architectural thesis to consider the coherence and rationalisation of Educational Estates.
The Scottish Governments Infrastructure Investment Plan 2021/22 to 2025/26 identified needs assessments to predicate the commissioning of new campus buildings with maximising existing assets as well as co locating and repurposing facilities, preferred to the financing of new facilities. Furthermore the Scottish Government current annual spend on the tertiary education sector equates to £3.5bn cut by £33m from the previous financial year, giving a strong indication that capital expenditure for new campus developments will likely be a last resort.
The author identified a Hypothesis that parametric design tools can be used to both collate data on existing facilities assets but also interconnect design objectives that can support needs assessments based on parameters deemed critical to the rationalisation of an exiting estate. The hypothesis worked on the principle of upscaling the parametric design tools in order to prepare a federated ecosystem of buildings, whereby asset utilisation in inter-regional facilities could potentially be aligned with regional skills needs, thus aligning with CSIC’s Future Skills Strategy, where centres of excellence and skills academy models are being proposed.
Using visual programming via the Grasshopper plug in for Rhino, data sheets for Fife Colleges new Dunfermline Learning Campus allowed a generative model from Excel data to be created, giving a conceptual mass which was then bin packed to another Grasshopper component named Wallacei. This was to generate design permutations using pre-defined fitness objectives. Whilst the end results did not have the anticipated impact identified in the hypothesis, what was identified was the need for more user-friendly interfaces and beginning with the refinement of single fitness objectives prior to embarking on more ambitious multi objective optimisation workflows.
Multi objective design tools can however, offer huge potential for the tertiary education sector to align physical estates with policy and curriculum planning tools to determine optimisation of regional facilities as well as supporting future needs assessments that are critical if investment for future infrastructure investments is sought from the Scottish Government. The ability to do so requires collaboration from stakeholders between centres. The East Central Scotland Colleges Collaboration provides that particular consortium of colleges the opportunity to begin this process through supplying an audit of one another’s estates infrastructure into a coherent data set to begin establishing workflows for both generative and multi objective optimisation design tools that can help plan for future needs assessments in a coherent manner, driving optimised estates utilisation for a sector and reducing unnecessary capital expenditure
Reconceptualising Pavement Maintenance Decision-Making Using GIS as a Visualisation Tool: A Case Study Exemplar
Get PDFThis study explores how a visualised GIS model can aid decision-making in pavement maintenance management,
focusing on roads under Local Road Authorities (LRA) control in the U.K. Factors influencing decision-making in
pavement maintenance were identified and ranked through a nationwide questionnaire survey, followed by interviews
with LRA experts to validate the rated factors. The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was employed to configure
priority rankings. Subsequently, a GIS-based decision support model was developed and tested using Runnymede
roads within Surrey County Council. Fourteen influential factors affecting pavement maintenance were identified and
ranked. The GIS model was deemed a rational, simple, and usable tool for pavement management. With growing
pressures on LRAs from limited budgets, increased accountability, and ageing roads facing higher traffic loads, efficient decision-making processes are crucial. GIS is a valuable tool for visualising results and optimising pavement maintenance strategies
Women in leadership of higher education: critical barriers in Jordanian universities.
Get PDFInequality and the lack of inclusion of women in academic higher education (HE) leadership roles persist globally. While inclusivity at the top also applies to ethnicity and disability, the issue of gender is the focus of this article. More specifically, the distinct need is to examine the barriers that slow down and/or obstruct women from advancing in academia and gaining leadership positions. Thus, the purpose of this study is to provide a review of the case in Jordanian Universities. It presents the prevailing situation from the results of a desktop study and a survey questionnaire of the barriers that impede career progression for women in HE. The severity index (SI) formula is used to delineate critical barriers found in the literature in a Jordanian context through a questionnaire. Factor analysis was used to group the critical barriers, which in turn was used to derive an action plan to improve career progression for female academics. The study exposed that women’s participation in leadership was deter-mined to be low, which is attributed to several barriers: sociocultural barriers, gender stereotypes, lack of skill and opportunities, work-life conflicts, social network obstacles, mentoring and support, and poor institutional policies that support women. As a result, several actions are recommended to support an increase in female leader
Discounted Cash Flows – Challenges to making it mainstream in real estate
No full textA series of 3 webinars with guest speakers,
Charles Golding (RICS)
Matthew Dichler (Partner, Knight Frank)
Professor Emeritus Colin Lizieri (University of Cambridge
Social, Economic, and Environmental Evaluation: Adopting Digital Manufacturing for Circularity in Cementitious Products
Get PDFThis report presents the social, economic, and
environmental evaluation of digital manufacturing
innovations to enhance the circularity of cementitious
products. Cementitious products come in various
forms and dimensions, ranging from ready mixes
to construction product inputs such as cement
blocks, cement roofing slates, cement pavement
slaps, cement pipes and concrete. In technical
terms, cementitious materials blend with water and
other solutions to form a pliable paste that forms
into concrete when mixed with such aggregates as
mortar, limes, or cement. In other words, cementitious
materials are essential components of concrete.
A typical concrete mix is made up of 60-75%
aggregates, 15-20% water, and only 10-15% cement.
Aggregates, water, and other resources that go into
cement production, including the energy used to form
concrete are exhaustible natural resources that are
rapidly depleting