Gender competences in undergraduate studies in Spanish public universities. Case study of the University of Seville

Gender competences in undergraduate studies in Spanish public universities. Case study of the University of Seville. Methodology This research analyses how European standards have been transferred to the teaching programmes of a Spanish university with more than 60,000 students, the University of Seville (US), the third largest in Spain. A content analysis of 4,643 undergraduate degree programmes has been carried out for all branches of knowledge. Purpose Accordingly, the objective is to perform a diagnosis on the inclusion of gender skills in all of its official degree programmes, for the purpose of drafting a best practices guide that may serve as motivation to include mainstreaming and specific skills in ‘teaching practice’. Findings We have established the scant presence of the gender perspective in the teaching projects of the US. Over 80 per cent of them do not comply with the regulations in this regard. Our second hypothesis, namely, that there are differences between fields of knowledge when complying with the mandatory transversal application of the gender perspective, has also been substantiated. This is especially the case in the natural sciences and engineering and architecture. Originality The results illustrate the little echo(?) of the regulations in the teaching projects and the existence of important differences when it comes to the gender perspective according to the branches of knowledge. This is the first research to carry out a study of this nature in all the degrees taught at a university and provides evidence of the need to modify equality policies in the university environment. 1. Introduction The existence of applicable legislation does not always mean that it is enforced. University education and gender combine two universes relating to education and the social realm. There has been a deluge of mandatory legal requirements, stipulated by both the European Union and universities themselves, in both spheres over the past decade. With a clear socioeducational objective, Constitutional Act 3/2007 of 22 March for Effective Equality between Women and Men, and Constitutional Act 4/2007 (March and April), amending the previous Act 6/2001 on Spanish Universities, created the framework for the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), which has laid the foundations for the new higher education studies for acquiring skills. This model gives priority to equality between men and women, as does the Spanish Constitution, the bylaws of the country’s different autonomous communities and the internal regulations of its universities. One such measure—Constitutional Act 14/2011, of 1 June, on Science, Technology and Innovation—envisaging the introduction of gender mainstreaming, deals with compliance with equality legislation in the degree verification reports of Spanish universities. Similarly, at the regional level, Law 12/2007, for the promotion of gender equality in Andalusia (the region in which the university analysed is located), and Legislative Decree 1/2013, approving the Consolidated Text of the Andalusian Law on Universities, are regional reference standards on these matters. The university gender/equality binomial has obliged the scientific community to address this matter and to put forward proposals for moving forward in a number of aspects, including the following: glass ceilings and velvet ghettos (Cline et al., 1986); gender violence and sexual harassment in the workplace; the inclusion of female university professors in managerial positions; the numerical representation of female students and their academic performance in relation to their male counterparts; the representation of women in research and teaching by field of knowledge; networks and publication channels for female researchers; the creation of units responsible for gender equality in chancellor’s offices, etc. These issues are being researched in Spain and the rest of the world (Howie and Tauchert, 2019; Lörz and Mühleck, 2019; Aktas et al., 2019), for even in developed countries with legislations that respect civil liberties, inequality continues to be an issue in higher education. As Castaño has stated as regards management, the new public management currently being practised at European universities promotes mainstreaming and diversity as the basis for equality policies, which nevertheless ‘are grounded in quantitative success metrics, while […] equality has been reduced to a numerical illusion and the myth of free choice to justify gender inequalities’ (2016: 238). The conclusions of researchers demonstrate that this is a current concern at Spanish universities (García Sáinz, 2017), albeit more for women, and that progress in this regard has been just as slow in Europe as a whole. Despite being a governmental concern, as reflected in the reports of the European