Regardless of gender, race, cultural and physical differences, inclusiveness, and empowerment, everyone is acknowledged globally to be among the key factors enabling the societies and countries to reach their full potential and sustainable development. The inclusiveness of education in all its phases (pre-school, primary, secondary, higher) and all its specializations (including science and technology/engineering) is the main notion that the research study is aligned with.

At first sight, incomprehensiveness facts may seem to be unsuitable for most modern societies in our days. However, even the absence of any legal or academic boundaries cannot eliminate gender disparities in some particular sectors. For example, according to statistical gap analysis provided in Azerbaijan, fewer women than men pursue a degree in technical sciences, comprising 27% of all students of both state and private universities. (The State Statistical Committee of the Republic of Azerbaijan, 2019). This discrepancy is also evidently visible in the labor market, whereas applicants to technical roles differ significantly by gender, resulting in the underrepresentation of women in the engineering workforce.

Considering that there are no visible obstacles established on women's path to the engineering job market, answers could be found by investigating sociological factors such as feelings of isolation, an unsupportive work environment, extreme work schedules, and unclear rules about promotion. The current research study intends to understand societal perceptions about women's choice in favor of engineering-related career paths and identify the factors that affect those perceptions. The other aim is to find out the actual constraints for female students in choosing engineering as a career path for themselves (is its a lack of technical knowledge or any social issues).

Literature review shows that main influencing factors are classified into 3 groups:

1. First, the notion that men are mathematically superior and innately better suited to STEM fields than women remain a common belief, with a large number of articles addressing cognitive gender differences as an explanation for the small numbers of women in STEM.

2. A second theme revolves around girls' lack of interest in STEM.

3. A third theme involves the STEM workplace, with issues ranging from work-life balance to bias. (C. Hill, C. Corbett, A. St. Rose, 2010)

It is planned to interview over 6000 secondary school students and their parents and university students. The survey will reveal the conscious and unconscious bias of society and understand tangible and intangible barriers challenging the women in their aspirations towards technical/engineering knowledge and work practice. Afterward, the research findings will be represented as contributor grounds for future steps into the increase of the inclusiveness level within society.

The research aims to find out the reasons behind the lack of female representation in engineering. Our research design is quantitative. To do that, we plan to administer surveys among three target groups: parents, high school students, and university students. School students represent 9th, 10th, and 11th-grade students, and they are selected from the top ranking schools in university entrance exams. The survey will cover the two biggest cities, including the capital city, Baku, and one suburban region with a quite big population. This suburban region was selected as it represents people with different socio-economic backgrounds. The high school student sample is about 3400 students from 44 schools, and students are randomly selected. In this survey, students will answer questions about their future career plans, education expectations, perceptions about engineering, stereotypes in engineering, etc. They will also answer some questions related to their economic background, and at the end, we will correlate this to their perceptions about engineering, their educational and career expectations. One parent per student will participate in the parent survey. Approximately 3000 parents will respond to questions about how they think of engineering, whether they would like to see their child as an engineer, and does it differ depending on the gender of their children. In the end, we will try to find any relationship between parents' education level and their perceptions about engineering. Furthermore, our third target group is female sophomores whose university entrance exam points were enough for engineering professions, but they chose the other pathway. Approximately 180 female students representing eight universities will participate in that survey. They will tell why they have not chosen engineering, which factors played the main role in their career choice, attitude towards engineering stereotypes, etc. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic situation, the surveys will be in an online format. As schools already use the Microsoft Teams platform for the provision of distance education, we will use this platform's help to reach high school students. We will reach parents and university students with the help of email. After the data is collected, we will analyze it with the help of statistical programs.

As we are in the data collection phase now, we cannot talk about any conclusion. We will have our results by spring next year, and it will be ready for the Emerging Researchers' Conference.

1.Hill, C., Corbett, C., & St Rose, A. (2010). Why so few? Women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. American Association of University Women. 1111 Sixteenth Street NW, Washington, DC 20036. 2.The State Examination Centre. (2018). The list of admitted students to higher education institutions– the passing scores per faculties (Group I). Baku, Azerbaijan. 3.The State Statistical Committee of the Republic of Azerbaijan. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.stat.gov.az/source/gender/