BETWEEN SILENCING AND NORMALIZATION: GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE IN HIGHER EDUCATION TEACHING

Abstract

This article investigates gender-based violence in higher education teaching as a structural phenomenon, whose persistence is articulated with the sexual division of labor, the symbolic devaluation of women's intellectual production, and the institutionalized reproduction of power asymmetries in Brazilian universities. The relevance of the topic is evidenced by data from the Higher Education Census (INEP, 2023): although women represent more than 54% of the faculty in higher education institutions, they hold fewer than 30% of rector and pro-rector positions, revealing the gap between numerical presence and equity of power. The central objective is to analyze, from a critical theoretical framework, the structural determinants of gender-based violence in university teaching, highlighting the articulation between symbolic domination, academic work organization, and teaching-related suffering. The methodology is theoretical-bibliographic, based on a narrative literature review drawing on Pierre Bourdieu, Christophe Dejours, Danièle Kergoat, and Heleieth Saffioti, combined with national studies contextualizing the phenomenon in the Brazilian university setting. The research is exempt from ethics committee submission pursuant to Resolution CNS No. 510/2016. Results show that gender-based violence operates through symbolic mechanisms that hinder recognition: underrepresentation of women in positions of power, erasure of female researchers' intellectual authorship, institutionally tolerated moral and sexual harassment, invisibilized emotional labor overload, and productivist penalization of careers interrupted by maternity. The article concludes by urging affirmative institutional policies, revision of evaluative criteria that naturalize male patterns of academic production, and the strengthening of safe reporting and care channels in universities.