Practices that generate violence in a postgraduate academic space

Abstract

This paper presents the results obtained in a study carried out on institutional practices between teachers and students that influence the academic performance and academic career of graduate students in agricultural sciences at an agricultural institution in Mexico, the Colegio de Postgraduados (CP). The aim was to identify how gender arrangements are present in multiple ways, practices and perceptions that are reproduced and recreated in academic life, which can translate into forms of harassment or mistreatment through micro-inequities and micropolitics expressed in visions, practices, norms and naturalized mechanisms, particularly in graduate programs that have traditionally been masculinized spaces. The methodological research tools were quantitative-qualitative; a survey was applied through electronic means directed to male and female students from four of the seven campuses of the institution. These campuses are located in several states of the Mexican Republic, which are part of the Colegio de Postgraduados. The students identified sexist and discriminatory practices and perceptions that translate into psychological abuse in school life, use of sexist, non-inclusive language, devaluation of women's academic work, exclusion, subordination and invisibility of their contribution; all of which has an unfavorable impact on the academic performance, perception of achievement, emotional health and self-esteem of the students. These are teaching, institutional and even male peer practices that reflect forms of control and power in the formal educational space that need to be transformed. It is essential to analyze gender inequalities, both structural and socio-symbolic, present in this space of postgraduate education, which implies rethinking and transforming the institutional culture, the educational task, designing strategies and proposals that change the institutional culture, in favor of equality.