Gender perspectives in higher education. A quantitative study about university curricula

Abstract

Education is a key area to promote changes in society to equality. Gender studies on education point out a range of barriers that stop those changes, where curricula are a very important issue and these last are not alien to androcentric logic. In this frame, results of a finalized research are presented. The aim was knowing ways of incorporation of gender perspectives in university curricula, focusing on five undergraduate programs of Social Sciences in a public and secular Chilean university. Following a quantitative approach and through documental review of 164 mandatory syllabus, indicators were constructed for measuring gender distribution on academic references and presence/absence of key concepts (feminism, gender and women). The analysis of information shows scarce references written by women and very low presence of those key concepts, a situation that contrasts with the outlook of graduate’ syllabus. This research points out why an effective incorporation of gender perspectives inside these disciplines is necessary, takes up again the debate between compulsory versus optative courses and suggests improvement actions to institutionalization of gender perspectives in university curricula.