One of the many challenges facing 21st-century societies revolves around reducing the gender-based inequity gap. This fact is not lost in the university educational reality and undoubtedly represents an element to address for all individuals involved in the academic sphere (Velasco et al., 2024). Indeed, some authors have highlighted the presence of sexist attitudes in this social reference space (Navarro-Pérez et al., 2019; Subirats, 2019; Fernández et al., 2022). In this regard, Maffía (2007) establishes a typological framework defining these attitudes in four different expressions: lack of recognition of scientific contributions, unequal professional positioning, a culturally biased biological conception regarding their physical, emotional, and psychological nature, and finally, a displacement of scientific rigor.

More specifically, in higher education, women face various challenges. For example, even though there are now more women in higher education than ever before, they do not appear to have the same opportunities as their male colleagues. In fact, the more senior the grade, the lower proportion of female academics in the grade. Furthermore, women in higher education make up 13% of professors in old universities, with success highly dependent on subject. In addition, leadership as a challenge for women in higher education. Accordingly, gender limits women in higher education (Cotterill and Letherby, 2005; Maphalala and Mpofu, 2017). It seems evident, therefore, that androcentric culture exerts multifaceted effects within the university and scientific context, precisely through symbolic constructions about men and women (González and Delgado, 2016), perpetuating a model that solidifies a collective imaginary where the male figure prevails over the female.

All of this occurs despite the gender equality principle (GEP) being enforced not only by various international bodies (UN Women, 2015) but also by European and state educational and ordinary legislations (see Organic Law 3/2007, Royal Decrees 1393/2007, 861/2010, and the currently effective Royal Decree 822/202). Studies reveal the dominance of men in the norms and values determining and hierarchizing roles in the academic space (Becher, 2001; Mestre and Guil, 2004), operating as polarizers in academic duties both in teaching and research (Berrios, 2005; Maffía, 2007).

In this scenario, it becomes evident that both academic institutions and all involved parties must ensure an equitable system of relationships to provide formative outcomes that guarantee the inclusion of social and civic principles (Fernández, 2011). Presently, there exists an academic genre that allows visibilizing how women are positioned in various activities involving tasks both in teaching and scientific representation: the teaching guide (TG).

The TG is a highly rigorous document in its execution, published after review by different academic bodies and endorsed by various competent bodies in university institutions (Delgado and De Justo, 2018). This genre constitutes a publicly available document aiming to unfold all necessary information for monitoring a subject in the teaching action of an academic degree. Among this information, its sections deploy, in addition to the entire curriculum base of a subject, basic data of the faculty in charge of its direction or coordination, as well as all bibliographic information provided for student theoretical training.

Ultimately, the TG becomes a suitable instrument to contrast the visibility granted to women both in the teaching and scientific realms. Primarily, this document allows analyzing the bibliographic production displayed in the subjects. This element is of special interest as it has been scarcely studied, as revealed by the literature (García-Jiménez, 2021). Furthermore, it permits placing the relevance of women in theoretical training or, in other words, the place occupied by scientific production generated by women. Secondly, the approach to said scientific production offered through the bibliography in university training subjects allows identifying whether the GEP is taken into account in the students’ theoretical training. In this case, no contributions regarding this aspect were found in the reviewed literature. This is considered a fundamental element as it would identify the level of acceptance of the GEP among university faculty. Finally, the TG allows visibilizing the representation of women in the direction and coordination of university subjects, as one of its sections deals with identifying the faculty responsible for each subject.

As previously noted, studies analyzing the framework of symbolic relationships and the prestige and power system between men and women in different academic disciplinary communities are scarce (Sánchez, 2011). Approaches exist from the disciplinary field of sociology (Lengermann and Niebrugge, 2007) as well as from the realm of communication (García-Ramos et al., 2020; García-Jiménez, 2021; García-Jiménez and Simonson, 2021; García-Jiménez et al., 2022; García-Jiménez and Herrero, 2022). This research aims to contribute to visualizing the situation of women in the disciplinary space of Education and more specifically in the Primary Education (PE) Degree area.

In this framework, the study aims to determine the presence of women in the development of subjects within the PE Degree in the Spanish University Network (SUN)based on the variables: disciplinary context, autonomous community (AC), and type of ownership.

The overarching goal of our research is further delineated into the following specific objectives:

For this purpose, a qualitative research approach has been developed, addressing the study of a corpus composed of 794 TGs.

This study was conducted using a qualitative, descriptive, and comparative method, displaying generalizable and representative results of the selected population (Hernández et al., 2006). Additionally, it is a non-experimental investigation, given that the variables have not been manipulated but are integrated into the research and have already exerted their effects (Sierra, 2007).

