doi.org/10.15198/seeci.2017.42.45-61
RESEARCH

THE FEMINIST UNIVERSITY STUDIES WITH A GENDER PERSPECTIVE IN SPAIN (2010-2015)
LOS ESTUDIOS UNIVERSITARIOS FEMINISTAS Y CON PERSPECTIVA DE GÉNERO EN ESPAÑA (2010-2015)
OS ESTUDOS UNIVERSITÁRIOS FEMINISTAS E COM PERSPECTIVA DE GÊNERO NA ESPANHA (2010-2015)

Asunción Bernárdez Rodal¹

¹Complutense University of Madrid. Spain
asbernar@ucm.es

¹Asunción Bernárdez Rodal: Titular of Journalism in the Faculty of Information Sciences, UCM
asbernar@ucm.es

ABSTRACT
This paper analyzes the situation of the studies on Gender and Feminism that have been developed in Spain with the inauguration of the European Higher Education Area as part of the implementation of the Bologna Plan. First, we perform an analysis of the historical circumstances of the Spanish university and its territorial characteristics. The objective of the paper is to make a conceptual map with the strengths and weaknesses of studies that society has been demanding to develop the different Plans of Equality in the democratic period.

KEY WORDS: University Studies, Gender, Feminism, Master’s and PhD studies in Spain, Educational policy in Europe.

RESUMEN
En este artículo se analiza la situación de las titulaciones sobre Estudios de Género y Feminismo que se han desarrollado en España con la inauguración del Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior, como parte de la implantación del Plan Bolonia. Para ello, se hace un análisis de las circunstancias históricas de la universidad española y sus características territoriales. El objetivo del trabajo es realizar un mapa conceptual con las fortalezas y debilidades de unos estudios que la sociedad ha ido demandando para desarrollar los distintos Planes de Igualdad en el período democrático.

PALABRAS CLAVE: Estudios universitarios, Género, Feminismo, Estudios de Máster y Doctorado en España, Política educativa en Europa.

RESUMO
Neste artigo se analisa a situação das titulações sobre Estudos do Gênero e Feminismo que se desenvolveram na Espanha com a inauguração do Espaço Europeu de Educação Superior, como parte da implantação do Plano Bolonha. Para isso fazem uma analises das circunstâncias históricas da universidade espanhola e suas características territoriais. O objetivo do trabalho é realizar um mapa conceitual com as fortalezas e debilidades de uns estudos que a sociedade tem demandado para desenvolver os diversos Planos de Igualdade no período democrático.

PALAVRAS CHAVE: Estudos universitários – Gênero – Feminismo – Estudos de Máster e Doutorado na Espanha - Política Educativa na Europa.

INTRODUCTION

If we had to make an impressionistic diagnosis of the situation of Gender and / or Feminist Studies in the Spanish State in the last five years, we could say that, finally, the degrees related to this area of ??study have been able to obtain academic recognition within the European Higher Education Area. However, we must qualify, since practically all degrees offered in the Spanish State in this field are developed almost exclusively in the Third Cycle: Master’s and PhD Programs. There are also a fairly large number of degrees from each university, which offer “Magister” and “Expert” degrees, as well as face-to-face or virtual continuing education.
The reality is positive, since in Spain public policies have been carried out regarding gender equality, to which the universities have not been extraneous. However, it is also necessary to point out that many problems remain to be solved, some due to the structural situation of the country and others due to the economic and social crisis that we are living in Europe since 2008, and that, in fact, rather than a crisis, Is turning out to be a change of economic cycle that bases its productivity in the denominated “intangible economy”, in which knowledge and specialized knowledge that develop from the universities acquire a great value.
The different Spanish governments have developed public policies regarding the development of equality for more than thirty years (Lombardo and Bustelo, 2012), which have addressed the development of gender equality in the teaching and research environments (García Bátiz, 2014). However, it is clear that there are still barriers to achieve full equality in areas such as economic, educational or political, as in other European countries. In the European Community, the need to continue to implement such policies continues to be stressed, as it is crucial that women be incorporated into the world of work as a prerequisite for promoting support for talent and entrepreneurship. This objective is indicated as a priority in the Horizon 2020², documents, and the Gender Equality Index³. In both, the European Union insists that inequality between men and women must be corrected to achieve a 75% employability rate among the European population in the ages of 20 to 64. This objective will not be achieved if effective equality between men and women is not achieved. Universities have a fundamental role in this process, since they are responsible for the training of teachers at all levels of education, but also because their research may result in the keys to action for a more egalitarian future.

²Estrategia Europa 2020. Una estrategia para un crecimiento inteligente, sostenible e integrador (Bruselas, 3.3.2010. COM (2010) 2020 final.
³Gender Equality Index 2015. Measuring Gender Equality in the European Union 2005-2012: Report, EIGE, Publications Office of the European Union, 25-06-2015.

DISSCUSION

Brief history of the configuration of the Studies of Women and / or Gender in Spain
For more than thirty years, there have been many female university researchers who have incorporated a critical perspective on their “objective” contents in their disciplines, adding a gender perspective to their work. At the same time, many of them were developing self-reflection about what their objectives should be when assuming that perspective in their teaching and research practices, constantly questioning the possibilities and limits of their work, their achievements and also their defeats as time has gone by. A large amount of bibliography has emerged from these teaching and research practices, which shows and explains the complex process by which various degrees in Gender Studies and Feminism have found a place in the Spanish Academy⁴ (Fernández Villanueva, 1989, Acker, 1995, Hernández Sandoica, 1995, Gallego, 1996, Astelarra, 2005, Ballarín, 1994 and 2010, VV.AA.1998 / 99, Izquierdo, 2004, Nash, 1996, Ortiz, 2005, Vicente Serrano and Larumbe Gorraitz, 2010).

⁴A significant sign that the process has not been easy is that the Spanish Language Academy has not yet admitted that the word "Gender" serves to describe the processes of social inequality, so for example, concepts such as "gender violence" or "gender studies" are not admitted as valid in an institution that, on the other hand, has much prestige in the academic fields.

All these works help us understand the particularity of Feminist and Gender Studies in a country like Spain, which experienced a political transition towards democracy after a dictatorship lasting forty years, and a process of very rapid modernization since 1975. During Franco’s dictatorship, the stereotype of the woman dependent on men in all areas of social life was kept alive, which did not favor the development of the institutional links necessary for women to organize themselves critically (Guil Bozal, A. and Flecha García, C .: 2015) on the need to achieve equality also in the academic field. Nevertheless, before 1975, a number of associations (Larumbe, MA page 12) emerged, such as the University Women’s Association or the Seminar on Sociological Studies of Women, both founded in 1953, or the University Association for the Study of Problems of Woman, organized in 1974.
The Academy is part of civil society, and as such, it did not begin to incorporate the critical discourses of the countercultural movement that was took place in part of Europe and the United States until the mid-1970s. The discourses around “woman”, “women”, “feminist” or later “gender” studies also developed as part of that counter-culture that changed the keys to the private lives of young people in current societies. Also in Spain, the so-called Second Wave of feminism consisted of a series of associative practices and feminist action, accompanied by a theoretical development that made it possible to question the role of women in capitalist societies of consumption and well-being proper to the latter part of the twentieth century.
In Spain, International Women’s Day was celebrated in 1975, and women’s associations began to develop in many areas, which formed a very rapid change in the sense of political action by feminist movements. At the same time, women in universities began to take a critical perspective on their research, while developing strategies of association and intellectual encounter within the university environment, which is usually not particularly conducive to such changes. Consuelo Flecha García (1999: 224) pointed out how the Spanish Universities were incorporated more slowly than other European countries to the Women’s Studies, after the First Conference on “Women’s Studies Concept and Reality” organized by the European Community in 1989.
One feature of the development of this type of studies in Spain since that period is the voluntarism of the teachers who decided to integrate a question in their work as teachers and researchers: “where are women?”, in each of their disciplines. As the feminist struggle is never solitary, the academics quickly learned to develop strategies of common action inside and outside their universities, generating more or less formal networks, and creating different Seminars⁵ that tended to be denominated Studies of Woman or Women, such as the Autonomous and Complutense Universities of Madrid or Barcelona. Some of these seminars were officially recognized by “University Research Institutes”, officially approved by their Universities⁶, which granted them a status close to the Departments, but in most cases they were not endowed with the economic and material resources that would have been desirable. Around this type of organizations, workshops, conferences, proper titles and complementary teaching were developed. A series of research journals, collections of books, etc were taking shape too. In this period some networks of gender study centers such as the University Association of Studies of Women⁷ (AUDEM), the Spanish Association of Historical Research on Women⁸ (AEIHM) or the Spanish Association of Researcher and Technologist Women (AMIT)⁹ were created.

⁵The female professors interested in Gender Studies have for years pressed their respective university communities to obtain institutional and economic support to develop gender projects such as the Center for Women's Studies at the University of Alicante, the Interdisciplinary Seminar of the University of Alicante, Students from Lleida Owner, Research Group on Equal Opportunities in Architecture, Science and Technology at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Center for Women's Studies at the University of Salamanca, Isonomía Foundation at the Jaume I University in Castellón, and a long etcetera
⁶Such as those of the Complutense University, the Autonomous University of Madrid, the University of Granada or the University of Valencia.
⁷http://www.audem.com/centrosuniversitarios.php
⁸http://www.aeihm.org
⁹http://www.amit-es.org

Since the founding of the Women’s Institute in 1983, an institutional space has been created from which to support the development of academic research projects with a feminist perspective, among many other activities. The creation of the Women’s Institute meant the institutionalization of feminism in Spain, sometimes criticized by the most radical feminism, but which undoubtedly performed a very important task, supporting different projects of social research with a gender perspective, and it solved the problem of attending general R & D calls in which the gender perspective was not yet considered fundamental. The Women’s Institute helped to develop equality plans based on models (Lombardo, M. and León, M. 2014: 17) that were already developing in Europe, and which have their turning point as a result of the economic crisis unchained in the year 2008.
In Spain, over a period of time, various very advanced plans were implemented in the development of the strategy to achieve equality, which were included in a series of laws. During the first government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Organic Law 1/2004 on Comprehensive Protection Measures against Gender Violence was promulgated. In addition to defining gender violence as a structural problem of contemporary societies, it spoke about the importance of incorporating gender issues into education.
Three years later, the Law for the Effective Promotion of Equality between Women and Men of 2007 (Organic Law 3/2007 of 22 March) was enacted, which in its article 20 indicated the obligation to disaggregate statistics by gender. Article 25 indicated that administrations should promote the implementation of studies and research on equality in the field of higher education. On the other hand, Organic Law 4/2007, dated April 12, referring to Universities, makes it mandatory to create an Equality Unit in each university, which will be in charge of developing an Equality Plan.
In the development of these three fundamental laws, universities began to equip themselves with a specific body to implement equality policies (Ventura Franch, A. 2008). Its functions are to collect information, prepare reports, advise, promote training, and ensure that the equality law is implemented. The first Gender Equality Offices were created in 2004 at the Complutense University of Madrid and at the University of Extremadura. These units depend directly on the rectors.

2.2 The Spanish university system as a context of Gender Studies

At present, Spanish university education is fully integrated into the European System of Higher Education, although this integration has developed with some specific characteristics due to both our university history and the constitution of the state itself.
Management of the Spanish university system is conditioned by the territorial configuration of the State, which after the Constitution of 1978 and the autonomous pacts that were developed in a long and complex process in the years 1981 through 1992, Spain was vertebrate in 17 autonomous communities (Including the Charter-Granted Community of Navarre) and two autonomous cities. Although the competence to issue university degrees remained in the hands of the Central State, the Autonomies were able to regulate and administer the educational system with relative independence. It is important to make this reflection to understand the particular development of degrees in universities, which do not correspond to a state design but to the development of autonomous plans.
The historical origin of the Spanish University was completely centralized in the city of Madrid (now Autonomous Community) and with a somewhat smaller development in Catalonia, especially in the University of Barcelona. At present, the system is configured with 50 public¹⁰ and 32 private universities. It is important to note that since 2001, 14 private universities have been created, one per year. With the autonomic system, there has been great decentralization, but the Community of Madrid remains the most educational community, since 507 degrees and 801 master’s degrees are taught. The different autonomies also have a certain freedom to adjust public prices, which caused a great difference in the payment of academic fees throughout the national territory. The average price per credit of degree in Spain is 18, 42 €, but a student in Galicia has paid the cheapest rates: 11, 89 €, as compared to 33, 52 € paid in Catalonia. The price of the Master’s degrees is even more expensive, and from an average of 26.89 € per credit, we find that a student in the Basque Country pays 17’66 € and in Madrid 42.75 €. In this complex system, a new university has been generated, which, through the assumption of the Bologna Plans, aims to train professionals adapted to the supply and demand of the current market. This system has garnered much criticism (Galcerán Huget, M.A 2010 and 2013), but the reality has ended up being imposed.

