The Value of a Sustainable Development Network in Advancing Gender Equality at Higher Engineering Education*

Anastasia Zabaniotou^{1, 2}

1. Department of Chemical Engineering, School of Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

2. Réseau Méditerranéen des Ecoles d’Ingénieurs (RMEI), Ecole Centrale Marseille, France-UNESCO Chair 651-Innovation and Sustainable Development

Abstract: This article aims to outline the value of networking on gender equality change perspectives at higher engineering education institutions. It presents how the network of Mediterranean Engineering Schools (RMEI) took the leap towards learning and acting for a systemic social change, created a community of practice on gender equality, and inspired members to commit to SDG5 under the framework of sustainable development, alternatively to the classical university’s approach, while it was enabled by the HORIZON 2020 TARGET project. The added value of the network comes from a) the existing co-sharing and collaboration conditions within the network, b) the ability to involve a range of multinational, multigenerational, multicultural stakeholders (professors, students, university’s leaders, policy-makers, practitioners, administrators, researchers, etc.) in a volunteer participatory approach, c) the challenging of the melting of traditional boundaries around engineering institutions by moving from separate bureaucratic centrally managed bodies to interconnected ecologies of self-assembling collaboration among mutually beneficial partnerships, d) the offering  of an environment where individual learners are becoming change agents to kick off the output phase of the other learners’ metabolism.

Key words: network, higher education, engineering, Mediterranean, gender equality, TARGET project, sustainable development