STUDENTS' AWARENESS ON GENDER INEQUALITY: CAN WE IMPROVE IT?

University’s curricula do not frequently include the gender perspective, neither explicitly or implicitly in the teaching plans. Teaching at the university is often presumed to be ideologically neutral and objective, but regarding gender it is not. Our concerns on that have driven us to a transversal project, in which we aim to introduce the gender perspective into the training of our students. We have implemented a pilot gender project in economy and history subjects on a Business and Administration Grade as well as in a Grade of Political Sciences.

We have particularly designed activities around how to measure gross domestic product (GDP), public policies, the effect of crisis and its recovery, and the role played by women over time. By introducing those topics in our teaching, our main goal has been to evaluate if they had an impact on the awareness of students about gender inequality. To assess the effect of the pilot exercises, we have used some questionnaires during the academic year 2016/17.They were answered by 201 students. A first questionnaire was done two weeks in advance, and a second one was done two weeks after the exercise had been fulfilled.

Results show that the introduction of specific knowledge on gender improves the awareness of the students on this type of inequality as well as their global concerns on the mainstream economic thinking. Additionally, they develop more skills on critic and analytical thinking. We can also state that the actions of the teachers on that direction have a positive impact on the students' conscientiousness on gender inequality.