Gender Violence in Higher Education Institutions

The Proposal of the Programa de Personas Orientadoras Comunitarias (POC) in the National Autonomous University of Mexico

Abstract

The women’s movements that emerged in Mexico cannot be decontextualized from the mobilization processes at the global level, particularly in Latin America, where the subject of feminism seems to be reconfigured. These processes have not been strangers to the demands against gender violence in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), such as the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Within UNAM, as of 2019, the Organized Women and feminist collectives questioned the gender order established at the University, demanding attention to cases of gender-based violence and institutional policies on the matter. In this context, the Coordination for Gender Equality of the UNAM (CIGU) emerged in 2020, from which the Community Counselors Program (CCP) emanates. This proposal seeks to generate important links in the university communities with the activation of spaces for the mainstreaming of the gender perspective, eradication of violence and promotion of substantive equality. Through an analysis of gender violence at UNAM, this article exposes the innovative experience of the Community Counselors Program, by collecting documentation and reviewing the redesign of the program as an institutional gender policy. Two years after its creation, the CIGU turned the focus of the program around from the perspective of gender and community work, which has resulted in the presence
of 230 CCP currently at UNAM.