Abstract:

Despite national and international recommendations aimed at incorporating the gender perspective into the university classroom, many investigations have noted the invisibility of women in the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). One of the strategies that seems most effective in offsetting their scant presence in these areas of knowledge involves promoting the gender perspective in subject guides. On the basis of this, it was decided that this study should seek to discover the views on this question of the teachers responsible for compiling these guides in STEM areas. To fulfil our objective we obtained the voluntary participation of 143 course coordinators of STEM subjects at the University of Alicante, who each completed an ad hoc questionnaire. A basic descriptive study was carried out with the help of SPPS .25 data analysis software. It can be deduced from the results that those in charge of designing STEM subject guides place little emphasis on including in these types of document content and concepts relating to the gender perspective, the sex/gender system, gender politics, equality and stereotyped culture. Indeed, they believe that dealing with these questions is neither common nor generalizable to all areas and subjects, and that it depends on the discipline being taught. However, they do appear to be more disposed to consider inclusive language as being a key aspect of subject guides. This body of knowledge on the treatment of gender in subject guides makes it possible to state that, despite the fact that institutions of higher education are committed to equality between women and men, more effort is needed to achieve the effective incorporation of gender into university teaching. We conclude, therefore, that there is an urgent need to improve training in and awareness of gender issues among STEM teachers so as to guarantee a more just, more democratic curricular approach that would be fairer to society as a whole.

Keywords:

Gender perspective, university teaching, subject guides, STEM, university teachers.