Commission (2011), universities are still resisting change (Verge et al., 2018). Pastor and Acosta emphasise how difficult it is to reduce the gender labour gap at Spanish universities, notwithstanding the measures that have recently been adopted, plus the need to ‘de-gender’ science to forge ahead (2016: 268). Women account for 48% of researchers in Spain, but only 16% are rectors, and 21% are professors (Ansede, 2019). The illusion of equality, which is still sketchy, can be seen in the growing number of women in managerial positions and in research, but there are essential areas that should be addressed to achieve real equality in academia, such as the curriculum, and not only who teaches it. Indeed, this approach is difficult to find in the equality programmes of public universities, in which many of the initiatives are nothing more than fine words, without any guarantee that they will be implemented (Pastor et al., 2020). The studies published to date demonstrate that in some fields of knowledge and disciplines what is still considered as teaching innovation (Vega et al., 2018; Aguilera et al., 2019) should now be routine. The largest number of studies have been performed on degree programmes, fields of knowledge and subjects (Guarinos et al., 2018; Ortega and Pagés, 2018; García-Ramos et al. 2020). Some universities have taken action and, in addition to diagnosing the presence of skills, have assessed their results, as has been the case with Vizcarra et al. (2015) and Aguilar (2015). There is even now talk of how urgent it is to adopt measures in subject programmes and projects in fields such as the health sciences, in which there is currently the highest degree of commitment in Spain. (Ruiz-Cantero et al., 2019). Learning of excellence, namely, learning from those with the best track record (Canada, the United States, Holland and the United Kingdom), is recommended. The need for gender mainstreaming in higher education, both in the social and natural sciences, is a social imperative today. Only through this action will it be possible to train adult professionals capable of closing the gender gap and changing the game rules (Morley, 2013; Vázquez-Cupeiro, 2015). 2. Objectives The few scientific studies that have hitherto analysed the results of the introduction of skills at Spanish universities have confirmed that ‘mainstreaming as a teaching strategy as regards gender issues has yielded scant results’ (Asián et al., 2015: 41), i.e., the use of gender-sensitive learning as a strategy that cuts across the content of all subjects, owing to the lack of knowledge and awareness of teaching staff. Accordingly, this study focuses on a Spanish public university, that of Seville, and, specifically, on the following research question: what is the current situation of mainstreaming and specificity in this regard at a university with over 60,000 students? Accordingly, the objective is to perform a diagnosis on the inclusion of gender skills in all of its official degree programmes, for the purpose of drafting a best practices guide that may serve as motivation to include mainstreaming and specific skills in ‘teaching practice’. It is necessary to review how these skills are included in the subject and degree programmes of different fields of knowledge, and to identify what type of subjects they are, the quantitative and qualitative inclusion of mainstreaming content or skills, and the challenges that these pose. Accordingly, this study focuses on undergraduate degree programmes, insofar as it is considered that what is involved is Level 2 of the Spanish Qualifications Framework for Higher Education (MECES), to wit, the basic university level. The University of Navarre (Fernández Viguera, 2011) and the University of Cadiz (Menéndez, 2018) are the only two Spanish universities that have performed comprehensive reviews to date. The results of this last review reveal that 49 per cent of the degree programmes have a gender perspective, but only 8 per cent of the subjects include gender content or skills, the field of health sciences being the most explicit in this regard, followed by the social sciences and the arts and humanities, while being non-existent in the natural sciences, engineering and architecture. Precisely, 0.2 per cent are specific gender subjects, 7 per cent include the gender perspective, 5 per cent are susceptible to including the gender perspective and 88 per cent do not refer to the concept whatsoever. With the aim of confirming whether or not they include the mandatory gender skills, 67 degree verification reports and over 21 national and 12 international double degree programmes, taught at a total of 25 of the University of Seville’s (US) centres and five associated ones, were examined. Grouped by field of knowledge, these verification reports have confirmed the following: the inclusion of transversal skills in all of the arts and humanities (with the same text: ‘To foster and