¹⁰According to the report: Basic data of the Spanish University System. 2013-2014 Course edited by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport.

In this new university intended to train professionals who adapt to the demand of the markets, it is a fact that women study more than men. For example, in the academic year 2012-13, 54.3% of women are employed in university positions. The female presence of students is greater in all academic areas, except in engineering and architecture, where there are 73.9% of men studying compared to 26.1% of women. The great social prestige that these qualifications accumulate and the high employability they have, and the drastic reduction of women in them (Castaño, C. and Webster F. J. (dir): 2015) is significant. Looking for causes and finding solutions to this apparent lack of women’s interest in these disciplines remains one of the great challenges for feminist studies today.
Another very important factor in the development of the Spanish University has been the progressive implementation of private universities (Padilla, 2011). Since 2007, they have gone from 13 to 33, while Public Universities have remained in the same number: 50 in all throughout the Spanish State. The endorsement of the creation and expansion of Private Universities was specified in Organic Law 6/2001, as of December 21, on Universities, at which time the necessary steps are being taken to create ANECA (National Agency for the Evaluation of Quality and Accreditation) that will become the managing body for the approval of both undergraduate and graduate degrees. This body is also in charge of the accreditation of the teaching staff that will be part of the university staff. At present, most public universities are undergoing a drastic cut in both budgetary allocations and in the possibility of hiring teachers. That fact, together with the increase of rates imposed by decree to the universities, has as a consequence that the private universities are imposing themselves more and more in the Spanish university space.
The implementation process of the Bologna Plans (Hernández Ruiz and Campillo Alhama, 1999) in Spain has been made with great difficulties, and in a way that has not been progressive, since Graduate degrees were first implemented before those of Degree. Thus, the Official Master’s degrees were developed in almost all Universities, while the Degree programs had not begun to be implemented. In addition, we opted for a four-year Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree, which is not the most common in the other European Community states, which have mostly opted for the model three plus two. In this time sequence, the new European Space Doctorate Programs were the last to be organized, based on Royal Decree 99/2011 as of January 28, which regulates the teaching of Doctorates.
In the passage of the Bachelor’s Degrees, there has been a general perception that Gender Studies lost their presence in the new plans, as the subjects that were almost always optional were offered in different faculties. This was a contradiction: while the interest in this type of study showed to be increasing due to the demand of students, in the different courses and seminars unofficially offered by university institutes, gender chairs or Centers of studies in most of the Spanish universities, the number of subjects that the students could take when carrying out their degree studies in an official manner was reduced, thus failing to comply with one of the guidelines of the Law of Equality 3/2007 as of 22 of March, which indicated in Chapter II, article 25, that public administrations, that universities “will promote teaching and research on the meaning and scope of equality between women and men.” In particular, they will promote (a) Inclusion, in syllabuses where appropriate, the teaching of equality between women and men.” While this mandate does not seem to have been fulfilled, it does seem to have allowed the development of that point of article 25 (b) which indicated the need To create “specific postgraduate courses”.
If we do an Internet search on the degrees offered by Spanish universities on issues of gender, women or equality, we find that the offer is vast. However, what happens is that many universities do not clarify for example the difference between “Master” (Official and within the European Higher Education Area) and “Magister” (University’s own title), which also do not need to be validated by ANECA. Many students do not know the practical difference between the two qualifications, and in many cases the ceremony of confusion between what is a European Space title and the one that is not is played. We have had to go to the official ANECA website to check the Master’s degrees that have a positive report and enable them to continue their PhD studies. We have verified that in many Autonomous Communities there are titles that contain the descriptors of ‘gender’, ‘woman’ or ‘gender violence’. We have counted 31 Master’s¹¹ degrees between public and private universities¹². At the moment there is no Degree in Spain, after the Degree in Equality and Gender awarded by King Juan Carlos University of the Community of Madrid has eliminated the new entrance of students from the year 2014, alleging lack of demand by students.

