Sex, gender, and public schools: representations of educational spaces in Armenia students (Q.)

Abstract

Urban spaces have historically been conceptualized, designed, and created from hegemonic discourses of neutrality and objectivity, this has made invisible the different tensions that are generated around gender and sex in space, as well as promulgated the establishment of a gaze reductionist about the complexities that are woven into them. This work seeks to scrutinize the representations of a group of 11th grade students from the educational institution “Escuela Normal Superior del Quindío” (Armenia, Colombia) with respect to the space in which their educational processes are constituted, through critical social research supported by a participatory method, the social mapping. Some of the findings are related to the fact that the students have mostly negative perceptions of the darkest, smallest and most closed spaces; the women's restroom occupies a prominent place, since it collects feelings such as security, being listened to and supported; the spaces are sexualized and have a gender character that shows educational canons where certain abilities correspond to the feminine and others to the masculine; Likewise, educational spaces continue to be supported by schemes of relationships of surveillance, control and separation of the subjects.

Keywords:  educational spaces; representation; sex/gender; social mapping; spatial appropriation