Paraguay education: Organization, gender and male teaching
RIAEE – Revista Ibero-Americana de Estudos em Educação, Araraquara, v. 18, n. 00, e023021, 2023. e-ISSN: 1982-5587
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21723/riaee.v17i4.16155 10
and other factors to the teaching profession, women began to enter the labor market and to
exercise this profession, which is called by many authors the process of feminization of teaching
or de-masculinization of teaching, to others.
With this in mind, every profession that becomes feminized suffers a devaluation
process, with a decrease in salaries, for example. In this sense, we bring Rossi (2008, p. 5, our
translation), who states this aspect: “Historically, it has been shown that activities, areas of
study, sectors of power and work that are feminized tend to experience a social devaluation that
is manifested either in the level of remuneration and branches of activity in which women
predominate, or in the level of the work they perform.”
From this perspective, Rossi (2008) questions what may be happening with teacher
training, since in primary education in Paraguay in the early 2000s, when she carried out her
studies, she noticed that most of the teachers were women: 84% of the teaching staff was
predominantly female and only 16% male. At the secondary level, this percentage drops to
65%, while the male percentage rises to 35% (i.e., the percentages alternate according to the
level of education).
Martins, Rios and Vieira (2016) broaden our views so that we can understand how
gender relations occur in the educational field, thus, it is necessary to understand that it is
permeated by gender and that we need to think about the social and cultural constructions of
masculinity and femininity. Regarding these constructions, which define the relationships
between people, Vianna (2001) points out that several stereotypes about men and women
persist, among which:
[...] aggressive, militaristic, rational, for them; docile, relational, affective, for
them. As a result, functions such as feeding, motherhood, preservation,
education, and caring for others become more identified with female bodies
and minds, thus gaining an inferior place in society when compared to
functions considered to be male (VIANNA, 2001, p. 13, our translation).
In view of the above, according to Bravo (1994), not everything is better on the male
side, since society demands that men fulfill their social functions, and when they decide to stay
at home, cook, clean, or take care of the children, this is seen as a deviation from their true
identity, since, by acting this way, his wife can dominate him. From the moment that men and
women break with roles and spaces designed for them, the author emphasizes that they may
feel fear, shame, or guilt for breaking with pre-established standards. By the same token, the
author invites us to think: "Thus, it is assumed that men and women have a different 'nature'.
The saying 'men don't cry' is one of the clearest examples. The arrangement of appearance and