¹¹ANECA browser can be used for official qualifications and for checking the date of approval of each of the degrees on the website: http://srv.aneca.es/ListadoTitulos/search/site/estudios%2520de%2520g%25C3%25A9nero%2520feminismo%2520mujeres ¹²The Official Masters have been approved since 2008. I will not provide the complete name of the degrees, but I will point out the Universities that have this type of studies. In the Autonomous Community of Andalusia they offer Masters of Gender, the Universities of Seville, Almería, Málaga, Cadiz and Granada (Erasmus Mundos). In Catalonia, several universities have joined together in a joint project led by the University of Barcelona, ??and the University of Lleida also develops a degree of this type. The Galician Community has two approved Master’s degrees, one at the University of Vigo and another at the University of Santiago de Compostela. In the Community of Madrid, the Complutense University offers three master’s degrees with a gender profile, one by the Autonomous University and another by King Juan Carlos University. At the University of Murcia two degrees are offered, two at the Jaume I University in Castellón, and two at the University of Valencia. Also the Universities of Salamanca, Zaragoza, the Basque Country, Oviedo, Illas Balears and La Laguna and Menéndez Pelayo International University have a Master's degree in gender studies.
As for the private universities, ANECA has approved Masters of Gender in the University of Deusto, Cardenal Herrera-CEU, and the Catholic University of Valencia.

The PhD Programs in the European Higher Education Area began to be implemented in the 2013-14 academic year. So far, only the programs of the Complutense University of Madrid, the University of Zaragoza, the University of Oviedo, the University of the Basque Country, the University of Valencia and the Autonomous University of Madrid are approved by ANECA, including eight other universities in Spain. Only two years ago, these programs have started to develop and we must wait some time to evaluate their results and effects in the academic life.
The implementation of the new Doctorate Programs is having difficulties, due to lack of a general strategy of both the Autonomous Communities and the Ministry of Education, and lack of endowment of the own universities to develop the programs, that once again must count on the volunteer work of the teaching staff, who must offer in most cases the necessary training to their doctoral students without being part of their teaching work.
ANECA, for the first time, is validating doctorate degrees, which may be managed by University Institutes and not only by Faculties. This is favoring the possibility of articulating programs of Feminists and Gender, with an autonomy that was unthinkable in previous moments. In any case, each University Institute or each Gender Chair has to choose between two positions: the groups that think that the strategic thing is to do joint doctorates among several universities, and those that have thought that political strength is lost if there is an excessive concentration of programs. In addition, there has been a practical obstacle: vice rectors of universities have had the power to authorize joint doctorates or not, which has meant that, in some cases, the initiatives that have been taken in this regard have not been possible.