guarantee respect for human rights and the principles of universal accessibility, equality and non-discrimination and the democratic values of a culture of peace’; except for philosophy and archaeology, which are more explicit in this respect). Mainstreaming appears to a lesser extent in the health sciences and only in nursing are specific skills developed. In the social sciences and law these skills are formulated in a variety of ways, but always as general skills, and only specifically so in anthropology. In the natural sciences they appear as general ones in a standard paragraph, as in engineering and architecture, with two undergraduate degree programmes (electronic engineering, robotics and mechatronics, and industrial chemical engineering) that neither include such a paragraph nor any other, thus failing to comply with the regulations vis-à-vis gender and/or equality. Despite being mandatory, the difficulties in applying and developing mainstreaming in the lecture hall is an undisputed fact (Bosch et al. 2011; Castellsagué et al., 2014; Menéndez, 2014). This has led to a regression, inasmuch as ‘the incorporation of specific modules in degree programmes, which had been promoted to a certain extent in the former undergraduate and Bachelor’s degree programmes, has declined with the incorporation of the new undergraduate curricula’ (Menéndez, 2014: 53), because they have been included as general skills and because their introduction in teaching programmes and projects has floundered. In this context, the initial hypotheses are as follows: - The majority of the US’s teaching programmes do not include a gender perspective. - There are differences depending on the field of knowledge when applying this mandatory mainstreaming. Accordingly, this study has three specific objectives: 1. To determine whether or not the institutional initiatives aimed at developing the gender perspective at Spanish universities have had an impact on undergraduate teaching projects at the US. 2. To establish a typology according to the presence of the gender perspective in those projects. 3. To establish a pyramid of presence in terms of the fields of knowledge covered by those projects. 3. Methodology and corpus To meet the aforementioned objectives, a content analysis was performed on all the teaching projects (a more developed version of the programme, specific for each group/teacher) relating to the 88 undergraduate degree programmes taught at the US during the academic year 2018/2019. The projects were downloaded in pdf. format from the university’s official website. Totalling 4,643, they were all in force during the aforementioned academic year (see Table I). As some of the projects belonging to the same subjects could be identical, those of the same length were compared and the identical ones were eliminated. After coding, the projects with the same number of codes were contrasted and those that were equivalent were also eliminated. The filtering of source documents resulted in a total of 3,131 teaching projects, which are shown in Table I listed by field of knowledge. Insert Table I. After introducing the teaching projects as source documents in the qualitative data analysis programme Atlas.ti, they were renamed and grouped in different families so as to facilitate their analysis by field of knowledge and degree programme. The procedure described by Guarinos et al. (2018) was followed for coding the projects. In order to identify references to gender, 20 projects chosen at random were carefully read, before retrieving the keywords. Among the keywords detected, we included “LBGTI”, “Queer” and “Patriarchy” as they repeatedly appear in publications related to gender studies. Automatic coding was performed using the ‘prerequisite statement’ function to avoid confusion with homonyms. Automatic coding allows for assigning labels to words, phrases, paragraphs and documents containing specific terms. In this study, the phrase was selected as the unit of analysis. The keywords detected and employed for coding are shown in Table II. Insert Table II. To tally the codes and to avoid duplications other new ones were created. Two keywords, for example, ‘equality and gender’ could appear in the coded phrases, thus duplicating the references. Accordingly, Boolean searches were performed to exclude those codes appearing in the same phrase. For instance, if the phrase ‘gender equality’ were coded, this would result in two codes ‘equality’ and ‘gender’. To avoid double counts, a new one was created employing the Boolean search and indicating that in the case of the code ‘gender’, only those coded phrases containing ‘gender’, but not ‘equality’, should be included. The same procedure was employed in the case of ‘women’: it was established that the phrase should contain ‘women’, but neither ‘equality’ nor ‘gender’. This was repeated with the five codes used. The order followed is shown in the first column of Table II. 4. Results When analysing the coded teaching projects, two aspects stood out: 1. There were important differences depending on the field of knowledge. 