Mujeres investigadoras en la Universidad de Cuenca: limitaciones y oportunidades, 2011-2017

Abstract

The research analyses the power relationships, sociocultural and political gender constructions in the experience and speech of the University of Cuenca woman researchers. Thus, a qualitative focus with a methodological design of simply-holistic case study, descriptive-explanatory was used. The techniques used for recollected data was: secondary documents, semi structured interview and discussion group. The research results display less than the 50% of woman participation as researchers, directors and codirectors in contrast of their man coworkers between 2013 and 2017. Also, the prevalence of woman researchers in the social and medical studies expose a horizontal segregation. Moreover, the naturalization of stereotypical gender roles develops into a triple workload for woman researchers. Consequently, the power relations flaunt a bias by the masculinization of director charge. Female researchers perceived inequitable conditions in order to acquire directive roles, thus they recognized abuse, authority and work devaluation experiences. However, as an interesting fact they identified their leadership as positive. These results evidence how limited is the female research and in the same way invite to build affirmative action policy in order to frame an equative access between female and male researchers