“The Chilean feminist May got the institutions to consider feminist demands, these issues are never considered if there are no elements that push it and that is a fantastic choice,” says the doctor in sociology and vice-rector of the University of Alicante, María José Rodríguez.
The researcher was visiting Chile giving a series of courses that seek to educate about the inclusion of the sex/gender dimension in the content of the research. “The questioning of gender policies in the university institution dates back to the 80s of the last century at a global level and having this perspective of forty years I would say that we have lived a slow, but continuous process of transformation,” he said.
Gender and research
Currently, several universities, including the Autonomous University of Chile, are generating a line of research in terms of the development of competencies in gender, which seeks to show that, regardless of the area of knowledge, all research can consider the gender dimension, promoting a rigorous science that promotes such contingent contents related to all areas.
“Including equality policies improves the performance of the institution or the area in which it is applied and there is a lot of evidence of this,” says the academic, who was in charge of providing this training in Chile.
As he details, including the gender vision transversally in the research would bring only benefits. “It has a dual purpose; improve the scientific system itself and catalyze processes of change.”
Rodríguez has also been a spectator of a continuous process of social change and knows very closely the university feminist movement in Chile. “First of all it improves science, I am a scientist and I expect me and my community to do the best possible science, and it also transforms the society in which we live and science with a gender perspective improves life and the contexts where we develop our aspirations, our desires, our desires,” she says.
Going into the matter, the academic explains that this process of inclusion “has involved at first adding more women to science, in a second moment in diagnosing sexist asymmetries within the institution, such as positions of power within it or salary asymmetries and finally the analysis that involves including the gender approach in the content of the research.”
Therefore, for her it is not only a question of including in the structure of institutions, but also of producing knowledge. In that sense, the academic details that, “it would be fantastic if at this moment the pioneering women of feminism observed through a peephole, who began to say that knowledge is not neutral, it is excluding, discriminating and does not contribute to advance in society or in democracies, it would be fantastic if they saw that this process is taking hold.”
Resistance to change
Despite its benefits, the process has not been easy. The academic referred to a series of unconscious biases that have delayed the opening to this new vision. “Everything is a process of cultural change. When we talk about any kind of discrimination, the counterpart is to maintain the privileges you have earned because culturally that is how it has been established, not for merit or for some exceptional ability. This generates a lot of resistance, especially when we talk about gender biases.” With this he gave a paradigmatic example of unconscious gender biases in the academy “The John and Jenifer effect”:
“An investigation was done where the same curriculum was signed by the name of a woman, Jenifer and the name of a man, John. This document was sent to different universities in the East and West of the United States and they were asked to evaluate it based on a series of terms and to determine what financial remuneration they should receive for the position of director of a laboratory. Surprisingly, they found that in front of the same curriculum, in all the criteria they had to evaluate, they highlighted the one signed by a man and not only that, but the scientists considered that the economic remuneration they should receive was 20% higher, “he says.
For Rodríguez, examples like this only show the unconscious privileges that exist in spaces of knowledge generation, “it is necessary to pass a process of personal reset, it is to question ourselves. Resist themThey go through internalized sexisms and academia is no exception.”
Experiences of change
Fortunately, European public policies have advanced in this aspect, “in Europe this process has finished curdling when in the call of the European Commission approved last year where the funds destined for research in Europe are approved for the first time it is required that for a project to be funded to include the gender perspective in the content of the research, in all areas of knowledge.”
His approach to these advances is precisely one of the reasons for his visit to Chile, “that is what the INES of gender of the Autonomous University is doing and that is why I have been invited,” he says.
In this line, she advises that, in order to include gender perspectives in academic research in all its extension to generate the paradigm shift, “the first thing is to demystify that talking about the inclusion of gender perspectives is the same as talking about gender studies,” she says, “it is a fantastic multidisciplinary field that has as its central objective to consider gender studies from different disciplinary perspectives and as part of the process to know the experiences of academics, LGBTI academics, the group of students with dissidents and who are part of the design and generate networks, generate synergies that often contribute to the institution changing”.
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