2. In some fields of knowledge there were specific subjects addressing the gender perspective which, in some cases, involved up to 65 per cent of the codes of the field of knowledge in question. It was therefore decided to perform an analysis by field of knowledge, without taking into consideration the specific subjects containing a high number of codes, in order that the comparison between fields of knowledge should be more realistic. The excluded subjects were as follows:  ‘Gender Studies in Communication’ in the social sciences.  ‘Gender Literature and Minorities’, ‘Gender and English Literature’, ‘Arabic Literature Written by Women’, ‘Gender and Family in Eastern Asia’ and ‘Feminist Thought’ (this subject contained 187 codes, due to its extensive bibliography of more than 30 pages) in the arts and humanities.  ‘Gender and Health’ in the health sciences. 4.1. By the appearance of gender references To present the results, the existence or not of the gender perspective in the teaching projects will first be addressed, followed by those for each field of knowledge. 4.1.1. Teaching projects without gender references The first analysis involved differentiating between those projects containing gender references and those that did not (with or without codes). The most striking finding is that in 81.4 per cent of the projects neither is there any reference to the gender perspective, nor do they even include the mandatory transversal skills. By field of knowledge, the natural sciences is the one with the lowest number of references (only 5.7 per cent) and the social sciences and law that with the highest (29.8 per cent). The number of projects analysed by field of knowledge and those that do not contain any codes are shown in Table III. Insert Table III. In Graph 1 it is possible to observe the differences between the fields of knowledge that prompted us to perform an independent comparative analysis. Insert Graph 1. It is evident that the gender topic is an object of study in the social sciences and law, as well as in the arts and humanities. Be that as it may, in this study the focus was not only placed on module content, but also on the analysis of the objectives and skills that they developed, and so as to be included as projects ‘with gender references’ they only had to mention some of the (gender-related) search terms. 4.1.2. Projects with gender references A total of 1,071 coded phrases corresponding to the five codes distributed in 583 teaching projects with gender references were obtained. When analysing the data (see Table IV), it is possible to observe the predominance of those references containing the term ‘equality’, appearing in all those teaching projects that include the transversal skills recommended by the Spanish Universities Act. At any rate, it should be recalled that the duplication of references was avoided in order that those that were already included in a code did not appear in the following one. Insert Table IV. The following graph shows the percentage of each code on the total by field of knowledge. Insert Graph 2. 4.2. Fields of knowledge The presence of each code by field of knowledge in some of the most critical sections in which the teaching projects are organised - 'Objectives and skills' (what knowledge and skills the students should acquire), 'Content' (a theoretical-practical set of the subject taught) and 'Bibliography' (scientific literature and recommended or compulsory reading manuals) - will now be analysed. 4.2.1. Social sciences and law The study of the gender perspective is inherent to the social sciences and law. Thus, it is reasonable to expect a high presence of these codes in sections such as ‘Objectives and skills’, ‘Content’ and ‘Bibliography’. In this field of knowledge there are 252 coded projects, with an average of 2.64 codes per project (for their frequencies, see Table V). Insert Table V. Similarly, the distribution of the codes in the different sections of the teaching projects are shown in Table VI. Insert Table VI. The presence of each one of these codes in each of the sections of the teaching projects will now be examined below. EQUALITY Objectives and skills This code appears above all in ‘Objectives and skills’ sections, specifically as a generic objective. The drafting of sections in which this objective appears is not standardised, for which reason some of the paragraphs contained in the teaching projects are identical, while the teaching staff have added other different ones. Content In law, although many of the coded teaching projects mentioned social inequality without any specific reference to gender, in the majority of cases it was decided to maintain them because it was believed that they addressed gender inequality in some way or another. Accordingly, some subjects contain entire sections or sub-sections dealing with equality. Bibliography The teaching projects contain 31 bibliographic references that include the term ‘equality’ in relation to gender. GENDER Objectives and skills The most frequently cited objective (37 per cent of the total) appears in the teaching project of the Social and Cultural Anthropology undergraduate degree course: - ‘E08. To recognise and analyse the relationships of domination as to class, gender, interethnicity, racism and age, which generate social exclusion dynamics.’ Content There are subjects that include entire sections devoted to addressing the subject matter from a gender perspective. This is the case with ‘Sociology of Labour and Companies’, ‘Sociology of Tourism’ and ‘Adapted Sports for Diversity’. Bibliography There are 26 bibliographic references among the 161 gender-related codes. WOMEN The code ‘women’ appears primarily in content sections. It should be recalled that, although it appears in other phrases, double counts were avoided. Objectives and skills Only one objective not appearing in the previous sections has been detected, namely, in the teaching project of the ‘Ethnology of Latin America’ subject. Content The rest of the codes appear in the content of sections specifically addressing the gender perspective of subjects like ‘Basic Sociological Processes in Education’ and ‘Historical Legal Institutions’. Bibliography The highest number of references are to be found in the bibliographies, with 57 publications relating to the gender perspective and including the term ‘women’. FEMINISM There are 17 codes, the majority of them in the content sections of the teaching projects, examples including subjects such as ‘Anthropology of Sexuality’ and ‘Ethnography of Black Africa’. FEMININE There are 10 references to this code in the bibliographies and four in the content sections of the ‘Myths and Imaginary of Audio-visual Culture’ and ‘Introduction to Criminology’. 4.2.2. Arts and humanities In the arts and humanities, 77.9 per cent of the teaching projects do not include any reference to the gender perspective. As already noted in the methodology section, in this field of knowledge there are five subjects that specifically address gender issues that have not been analysed. The average number of references to the code ‘gender’ per project is 1.78. The relevance and frequency of the codes can be observed in Table VII. Insert Table VII. As with the social sciences and law, the gender perspective is an object of study in the arts and humanities, as can be seen in the five specific subjects and in the number of codes per teaching project, indicating that they include more than a mere list of objectives and skills. The distribution of the codes in the different sections of the teaching projects in shown in Table VIII. Insert Table VIII. The presence of each one of these codes in all the sections of the teaching projects is analysed below. EQUALITY The most frequent code is ‘equality’, accounting for 43 per cent of the total. Focusing on its distribution in the different sections of the teaching projects, it can be observed that it is basically to be found in ‘Objectives and skills’. Objectives and skills The most frequent is the generic skill recommended by the administration, as has been seen in the social sciences and law (with 54 teaching projects). Content Content is presented in specific sections of the teaching projects of subjects like ‘Fundamentals of Political Philosophy’ and ‘Current Ethical Theory and Issues’. WOMEN The second most frequent code is ‘women’, representing 21.5 per cent of the total. This term is to be largely found in bibliographies (it is important not to forget that the previous codes excluded the following one, that is, in those references in which the codes ‘equality’ and ‘women’ appeared, the former was chosen). Content With respect to content, in the teaching projects there are topics aimed at analysing the role of women appearing in different subjects including ‘Islamic Institutions’ and ‘Cultural Studies in English II’. Bibliography García-Ramos F.J., Zurian F. y Núñez-Gómez, P. (2020) Los estudios de género en los grados de Comunicación. Comunicar, Vol. 63, pp. 21-30. Guarinos V., Caro F. and Cobo S. (2018) La igualdad de género en los estudios de grado en Comunicación: la transversalidad imaginaria, Prisma Social, Vol. 22, pp. 296-325. Howie G. and Tauchert A. (2019) Gender, Teaching and Research in Higher Education, Routledge, London. Lötz M. y Mühleck K. (2019) Gender differences in higher education from a life course perspective: transitions and social inequality between enrolment and first post-doc position. Higher Education, Vol. 77 (3), pp. 381-402. Menéndez A. B. (2018) Análisis de la incorporación de la perspectiva de género en los Planes de Estudios de Grado de la Universidad de Cádiz. Cádiz. Universidad de Cádiz. Menéndez M. I. (2014) Perspectivas de género en el EEES: