Feminized studies? Stereotypes and reality

M. Pilar Delgado, director of the Nursing School and vice-dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the UB.
M. Pilar Delgado, director of the Nursing School and vice-dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the UB.
Institutional
(06/03/2020)

On the occasion of International Womenʼs Day, we asked three lecturers of the UB to talk about those studies in which the presence of women is specially high. These are Nursing, Romance Languages and Literatures and Early Childhood Education, three degrees where the percentage of female students goes beyond 80%. They tell us how these studies and the professionals are nowadays, beyond social stereotypes. We also treat issues such as the need to promote the presence of men in these studies.

M. Pilar Delgado, director of the Nursing School and vice-dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the UB.
M. Pilar Delgado, director of the Nursing School and vice-dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the UB.
Institutional
06/03/2020

On the occasion of International Womenʼs Day, we asked three lecturers of the UB to talk about those studies in which the presence of women is specially high. These are Nursing, Romance Languages and Literatures and Early Childhood Education, three degrees where the percentage of female students goes beyond 80%. They tell us how these studies and the professionals are nowadays, beyond social stereotypes. We also treat issues such as the need to promote the presence of men in these studies.

Nursing: breaking the academic and research ceiling

M. Pilar Delgado: “At the moment there is no doubt whether nursesʼ skills to do research on medical care or in the effect of the results in peopleʼs health”.

Nursing holds the second position of trusted professions according to the GfK Verein study (2016), where the nursing staff obtains a valuation of 93%. This data is confirmed by the indicators, such as the Health Barometer of Catalonia (2018), in which one of the top assessed aspects by users is the treatment they received by nurses in the special outpatient services. “Despite the good results, there is still a lot to do so that people know what nurses do for peopleʼs health”, notes M. Pilar Delgado, director of the Nursing School and vice-dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the UB. This is why awareness and visibility campaigns such as Nursing Now Catalonia are very important.

Since its emergence in the universities, a bit more than 40 years ago, Nursing studies evolved notably. They went from being a technical degree to a bachelorʼs degree in 2009, which enabled the implementation of all academic levels (bachelor, master and doctoral studies) and “broke the academic ceiling of the nursing degree”, notes M. Pilar Delgado. In the UB, the integration of the Nursing School in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the UB with two departments and two campuses (Clinic and Bellvitge), “represented an important advance in training and research in the field of nursing and medical care”. Nursing research has been promoted through different sides. One of them is the university, with the Doctoral Program of Nursing and Health and 155 read theses in Spain. Another side is related to the access to funding entities with specific programs for nursing research. “At the moment, there is no doubt on whether nurses have the skills to do research on care nor the effect of the results on peopleʼs health”, notes Delgado, and adds that “the incorporation of research groups on nursing in the research institutes is real”.

The Department of Health of the Catalan Government has increased the number of training positions for nurses; the most distinguished feature of this call is that “for the first time, people can study the major in Nursing in Catalonia, despite the fact that the published positions -only two- is lower than the real needs of the labor market”. A similar case occurs in geriatrics, despite having eight more positions, it is not enough to cover the needs. An unsolved issue is that these specialties have to be recognized in work categories, since in Catalonia there is only one recognized major study: obstetrics and gynecology.

Romance Languages and Literatures: studies in humanities for the challenges of the 21st century

Meritxell Simó: “The current challenges of society demand female scientists, but maybe what we need is more young people, men too, with humanistic values and a critical eye”

“An issue I see here is that there is this promotion of women willing to hold positions that were traditionally held by men, but I do not see men going for trainings in the field of humanities. If we deal with the current challenges and problems (gender violence, climate change, ethic debates of the technological revolution, ect.), we know we need women scientists, but maybe what we need is more young people, men too, with humanistic values and able to see this world and this society through a critical eye”, says Meritxell Simó, lecturer of Romance Philology and director of the Institute for Research on Medieval Cultures (IRCVM) , who says that, when she was young she liked both mathematics and Latin. “I knew I would end up in the Historical Building of the UB, but I did not know whether it would be the Arts Courtyard or the Sciences Courtyard”, she says.

Simó links the great presence of women in studies of languages and literature to cultural questions. “We could find many explanations for the image of women readers. For many centuries, while men went to university and frequented public spaces for leisure, the education and leisure of women was reduced to the domestic spaces. Womenʼs predisposition to arts has to do more with culture than natural inclinations”, she says.

Regarding the academic activity in the field of humanities, and in particular the field of languages and literature, Simó highlights that “we have to give prestige to humanities and give them the status of hard sciences”, and puts emphasis on the importance of multidisciplinarity. “In the case of the IRCVM, devoted to the study of the Middle Ages, we have a wide range of skills we need in order to interpret documents written in languages we do not speak and written by men who did not think like us: language, paleographic, artistic, philosophical competences...”, she notes. Moreover, she adds: “Itʼs only when you are able to rebuild all these differences, from a different worldview than your own, that you can sense to what extent a text written long ago can be modern”.

The study of the past is necessary to understand the present, and this is reflected in the labour field. “On the one hand, culture became a lucrative business: on the other, the current productive model makes more the skills of humanistic training more necessary: creativity, ability to think complexity, connecting diverse languages and knowledge”, notes Simó. “Lecturers of Romance Philology have a close relationship with the students, which are only a few, and we know once they finish the degree, they will work in very diverse fields, such as files, libraries, cultural industry, museums, etc. Sometimes, they can work in fields that are far from philology, but where they value humanistic training”, she adds. And she continues: “Apart from the intrinsic value, humanistic knowledge became an important agent in the market; actually, some international universities opt for an interdisciplinary training with a humanistic and scientific and technological character.

Early Childhood Education: innovation and neuroeducation

Anna Forés: “The first years are a crucial educational stage and should be in the best hands regarding education”

Anna Forés is a researcher at the Department of Teaching and Learning Educational Organization, dedicated to teaching, research and transfer in the fields of didactics, curriculum, educational organization, special educational needs, teacher training, educational and innovation technology and educational changes.

Regarding the majority of women studying at the Faculty of Education, and in degrees like Early Childhood Education, Forés notes: “Without thinking about stereotypes, this majority of enrolled women in the studies can result from the fact that this is a vocational profession. Being in peopleʼs educational process requires empathy, assertiveness and other skills that are more present in the feminine world”. Forés would prefer for these rooms to be more balanced: “Educators are role models; everyone had a teacher that made a significant impact on them, and it would be great that for classrooms to be more diverse in students and teachers”. “The most important thing -she adds- is to believe in the profession, to believe in the teachers and be passionate for education. The rest will flow”.

In any case, this is a field with a higher importance in research and knowledge transfer: “We are living a new pedagogic revolution that requires new proposals, and questions on the education in all contexts and for all ages”. “In education, research and innovation are a binomial that should go together”, says Forés. One way to get closer to education in research is with neuroscience tools. In this line, for instance, the Chair on Neuroeducation of the UB wants to contribute to knowledge transfer and the professional training in any field of education, as well as dissemination and knowledge transfer to society.

“Neuroeducation ratifies what had always been said about the first years being the most important ones for learning”, notes Forés. “That is, educational pratices and environmental, family, social and cultural factors have a greater effect on the synaptic plasticity than in adult ages. Therefore, this is the age of greatest influence for educational practices: this educational phase is essential and should be in the best educational hands”, she concludes.