Reasons for the prevalence of masculinization in the Mayor University of San Andrés of La Paz, Bolivia

Abstract

The present research tries to know the reasons for the prevalence of masculinization in some professional careers at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés. If decades ago it was necessary to fight for the democratization of higher education so that women enter university classrooms, nowadays it is necessary to conquer the opening to women in university careers that until now are strongly masculinized. With this objective, we have identified university careers that are masculinized and those that are feminized. In addition, we have interviewed students and teachers of four masculinized careers. Based on spoken interviews and statistical data, we find the gender reasons they give about the masculinization of their careers. Among the findings we have that the choice of strongly masculinized careers has to do with the search for economic success in the labor market, while the choice of strongly feminized careers has to do with the vocation of service to others, analogous to how women take care of children and serve household employees.