contenidos docentes en Comunicación. In: VVAA, III Xornada de Innovación en Xénero. Docencia e investigación. Lugo: Universidad de Lugo, pp. 39-55. https://www.uvigo.gal/opencms/export/sites/uvigo/sites/default/uvigo/DOCUMENTOS /igualdade/Actas_con_portada_III_Xornada.pdf (Accessed 30 January 2020). Morley, L. (2013). The rules of the game: women and the leaderist turn in higher education. Gender and Education, vol. 25, 1, 116-131. Ortega D. and Pagès J. (2018) Género y formación del profesorado: análisis de las guías docentes del área de didáctica de las ciencias sociales. Contextos educativos, Vol. 21, pp.53- 66. Pastor I. and Acosta A. (2016) La institucionalización de las políticas de igualdad en la Universidad española. Investigaciones feministas, Vol.7 (2), pp. 247-271. Pastor I. et al. (2020) Los planes de igualdad en las universidades españolas. Situación actual y retos de futuro. Educación XXI, Vol. 23 (1), pp. 147-172. Ruiz-Cantero M.T., Tomás-Aznar C., Rodríguez-Jaume M.J. et al. (2019) Agenda de género en la formación en Ciencias de la salud: experiencias internacionales para reducir tiempos en España. Gaceta Sanitaria, Vol. 33 (5), pp.485-490. Vázquez-Cupeiro, S. (2015). Ciencia, estereotipos y género: una revisión de los marcos explicativos. Convergencia. Revista de Ciencias Sociales, 68, 177-202. Vega A., García S., Díaz Hernández M. C. et al. (2018) Una experiencia de innovación en los procesos de enseñanza-aprendizaje en la Universidad desde la perspectiva de género, De la innovación imaginada a los procesos de cambio. https://riull.ull.es/xmlui/handle/915/9443 (Accessed 23 April 2020). Vizcarra, M.T. et al. (2015) La perspectiva de género en los títulos de grado en la Escuela Universitaria de Magisterio de Vitoria-Gasteiz. Revista de Docencia Universitaria, Vol. 13 (1), pp.297-318. Table I. Teaching projects analysed Fields of Knowledge Downloaded projects Debugged projects Difference Arts and humanities (AH) 797 569 228 Natural sciences (NS) 352 245 107 Health sciences (HS) 626 403 223 Social sciences and law (SS) 1318 846 472 Engineering and architecture (EA) 1550 1068 482 4643 3131 1512 Table II. Codes and search terms Code Search terms Igualdad Igualdad, equality Género Género, gender Mujeres Mujer, mujeres, woman, women Feminismo Feminismo, feminista, feministas, feminism, feminist Femenino Femenino, femeninos, female Queer queer Patriarcado patriarcado, patriarcal, patriarcal, patriarchy LGTB LGTB, LBGTI Table III. Frequency of projects without reference to gender by field of knowledge Field Total projects Projects without codes SS 846 594 AH 569 443 HS 403 318 EA 1068 962 NS 245 231 TOTAL 3131 2548 Table IV. Codes by fields of knowledge Code SS AH EA HS NS Total row Equality 355 93 104 64 17 633 Gender 156 35 4 34 0 229 Women 71 46 10 0 0 127 Feminism 18 27 0 1 0 46 Feminine 14 7 1 0 0 22 Queer 3 6 0 0 0 9 Patriarchy 2 0 0 0 0 2 Total 622 214 119 99 17 1071 Table V. Code frequency in SS Code Frequency Percentage Equality 355 57 % Gender 156 25.1% Women 71 11.4% Feminism 18 2.9% Feminine 14 2.3% Queer 3 0.05% Patriarchy 2 0.3% Total: 622 100% Table VI. Percentage of each code in the sections of a teaching project in SS Sections Percentage Objectives and skills 65.6% Contents 26.3% Bibliography 8.1% Table VII. Frequency of codes in AH Code Frequency Percentage Equality 93 44.7% Women 46 22.1% Gender 35 16.8% Feminism 27 13.0% Feminine 7 3.4% Total: 208 100% Table VIII. Percentage of each code in the sections of a teaching project in AH Sections Equality Gender Women Feminism Feminine Objectives and skills 83.33% 35.71% 0.00% 0% 0% Contents 12.50% 39.29% 24.39% 18% 50 % Bibliography 4.17% 25.00% 75.61% 82% 50% Table IX. Frequency of codes in EA Code Frequency Percentage Equality 104 92.04% Women 3 2.65% Gender 5 4.42% Feminine 1 0.88% Totals: 112 100.00% Table X. Percentage of each code in the sections of a teaching project at EA SECTIONS Equality Gender Women Feminism Objectives and skills 97.85% 50.00% 0.00% 0% Contents 1.08% 40.00% 33.33% 100 % Bibliography 1.08% 10.00% 66.66% 0% Table XI. Frequency of codes in HS Code Frequency Percentage Equality 64 65.31% Gender 34 34.69% Total: 98 1 Table XII. Percentage of each code in the sections of a teaching project in HS SECTIONS Equality Gender Objectives and skills 77.4% 16.1% Contents 55.5% 44.5% Bibliography 40.1% 59.9% Graph 1. Percentage of projects without gender references by fields of knowledge Graph 2. Percentage of each code on the total by field of knowledge 0.702 0.779 0.789 0.901 0.943 0.00% 10.00% 20.00% 30.00% 40.00% 50.00% 60.00% 70.00% 80.00% 90.00% 100.00% SS AH HS EA NS Graph 3. Percentage of appearance of the codes in the different sections of the teaching project Equality, 59% Gender, 22% Women, 12% Feminism, 4% Feminine, 2% Queer, 1% Patriarchy, 0% 44 44 61 92 100 30 21 19 50 26 34 10 20 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 SS AH HS EA NS Objectives and skills Contents Bibliography