The results obtained after analyzing the 794 TGs comprising the corpus are presented below, organized into two sections. The first section provides the results related to the analysis of the proposed bibliography within the TGs (presence of women and inclusion of the GEP in the bibliographic production), while the second addresses issues regarding their coordination and management. Everything based on the three previously mentioned variables: disciplinary context, autonomous community, and type of ownership.

The results regarding the analysis of the bibliography provided in the TGs, which show a bibliographic compilation where male authorship almost doubles the rate of female authorship, evidence a clear androcentric tendency also identified in other studies (Lengermann and Niebrugge, 2007; García-Ramos et al., 2020; García-Jiménez, 2021; García-Jiménez and Simonson, 2021; García-Jiménez et al., 2022). These data, in turn, demonstrate that the knowledge transmitted in the Primary Education Degree of the Higher Education Institution is mainly based on the contributions of male authors. The low proportion of female authorship confirms, on the one hand, the undervaluation of women as authors in the construction of knowledge (Maffía, 2007) and, on the other hand, that the training of Primary Education students is materializing through the invisibility of these women.

This is worrisome, as it constructs an educational interpretation of future Primary Education teachers based on a clear bias against the recognition of women. In this line, research in recent years (Arias, 2016) states that the incorporation of bibliography by female authors in TGs is fundamental to establish the importance of women in various historical moments and sociocultural conditions, moving away from the construct that depicts women as exceptional individuals unrelated to social processes and structures. In this sense, the incorporation of a higher rate of bibliography by female authors in the Teaching Guides of Primary Education could contribute to students accessing a less biased, and male-centric, view of the different topics addressed during their academic formation.

Accordingly, the analysis carried out concerning the didactic area variable allows for the visibility of that reality within the scientific realm. Despite a low representation of the principle of equality and female authorship, it’s interesting to note how humanistic areas such as Social Sciences, although showing a higher presence of female authorship as seen in other works (Montané and De Carvalho, 2012) and inclusion of the gender equality principle (Aguilar, 2015; Díez et al., 2016; Moreno and Díez, 2018; Ortega and Pagés, 2018; Velasco et al., 2024), evidence that education within this area is clearly androcentric and therefore biased.

The analysis of the autonomous community and ownership variables affirms that the presence of female authors is very limited, resulting in a lack of recognition of their achievements and contributions in the content covered in various subjects. Consequently, female cultural references are poorly represented in the materials used to educate students within the Spanish University Network. Therefore, with this low presence of female authorship references, it’s not surprising that, as López and Querol (2014) point out, there is a collective belief that women have hardly contributed to social and cultural development. Higher education institutions play a crucial role in debunking this belief. One way to do this would be through gender parity in the bibliography used to educate students.

Once again, similar to the inclusion of female authorship, the inclusion of the gender equality principle in the bibliography content is very low. The analysis of the variables yields results very similar to those shown in the inclusion of female authorship in the bibliographic proposal. Thus, regarding the disciplinary area variable, once again, the Social Sciences area shows the greatest display despite its low inclusion ratio. Similarly, the autonomous community and ownership variables again show very low appearance rates, and it also confirms what was mentioned earlier, asserting that there is no ideological-political pattern.

Ultimately, there is clear underrepresentation of women in the bibliography, as well as a lack of deployment in the content of the gender equality principle. This is a widespread fact, regardless of the didactic areas, the Autonomous Community, or the type of institution taken into account. This non-equitable female representation undoubtedly contributes to perpetuating gender gaps existing in academia, as well as causing a gender bias in the Primary Education stage where women are clearly left behind.

Another aspect analyzed in this research is the direction and coordination of subjects in the Primary Education Degree within the SUN. Considering that, according to data collected in the academic year 2016/2017 by the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training, 41.3% of university teaching staff are women (Ministry of Education and Vocational Training, 2019), it could be asserted that the percentage of female university professors in didactic subjects in the Primary Education Degree in the SUN is higher than the average. In this regard, high percentages of coordination are also observed (46.3% of the total).

Regarding the didactic area variable, it’s notable that Physical Education demonstrates the lowest ratio. This could be attributed to the historically low presence of women in this area and the fact that, although by the end of the 20th century women had gained visibility in this context, the sports environment remains predominantly male (Pérez-Ugena, 2020), resulting in a very limited space for women in this field (Piedra et al., 2013).

