Global alignments, buzzwords, and empty shells: a critical discourse analysis of policies promoting gender-sensitive teaching in higher education

• In Event: Research Approaches to Globalization & Education

Proposal

The will to close the gender gaps in education participation, access, and achievement, and the introduction of gender perspectives in education have become central in the global education policy field (Monkman & Webster, 2015). Especially since the last quarter of the twentieth century, but with a relevant increase in recent years, influential international organizations such as UNESCO, the OECD, and the World Bank have placed gender at the core of the global education policy debates (Lahelma, 2014; Monkman & Hoffman, 2013). In such a context, it is not surprising that most national and regional governments have formulated several gender-related policies in education. In the context of Europe, additionally, European Union institutions promote gender mainstreaming in all policy fields, including education (Jacquot, 2015), which has been differently operationalized by member States and subnational units. In this regard, focusing on higher education (HE), I take the case of Catalonia—one of the 17 autonomous regions of Spain—to analyze the policies promoting gender-sensitive teaching in the last two decades in a Southern European context.

Catalonia has a history of promoting gender-sensitive education. Although most legal texts mentioning gender focus on primary and secondary education, HE has not been an exception. In fact, recent laws introduce the obligation for universities to include ‘gender perspective’ in teaching in all branches of knowledge (Law 17/2015). Actually, the accreditation of bachelor’s and master’s degrees by the Catalan university quality-assurance agency (AQU)—responsible for evaluating and licensing HE programs in the region—is conditioned to the ‘transversal introduction of gender perspective’ in teaching since the academic year 2020-2021 (AQU, 2019). Following this policy mandate, Catalan universities have undertaken diverse responses to make sure all the degrees include such a perspective.

Considering the above, understanding policymaking as a site of struggle over meaning (Hyatt, 2013) where language as a social practice—far from ‘neutrality’—is used tactically (Fulcher, 1989; Fairclough, 2001), I use critical discourse analysis (CDA) as a tool to explore the struggles among actors to mobilize discourse, to analyze the legitimation processes, and to unpack the inclusions, omissions, and tensions of the different actors’ discourses about gender-sensitive HE teaching. In particular, drawing from the contributions from ‘Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis’ (Lazar, 2005, 2007, 2017) and the analytical elements of the ‘Critical Policy Discourse Analysis Frame’ (Hyatt, 2013), I analyze policy texts and in-depth interviews with policymakers and other relevant HE stakeholders. I focus both on the contextualization and the deconstruction of policy.

The analysis shows how different gender discourses interact, and sometimes even compete, among each other—mainly liberal feminisms and singular-difference feminisms (Beasley, 2005)—around topics that might apparently seem incohesive, such as equality, acknowledgement of women’s work, elimination of obstacles, increase in women’s participation, eradication of gender-based violence in universities, and competences for a changing world. Despite the interaction of different discourses, the term ‘gender’ is mostly framed as only referring to ‘women’ as a quite homogeneous category. That is, mentions of gender identity, aspects related to the social construction of femininities and masculinities, sexual orientation, or the interaction between gender and other systems of power remain omitted or are not as central. Therefore, gender discourses such as social constructionist, postmodern, queer, and race/ethnicity/imperialism feminisms (Beasley, 2005) occupy a more peripheral position. This seems particularly interesting considering that the concept of ‘intersectionality’ (Hill Collins & Bilge, 2020) has somewhat become a buzzword for policymakers both at the global and Catalan scales. However, its relative absence in policy documents show, first, how actors that advocate for such an approach failed in mobilizing discourse and, second, how other actors appropriate the concept as another ‘empty shell.’ The analysis also highlights how policies promoting gender-sensitive teaching in HE in Catalonia are permeated, not only by diverse gender discourses, but also by other non-gender-related discourses, such as education efficiency and nationalism—e.g. ‘gender-sensitive teaching is more efficient’ and ‘the Catalan HE system is a model for Europe’, respectively.

Additionally, in line with the above, the results show that policy texts present gender as an unproblematized, devoid-of-meaning concept, and that the specific policy mandates write-up is vague and ambiguous. Interestingly, such a framing of gender as an ‘empty shell’ does not occur by chance but rather as the result of the diverse, often contradictory perspectives of the policymakers involved, even those reluctant to include any notion of gender in HE—note that, as in most contexts, there has been strong opposition in Catalonia to including ‘gender perspectives’ in education, although some actors have not always expressed their opposition publicly but, rather, offstage. That is, the way ‘gender’ is formalized in policy texts is a result of actors’ different approaches and negotiations, a kind of ‘agreement on minimum standards’. Despite this being common to policy texts and to the processes of institutionalization of ideas in general, it seems especially relevant in policies that address topics perceived as ‘controversial’, ‘ideological’, and ‘non-neutral’. In this regard, against some actors’ opposition to gender-related policies, the use of political warrant and modes of legitimation becomes a means for other actors to justify the relevance of policies promoting gender-sensitive teaching in HE, especially rationalization and moral evaluation—e.g., gender-sensitive teaching in HE as fostering ‘social justice’ and ‘a better society’—, and authorization—e.g., explicit references and alignment with international organizations that are seen as a relevant authority, that is, the EU and UNESCO and its SDGs.

Finally, the article concludes by arguing three related points: (a) how actors not only have unequal power to mobilize discourse to advance their agenda, but also how they use gender-related policies in education to gain a ‘symbolic position’ in the network of HE actors, considering the alignment with global trends—especially SDG4—; (b) how these global trends regarding gender in education influenced the configuration of the aforementioned policies in Catalonia both by building momentum and by shaping the terms of reference; and (c) how the terms in which gender-sensitive teaching in HE is framed also influence the enactment and effects of such policies.

Author

• Alejandro Caravaca, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona