This study analyses the impact of agricultural technology adoption on income inequality. Primary data has been collected from 400 sample households in Awi zone of Ethiopia through household survey during agricultural season of 2017/18. The collected data were analysed by using propensity score matching method. The estimated results revealed that adoption of agricultural technologies such as chemical fertiliser and improved seeds significantly increase total household income but worsen income distribution. After adoption of agricultural technologies, income inequality measured by Gini coefficient increased ranged from 0.047 to 0.087. Hence, the government and other concerned authorities should exert more efforts in order to enhance technology adoption status of the poor households by increasing their accessibility for extension and credit services.

Engineering is traditionally considered a male domain with lower female participation despite various affirmative actions taken in recent decades. There is evidence of greater gender equality as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and precautionary lockdown measures. With this in mind, this paper investigates whether women engineers in India were more adversely affected than their male counterparts by the COVID-19 pandemic. Such an impact may be explained by ‘intersectional stigma’, expanded upon in the literature on discrimination. The impact of such stigma varies in different countries based on socio-cultural factors. Through the use of ethnographic and statistical research methods on secondary and primary data from a sample of 384 engineers, this paper shows that the impact of COVID-19 is not significantly different between genders in engineering education and employment. This may be due to the high demand for digital engineering skills, and strong family support in Indian society. Engineering branch may play a relatively more important role than gender in terms of impact. This finding has repercussions for continuing engineering education (CEE) programs and regulatory bodies in India in terms of enhancing course content and the results may be used in developing affirmative programs in other regions.

Engineering and Technology Education is a means to sustain and accelerate the overall development in a country and it has a direct effect on individuals’ productivity and earnings as well. But the problem is there is gender disparity in distribution especially in developing countries among educational branches. In Ethiopia, despite significant improvements in the last couple of years, women are still under-represented in engineering and technology. Since the share of Ethiopian women in science and technology programs in higher education has been low, the governments apply a policy to stream 70% of all university entrants to be in the science and technology track indirectly to increase their entry into these fields. Even if this types of policy is applying, their participation in engineering and technology education and employment is very low proportion. The main purpose of this study is an attempt to assess trends and share of women in the field of engineering and technology regarding to their share of enrollment, employment and professional positions from the period 2000 -12 based on available secondary data collected from different sources. The collected quantitative data were analyzed by using descriptive data analysis techniques. Result from the data shows that there is low share of women in engineering and technology enrollment, employment and professional position status as compared to male in the country. Even if the share of enrollment of women in higher education is on improved status, their share of enrollment in engineering and technology filed is quite low that on average below 30 percent per year. In addition, this grate disparity and low participation of women in engineering and technology invites further investigation regarding to what is the reason behind.

Globalization process and growth of knowledge economy with increasing dependency on innovative information technology necessitated an expansion of higher education institution. With the country counting on its demographic dividend, the increase in number of students seeking university degree is putting pressure on the higher education sector to expand. Government funding in higher education is not sufficient to meet the growing demand, which has led to the establishment and mushrooming growth of private higher education institutions. Private higher education institutions are established by philanthropic, private business establishments, religious and for-profit organizations. The increase in the number of institutions carries with it serious challenges ahead; thus, the article discusses the challenges ahead of these private engineering institutions.

After a significant expansion in the number of engineering institutions and intake capacity in India for almost a quarter century, i.e., between 1991-2014, a deceleration has been experienced. At a time when technical intensity has increased, even for non-technical sector, and the primacy is to achieve Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 for which technology needs to play a central role, deceleration in enrolment may not be a good sign. In this background, the paper discusses probable reasons like existing high unemployment among engineers, high cost of private engineering education, and inability of institutions to impart employability skills which fade away their chances to get employed in future too, for this falling enrolment. Moreover, medical education has experienced expansion in the recent past. Generally, software, and IT firms impart their own training after recruiting fresh graduates so they tend to recruit engineers of any branch or even science graduates, where the cost of getting a degree is lower than engineering. Use of emerging technologies in business has made the engineering labour market quite dynamic and is changing the old paradigm of workplace, working hours, static employable skills, etc.

Very good effort by the author. Following are my few suggestions for the paper: 1. Pandemic may have aggravated the speed of automation but the trend emerged and was being discussed even before the pandemic. So, in the title of the paper, post-P...