Considering these results and those presented in the previous section, a significant relationship emerges. There seems to be a connection between the direction of a subject and the proposed bibliography. Specifically, lower female direction corresponds to a lower rate of female authorship in the proposed bibliography. Therefore, the results suggest that having more female directors in subjects could lead to the inclusion of a higher amount of female-authored bibliography in Teaching Guides. In this regard, subject directors might be more conscious about the importance of incorporating a significant amount of female bibliography in the Teaching Guides. This finding is highly relevant, allowing universities, for instance, to take concrete actions to enhance the visibility of women in the education they provide.

To conclude, it’s relevant to mention that the absence or lack of representation of women in different aspects of Teaching Guides and, consequently, in university education, has significant repercussions. This positions women as second-class citizens, leading to an undervaluation of their contributions in the academic sphere and society at large. Furthermore, the exclusion of women from the discourse conveyed in educational content, through Teaching Guides, represents an unacceptable lack of rigor (López and Querol, 2014). On the other hand, it transforms Teaching Guides into instruments perpetuating inequalities.

The main objective of this study was to determine the presence of women in academic-university education in the Primary Education Degree within the Spanish University Network (SUN) concerning disciplinary context, Autonomous Community (AC), and type of ownership variables. Firstly, the results indicate a clear predominance of male authorship over female authorship in the proposed bibliography within Teaching Guides (TG), regardless of the didactic area, AC, or type of ownership. There are slight variations in the rate of female authorship in some didactic areas (for example, in the Social Sciences area or in Physical Education compared to Language and Literature) or between some communities (Navarra versus La Rioja), but in none of the cases does the rate of female authorship equal that of male authorship. This reflects an evident androcentric view, where women’s productions in the academic sphere are invisibilized (Maffía, 2007). This impacts the training of future teachers in the sensitive stage of Primary Education, fostering bias and clear exclusion of women in these contexts. The perpetuation of these gender biases is especially relevant in teaching practices as they reinforce the gender system and, therefore, inequality both in the classroom and in society (Díaz de Greñu and Anguita, 2017).

Additionally, the inclusion of the Gender Equality Principle (GEP) in the proposed bibliographic production within the TG of subjects is minimal based on the obtained results, where no significant rate was found in any case. This is particularly striking in the case of Social Sciences, which, while presenting a slightly higher rate than other didactic areas, remains surprisingly low (1.6%), despite being considered an area of reference in social pattern creation (López and Querol, 2014).

Moreover, the CA variable does not show significant differences. Although Andalucía is the community that most visualizes the GEP in its proposed bibliography, it is still almost non-existent (1.3%). Therefore, there are no clear ideological or geographical patterns regarding the inclusion of the GEP.

The same applies to the ownership variable. In this case, all universities that highlight the GEP in their proposed bibliography are public universities, but the rate obtained (0.5%) is not sufficient to make any generalizations regarding the inclusion of the GEP. However, although the proposed bibliography in the guides yields rather disheartening results in terms of female authorship or the GEP, it’s worth mentioning that the results are more positive when analyzing the presence of women in the direction or coordination of didactic subjects in the Primary Education Degree within the SUN.

In view of these results, it’s striking that, despite the high rates of female direction and coordination in almost all cases, the analysis of the proposed bibliography in the TG does not show more positive outcomes. Nevertheless, there seems to be a relationship between the rate of direction or coordination of subjects and female presence in the bibliography; that is, a higher female presence in management positions correlates with a higher female presence in the proposed bibliography within the GD of subjects. For instance, consider the case of Language and Literature, where the rate of female authorship in the proposed bibliography was the highest among all analyzed didactic areas (43.1%) and also had the highest rates of direction and coordination (61.8 and 55.6%, respectively). In summary, while the presence of women is quite similar to that of men in management positions of didactic subjects in the Primary Education Degree within the SUN, there is still much progress needed in terms of the visibility of women and gender equality.

Limitations of this study include the inability to access all universities within the spectrum of the Primary Education Degree in the SUN (65 out of 68). Additionally, it would have been interesting to cross-reference the TG data with the participation of stakeholders related to the analyzed gender (department heads and faculty). In this regard, future enriching this study with other qualitative techniques is projected.

On the other hand, the strengths of this work lie in the following aspects. Firstly, the consideration of two variables that have allowed for the analysis of specific aspects and undoubtedly open avenues for new research spaces. Secondly, the study focuses on an extraordinarily necessary topic, namely the analysis of discriminations and, in particular, the discriminatory reality experienced by women. This is accentuated in the academic and scientific spheres, where androcentric construction patterns prevail, as evidenced from both the literature and the data in this study. In conclusion, this study provides solid and valuable results that allow us to continue advancing towards the recognition of women compared to men.

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

JH-R: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Methodology, Resources, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. PM: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Methodology, Resources, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. EV: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Methodology, Resources, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing.