INCLUSION OF GENDER STUDIES IN THE FIELD OF HIGHER EDUCATION
Instituto Politécnico Nacional - UPIITA (MEXICO)
About this paper:
Appears in:
EDULEARN11 Proceedings
Publication year: 2011
Pages: 5375-5381
ISBN: 978-84-615-0441-1
ISSN: 2340-1117
Conference name: 3rd International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies
Dates: 4-6 July, 2011
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Abstract:
Vision of the gender concept, organized the current social distance and has an impact on the construction of a system of social order. To understand this, we must have clear the concept of gender because it is not a synonym for sex (biology), we required to have a gender vision. De Barbieri says:
"Gender systems are sets of practices, symbols, representations, social norms and values
that societies developed from the anatomical and physiological sexual difference and
give meaning to the satisfaction of sexual impulses, to the reproduction of human
species and in general the relationship between people. In Durkheimian terms, are the
patterns of social relations that determine the relations of human beings as sexual persons." (1993, 5)
Thus, men and women need to review the budgets of the feminine but also masculine. For example, in the latter case, the preconceptions that have settled in traditional masculinity, visions that limit human potential and stigmatizes those who do not conform to the hegemonic model.
How to promote the vision of gender equality, women's empowerment if public policies sometimes seek only statistics? How to train new generations with this new vision if teachers and principals themselves have and maintain the traditional stereotype of the feminine and masculine?, if they do not have the conviction that the goal is equality for a better society future? How to speak of co-education, if images of the messages from the media (whether books, review, tv programs, etc.), repeating the traditional roles men / women without being questioned about what they transmit?
This paper presents the results of a larger study from a research at National Polytechnic Institute (IPN), particularly in the Professional Interdisciplinary Engineering and Advanced Technologies Unit (Mexico). Among the main objectives of this research is to identify the main social causes of gender imbalances occur. Among the highlights results and views of students and teachers, they express the need for such programs with a gender perspective, not as far as an optional situation of higher education, but part of their schooling. We will present cases of the positive significance of this type of training activities from the perspective of gender studies. The results allow us to conclude that institutional gender programs should be mandatory in all educational levels, but specially in higher education.
No strategic change without the existence of systematized actions, from specific objectives. So, we think about the programs with a gender perspective are really necessary in the formal education.Keywords:
Gender studies, Higher Education, institutional programs.