The Order of Things: Educator Women and Gender Inequality in Higher Education

Abstract

In this article, we retake some principles exposed by international organizations (World Bank, Unesco, among others), that made routes for contemporary public policy in the realm of education with relation to the terms of inclusion and inequality in Latin America. The goal of this article is to review the implications of the liberal and capitalist discourses as guiding principles of education for all and where women are not included but have the same conditions as men.

We display the case of two groups of women students from the undergraduate program in pre-school education in the 097 South Unit of Universidad Pedagógica Nacional (National Pedagogic University) in Mexico City. These cases serve as referents for questioning the element involved in the current educational policies and how women have occupied a place of structural inequality since the conformation of the organization of societies, the origin of democracy, and the patriarchal fusions and intricacies between capital and liberal States. By retaking a case study documented through qualitative research from the socialcultural perspective and by having in-depth interviews as the main tool of inquiring, the autobiographical narratives of the female students give an account of the gender conditioning and their social and cultural, family-related, and economic repercussions lived by these women that are teachers and students at the same
time. The empirical data presented here are sieved by theoretical references, the feminist ones among them, for unveiling the structural gender inequality underlying in the promises
of educational inclusion in the current public policy for the educational realm.