Gender Discourses and Identities of First-Generation University Women Students in Latin America

• In Event: Roundtable Session 53
  In Roundtable Session: Learner Identities and Social Situations of Knowledge Production in an Epoch of Globalization

Abstract

In this paper I studied how women from poor and extreme poor backgrounds attending university in Latin America negotiated female roles, identities, and discourses in their communities as they engaged in critical situated literacies (Barton, Hamilton, & Ivanič, 2000). I studied eight women in Mexico, Colombia, and Costa Rica, who were the first-generation university students at public universities. This study draws on Latin American Feminism (Mendoza, 2010) as a framework to produce “new” Epistemologies of the South (de Soussa, 2012). I argue that first-generation university women students reshape and challenge female gender roles, identities and discourses through the enactment of critical situated literacies. By documenting their lives, and experiences, I also challenge the basic structures and ideologies oppressing these women.

Author

• Lina Trigos-Carrillo, University of Missouri - Columbia