GENDER DIGITAL DIVIDE AND ENGINEERING STUDENTS

Although each day especially the new generations of young people and children have increased access and use several digital technologies of communication and information such as cell phones with various apps, tablets, internet, computers.... But still persist the "negative images", prejudices and stereotypes regarding women have less use of those devices, fear of technology, lack of expertise, and / or waste of time, while the male stereotype indicates a higher use of computers and high skill with these technologies, especially for work. At the level of higher education, particularly engineering students in high technology, we observe the current generations of digital device users make extensive use of digital technologies. Clearly the need to use certain equipment and software a result of their professional training enables almost equally to men and women in those skills, but the question would be is the educational background that allows the disappearance of digital divide or the reason of differences is because of gender? To help answer this question, in this paper, we present the results of a gender perspective research being done at the National Polytechnic Institute (Mexico) particularly at UPIITA School, where they train students in Engineering and Technology advanced. Thus we can identify if there are significant gender differences in the use and appropriation of technology primarily for educational purposes vs. social networks primarily for interpersonal communication and entertainment. We should mention that we start from the idea that technological appropriation cannot be the exclusive result of a single factor could be decisive as access to technology or age or educational context. We therefore consider doing this study with students with similar characteristics (such as age, career interests, etc.), to identify if gender is the cause that makes the difference in the use and appropriation of technology.