Access, Retention, and Graduation Linked to Gender: The Case of Students at the National University of San Juan

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to analyze the intake, permanence and graduation of undergraduate students at the National University of San Juan -Argentina- in relation to gender determinants. It is a quantitative study that tries to investigate, through the statistical registers of all the faculties of said university, gender as a factor that affects the course of students in public higher education in our province. Also, to know the existence of masculinized careers or the maintenance of traditional roles for each gender in them. It is recognized that there are varied contexts and processes that intervene in the reproduction of gender inequalities even today, and the formal spaces of higher education are not the exception. There the subjects are integrated within the framework of their gender identity and of the social constructions around them, which are related to their professional, academic and student activity. Universities are spaces that transmit both education and knowledge, as well as ideas and meanings, and that can represent favorable conditions or obstacles to the academic course of students, one of them may be the social construction on the concept of gender that the academic community possesses.