Abstract

ZAMBRANO ESCOVAR, Marta  and  DURAN URREA, Margarita María. The mirror effect: sex, gender, and care in the professional trajectories and moral and labor hierarchies of anthropology in Colombia. Rev. colomb. soc. [online]. 2017, vol.40, n.2, pp.87-106. ISSN 0120-159X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/rcs.v40n2.66386.

The article studies the dimensions of gender, sex, and care in the fields of perfor-manee and the configuration of the labor trajectories of professionals who graduated from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia's Anthropology program between 1985 and 2010. It is based on a qualitative research project with a biographical, ethnographic, and historical perspective, whose empirical core was made up of 35 interviews (34 in-depth interviews and one group interview) with eighteen women and nineteen men, selected according to a conceptual sample that cross-checked three graduation periods (1985-1991; 1992-2005; and 2006-2010), geographical origin, socioeconomic status, sex, generation, age, marital status, and field of professional performance. The work involved analyzing the ways in which obligations toward the family, relatives, and offspring, as well as seffcare, have led to pauses in education or delays in graduation, or have determined differences regarding work options and employment depending on the sex of the persons interviewed. On the basis of this work, it was possible to conclude that gender representations and practices in the professional field of science and technology have shaped the asymmetrical labor trajectories of the female and male anthropologists that were interviewed, as well as those of their peers. The paper also explores how the professional development of these individuals has also been marked by unequal and often precarious work and employment conditions. Finally, the article suggests -and shows- that the cross analysis of the categories of gender, ethics of care, and care occupations sheds light on and contributes to the understanding of the particularities of the practice and orientation of anthropology in Colombia, which have already been reviewed and analyzed in the available academic literature. This is achieved through the analysis of the peer culture that has characterized this discipline and of the clash between labor and moral hierarchies that has governed its fields of professional performance.

Keywords : anthropology of anthropology; care occupations; gender hierarchies; labor trajectories; moral and labor hierarchies; professionals; professional anthropology; Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

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