2.3 First Critical Note: PhD Programs under Horizon 2020

If we link the PhD programs (which in the end represent the end of a stage started with the Master programs) with Horizon 2020: Framework Program for Research and Innovation (2014-2020), we find a conclusion that, If not discouraging, should at least give rise to a reflection on what is happening with research policies in Europe.
This program was drawn up on the basis of a previous study of the research situation contained in a White Paper which was intended to be the basis for the development of “a common strategic framework for the financing of research and innovation by the EU” (COM 2011), which includes the views of the Council of Europe, Member States and a wide range of social stakeholders involved from industry, academia and civil society, after applying impact developments. Horizon 2020 has an endowment: 87,740 million Euros, distributed in a 32.6% for scientific excellence; 24.3% for industrial leadership; and 37.5% for social challenges. 2.4% of the total budget would be dedicated to non-nuclear actions of the Joint Research Center (JRC), and 3.3% to EIT. Its fundamental objective is to strengthen the scientific and technological bases by establishing a European Research Area (ERA) in which researchers, scientific knowledge and technologies can freely circulate and by encouraging the Union, including its industry, to become more competitive.
It is very important in Horizon 2020 to recognize that research and innovation are not simply a state expenditure on public services, but that in information societies they are a true engine of the productive economy. That is why the goal is to increase spending on research and development to 3% of GDP.
Horizon 2020 clearly states that the activities carried out in this framework should be aimed at promoting equality between men and women in research and innovation, in particular by addressing the underlying causes of the imbalance between them, exploiting the full potential of male and female researchers, and integrating the gender dimension into the content of the projects, in order to improve the quality of research and encourage innovation. The activities shall also be aimed at implementing the principles relating to equality between men and women set out in Articles 2 and 3 of the Treaty on European Union and Article 8 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. The text makes direct reference in its article 15 to the Equality of gender. These statements of intent are too general, as often happens in these texts. This was later indicated by the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality (in its report of 20 December 2012), which raised eighty-two amendments to the text.
Feminist and gender studies must, in any case, be competitive within a research landscape where excellence is singled out as a fundamental objective. At risk of being captious, we can ask ourselves how “excellence” is defined. The Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy offers us two meanings: 1. f. Superior quality or goodness makes something worthy of singular appreciation and esteem. and 2. f. Treatment of respect and courtesy given to some people for their dignity or employment. That is, excellence is defined in relation to something or someone. In this case, in part I of the text Horizon 2020, when talking about “Excellent science”, a comparison with the United States is being proposed, in which comparison we lose. What happens is that the European Union has the most scientific production, but when we talk about impact, American productions are more influential. Then, it also alludes to the fact that American universities are the ones that obtain the highest positions of international quality calculations, and it also adds a devastating fact to Europe: 70% of the Nobel prizes are in the United States. That is, they recognize that they are not necessarily people of American nationality, but are male and female researchers who live there because the system has managed to attract them.
Where is the problem according to Horizon 2020? In Europe, the public sector has too much weight in research. That is, although the US and European public sector invest a similar amount in research, researchers who depend on the public sector are three times more in Europe. With this idea, Horizon 2020 is clearly a strategy that consists of “scolding” European governments for “feeding” too many researchers, and also adds that another problem is that the public sector is not as demanding as the American when choosing the researchers who are given the resources. That is, resources should be given only to those “excellent”.
We can read between lines that the ideal model is the American, but at no time is there an analysis of the social, ideological or political differences that occur in these two areas of the world. For example, there is lack of analysis and in-depth debate about the ways in which private companies are involved in research and how American laws protect that participation. For example, it is a reality that in the United States there are small companies that invest in research, but they do not do it because they are more “entrepreneurial”, more “altruistic” or more “intelligent”, because they get great tax advantages and a possibility of return of profits to their own business. Nothing to do for example with European patronage laws that mostly only favor investment in research of large companies because they are actually saving taxes and, what none of these conservative governments seems to think is that what these companies fail to provide are general resources that are subtracted from the public welfare.
The parameters of excellence in any case are designed for an applied technological research, and hardly extrapolable for research that has to do with social development and equality. In all these plans there is much talk about competitiveness, for example, and very little redistribution to achieve fairer societies. The fundamental critique of this model, and returning to the relationship between Horizon 2020 and Postgraduate Studies, is that the relationship that historically has existed in Europe between the University and scientific and technical research as the engine of social development may just be ceasing to exist. and not just in matters of gender or equality.
It is very meaningful to make a quantitative account of words and terms, resorting to the idea that words construct the reality of the world. In Horizon 2020, the word “research center” appears 9 times, the word “university”, 14 times, just like the concept of “equality / inequality”. In this ranking, the word “market” appears 94 times, and the word “company”, 120. One could say that this method so inaccurate that grants a status of reality only to what exists and is shown In the form of signs is “unscientific”. However, we like to think of that principle that states that “the quantity of a thing can become a” quality “of life.
We do not believe that the number of times the word “company” is cited multiplies by eight the times the word “university” is quoted, is a coincidence. It is a reality that, in this entire plan, research associated with universities, and particularly higher education, is not a priority in this Horizon 2020. The research plans of university or public institutions for research such as the CSIC may lose relative importance in the face of a market and companies that become guides to research itself.

2.4 Second critical point: female researchers at Spanish University

Data on female researchers in Europe remain unhelpful, as they continue to suffer from a deficit in senior positions in research structures, even though, as we noted in the previous point, the European institutions in Horizon 2020 recognized that gender is a priority and transversal theme in research and innovation. In Spain, work continues on developing the principles established in the Law of Science, Technology and Innovation (Law 14/2011 as of June 1), which, in its 13th Additional Provision, speaks of “Implementation of the perspective Gender” in the context of research.
In the study of Elizondo Lopetegui, A. Novo Arbona, A., Silvestre Cabrera, M. (2010), the situation between men and women in the Spanish university (public and private) is analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively, trying to determine the degree of Equality that has been achieved, taking into account all the groups involved in education (Aguirre Calleja and Azor Hernández, 2014), in order to make an “Equality Ranking” of Spanish universities, as was done at the Center of Excellence Women and Science at the University of Bonn in 2003. The conclusions they reach is that despite the increase in women in universities, that increase has occurred in an unbalanced way. As for teachers, women are in a minority in management positions and in the general teaching staff. This imbalance continues to occur, despite the fact that the Spanish State, with varying degrees of involvement with its different governments, started in 2002 a series of actions to begin to analyze the situation of women in research environments. The Ministry of Science and Technology organized that year the Seminar on Women and Science, and in 2006 created the Women and Science Unit of the Ministry of Education and Science.
In Spain, the Women and Science Unit currently under the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (which, among other things, engages in reporting on the presence of women in science) shows the problems women have to have access to research. For example, the report: Female Scientists in Figures, 2013 (data for 2012), points out that, finally, in Spain since February 2013, the Spanish Strategy for Science and Technology and Innovation, approved in February 2013, includes the incorporation of the gender perspective as a fundamental principle in public R & D & I policies. The report indicates that few women continue to work in the technological field, and few men in the life sciences. The feminine presence does not advance in representation in the world of science.
The number of women (38.6%) employed in the knowledge-intensive sectors is higher, as compared to 27% of men. Spanish rates are close to the European ones, according to the She Figures, 2012 report that worked with data from 2010. Women work more in public centers than in private ones, although the presence of women has decreased in one and a half point since the economic crisis unleashed in 2008. The female presence has been increasing in almost all sectors of research, but they are still scarce in the highest positions in Spain. For example, the female professors and emeritus of Group A of the administration are only 20%. As for the number of female rectors in Spain, it has decreased even in recent years. At present, there are only 6% of female rectors.

CONCLUSIONS

For an immediate future
All the literature analyzing the development of the Gender and Feminist Studies in the university usually recognizes the great progress that has occurred in the whole national territory, since at the moment there are many Master’s degrees held within the European Space of Higher Education, and the development that the Doctorate Programs are having is positive. Despite this, it is also common to recognize that much remains to be done, and the sample is how women continue to achieve equality in terms of employability and the in holding positions of responsibility, both in universities and in different institutions related to research.
Solving this gender gap is a complex problem that requires acting in several ways. One primary and fundamental way is to include the gender perspective in teacher training (Genet Association, 2015) at all levels, even requiring the incorporation of evaluation tests to the teaching positions where equality training is valued.
The development of basic subjects in the Degree studies is also pending, at a time when the decision has been made to match most European studies in a 3 + 2 model. Above all, in those degrees that have to do with the development of cultural industries, basic and obligatory training for all those professionals dedicated to the creation of collective imaginaries, who today make up values, stereotypes and, ultimately, the ways of acting.
It is essential to obtain the support of the rectorates from the Research Institutes in Gender Feminist Studies and to ensure that the Equality Units carry out an evaluation of the progress of equality in the three areas of work of universities: teaching, research and the transfer of knowledge to society. The implementation of the gender perspective requires concrete economic investments that will reverse the training of all graduates of our universities.
Finally, it would be convenient to point out the problem that we the female professors that dedicate ourselves to the Studies of Gender or Feminists have nowadays: there is no area of the ANECA for us to be evaluated. For many years, there has been debate within the involved faculties about the desirability of a specific area of evaluation, arguing that gender must be transversal to all areas. Over the years, and with the imposition of quantitative criteria to which the teaching careers must be submitted, the possibility of ANECA having a specialized teaching staff to make assessments tailored to the teaching staff dedicated to gender studies seems more rational.
Finally, it would be important to require that research projects always include a gender perspective, as well as specific items should be provided to develop projects related to equality.

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AUTHOR
Asunción Bernárdez Rodal
Is a Professor of Journalism at the Faculty of Information Sciences. Her lines of research are the studies of Communication and Gender, Mass Media Semiotics and Visual Studies. Her latest book published in the Publishing House Fundamentals: Women in Media. Proposals to analyze mass communication with a gender perspective, in the year 2015.
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4081-0035