Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This study aimed, from a feminist perspective, to conduct a critical analysis of the discourses that establish, maintain, and reproduce gender stereotypes in primary schools in Tuluá, Valle del Cauca, in western Colombia. The school functions as a space that perpetuates hegemonic narratives; although it may reproduce the persistent hegemonic model, it also provides opportunities to consolidate spaces for resistance and social transformation. The research made visible three discourses present in the school: first, the institutional discourse represented by the “Manual de Convivencia Institucional”; second, the discourse of resistance expressed by some female teachers; and third, the discourse of girls as political subjects. Thus, it is recognized that the reproduction of stereotypes is structural and embedded in everyday school practices. From the perspective of Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA), this reproduction can be identified in the ways tasks are assigned, activities are organized, and students are corrected, among other discourses that circulate within the school and normalize inequality. At the same time, the performative nature of language in classrooms was recognized. The discourses analyzed made it possible to establish how these discourses themselves produce realities within the school, highlighting the ways in which they inscribe gender divisions not only on the body but also in thought. In this way, they limit the possibilities of being, feeling, and acting. Thus, a first step toward destabilizing the patriarchal order is to make symbolic violence visible. This violence represents gender differences as biological and natural, concealing their social, cultural, and capitalist origins, legitimizing the sexual division of labor, establishing a hierarchy of the masculine over the feminine, and normalizing violence and inequalities.
Author: Jessica Marcela Diaz Epe
Institution: University of La Salle
Language: English
Subfield: Gender Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7225234042