Abstract

IBARRA MELO, María Eugenia. Challenges and tensions to the order of gender in the Universidad del Valle. Rev. colomb. soc. [online]. 2021, vol.44, n.1, pp.341-362.  Epub Nov 22, 2021. ISSN 0120-159X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/rcs.v44n1.77335.

This paper analyzes the gender relations and practices of the students of the Universidad del Valle from a constructivist perspective. It reveals the links and intersections that define them, captures the interactions between cis, men and women, homosexuals, transsexuals, individuals of fluid gender, youngsters and adults, white mestizos, Afro-Colombians and indigenous people, and people from Cali, Valle del Cauca and other municipalities in Colombia; almost all them being of low and middle income. The paper also looks at the acts and behaviors related to the students' social position and the appropriation forms of the university campus, identifying spaces of representation and representations of space, the perceived separation among genders, ethnic groups, consumption forms or belonging to a discipline. The research route favors the ethnographic gaze and intentional observation, using informal conversations, focus groups, workshops and social cartography as the main tools. The information obtained reveals that on the Meléndez campus interact different sexualities and desire orientations, as well as gender identities and expressions, coexisting in an environment of demands and challenges to the privileges of hegemonic masculinity. These tensions occur in a field of deliberation and dispute, that reveals opposition to the binary sexual system, by individuals and some agents linked to groups and political organizations, but also the defense of the gender order by others. The text is divided into three sections: first, it shows how the students appropriate the space and enter into a dispute to subvert or maintain the gender order. Second, it describes the way in which their sociability occurs at the University and high-lights nuances in the spatial practices they live. Third, it analyzes how and by whom some hetero-patriarchal practices face or maintain them in order to preserve gender order.

Descriptors: gender systems, gender relations, gender roles, transgression.

Keywords : gender relations; gender order; gender practices; representations; Universidad del Valle.

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