Ending ghettoization? mainstreaming gender in spanish political science education

Abstract

Mainstreaming gender in political science education requires legislation, structures, instruments, and critical actors, not to mention a favourable political context for putting the issue on the agenda. This article examines these issues in the Spanish context with particular reference to the opportunities afforded to the mainstreaming of gender in higher education as a result of the European Higher Education Area and the policies pursued by the Socialist Zapatero government (2004–2011). Upon the back of these initiatives, undergraduate gender and politics studies were introduced for the first time in Spanish universities, having from the most part until then been the reserve of interdisciplinary Masters programmes on gender. While the opportunities to embed gender within political science education have been opened up, this process of mainstreaming has also been characterised by resistance. These issues are unpacked through a case study of the development of the gender and politics network within the Spanish Association of Political and Administrative Science, as well as through reference to the project of a pioneering textbook on mainstreaming gender in political science.