Psychosocial Support Strategies for the Problematization of Gender Relations in a Higher Education space for rural youth in Jalisco, Mexico

Abstract

The article presents some reflections around a process of participatory action research taken place at an institution of higher education in the state of Jalisco of Mexico, located in a rural context set up by agroindustry, in which some rural youth unfolds their life trajectories intersected by gender inequalities, inequities and uncertainty. Between 2022 and 2024 some investigations were made to understand how different variations of gender-based violences that they experience are related with the precarization of the conditions in which they study their higher education and the high index of discretion in the institute. Derived from this, there has been a series of organized events at school which objective has been to problematice gender relations, especially emphasizing violence against women and empowering female students. In addition, some strategies that had been aimed at male students for the sensibilization of their role in the different forms of violence inflicted are highlighted, but also taken into consideration the construction of their masculinities in these contexts, the submissions and subversions they impose as men. From this set of investigative and action processes it’s concluded that amongst facilitating access to higher education, it must be recognized that the rural youth condition it’s not only addressed by covering the structural dimension in the sense of the augmentation of schooling, nor the territorial dimension in terms of facilitating access in rural spaces, but it’s fully comprehended from it’s intersubjective dimension where we can see relations between male and female students, but also understand intergenerationally how those relations have been configured and what meanings and significance they have, as well as recognizing how the youth from their agency are modifying their ways of relating to each other and with the world.