Going Beyond Non-Sexist Education: Contributions from Intersectional Feminist Pedagogies

Summary

The feminist student movement of the year 2018 in Chile posed a series of challenges to universities, mainstreaming the demand for a non-sexist education. The present article seeks to problematize this demand taking into account the theory and trajectory of intersectional feminist pedagogies, deepening the debate around sexism in education. We begin with a contextualization of the feminist student movement in Chile, pointing out its main demands. Then we explain our intersectional approach, as a positioning and a conceptualization. Secondly, we address intersectional feminist pedagogies presenting four axes we consider relevant in relation to the demands posed by the movement: feminist epistemologies and situated knowledges; feminist pedagogies as embodied and affective practices; relations and hierarchies of power: the emphasis on the relational and collective dimension of the construction of knowledges; and the concern to improve people's material living conditions. Finally, in the conclusions, we emphasize how intersectional feminist pedagogies allow us to go beyond a nonsexist education, proposing a more structural, complex and liberating project of social transformation.