The gender perspective, a space of analysis for education

Abstract

The journal ‘Education and Social Development’ is focused on publishing articles resulting from research, review and reflection issues in fields of knowledge that respond to contemporary sociological perspectives. In this context, they are presented conceptual aspects about gender, important to be taken into consideration by education and social development. The role of gender in the field of education is crucial. Its analysis and understanding provide to the different actors developments and epistemic advances that allow the comprehension and construction of spaces of equality, inclusion, fairness, innovation and respect in schools (Rebollo-Catalán, Piedra & Vega, 2009). The concept of gender can be understood from the “different sociocultural contents that are given to those characteristics between men and women” … “behaviors, attitudes and male and female feelings, and hierarchizing them, so a greater value is given to those who identify with the same” (Moreno Sanchez & Pichardo Galán, 2006). From a historical perspective, it is recognized that in the sixties of last century, it emerged the necessity of women of theorizing about gender inequalities, only after that the sociocultural conditions provided a space and significant condition in academia, and after some women had access to higher education and equality conditions, which, at the same time, made the pre-conditions necessary to open a path to a new academic consciousness called feminism (Lerner, 1986; Castro & Bronfman, 1993). Contrary to this, some authors assume that it had not given birth before because of the “self-imposed limitations of Marxist epistemology, functionalist / relativistic and empiricists,” preventing the “discovery of these matters” (Harding, 1983; Castro & Bronfman, 1993). That’s how the feminist theory is born, based on the origin of oppression and repression in women (Bart & Bundinger, 1984; Castro & Bronfman, 1993) being this the beginning of gender studies in the context of a decade marked by upheaval and social and ideological revolution in the West.