Marina Tomàs

El género y la participación en algunos órganos de gobierno en la universidad

As the level of power and responsibility in universities increases, the presence of the female gender decreases. Spanish universities are largely governed by a participatory system, therefore the purpose of our study was to observe how teaching staff participate within their governing bodies. Taking as our starting point the production of categories of observation of the contributions made in decision-making meetings and discussion groups, a descriptive exploratory study was carried out on participation according to gender. The results show certain tendencies such as the fact that female teaching staff present a more assertive style of participation rather than aggressive or passive and that the gender of the coordinator of the meeting influences the way in which those present participate.

Ser o no ser visible en la universidad. Un estudio sobre las profesoras

This article explores the dimensions and conditions related to the visibility of university professorsbased on their gender using a qualitativemethodology. To do so,we used threemethods of data collectioncreated by the investigative team: a semistructured interview, discussion group and document analysis.The informationwas collected from22 interviews performedwith academics fromtwo universities, two discussiongroups of 7 participants each and analysis of institutionalwebsites, gender policies and strategic projectsfor equal opportunities.Analysis of the information indicated three large categories of causes of visibility including: causes relatedto the characteristics of the female professors themselves and cultural characteristics of the environmentin which the visibility was studied and causes derived from the function developed – teaching,investigation and management.In view of the results obtained in this study it was concluded that visibility based on gender as the objectof study contributes comprehension to university functioning and to the role of gender in the professionaldevelopment of the academics. Likewise, the present article provides a starting point for futuredevelopments on this subject and a basis for promoting possible university policies and practices in the future.