How to Suppress the Careers of Female Social Scientists – Volume 1

This book is the first of a series of five volumes that analyze and denounce the gender inequalities and violence faced by Latin American female social scientists in academic settings. The five volumes will present and discuss the results of an ethnographic research project conducted in four countries – Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico – to analyze gender inequalities experienced by Latin American women in five dimensions of academic life: undergraduate education, graduate education, labor insertion, professional performance in stable positions, and gender violence faced at work.

This first volume narrates the creation of the research project, from the formulation of its methodological strategy to the application and analysis of its first case study in Chile. It presents the theoretical-methodological perspective adopted in the whole project – a feminist ethnography that draws on the intersubjective role of female experiences to denounce situations of power inequality – and analyses the testimonies of 50 female academics working in 12 universities in nine cities of Chile.

The title of the five-volume set, How to Suppress the Careers of Female Social Scientists, pays homage to the seminal work of Joanna Russ about gender inequalities faced by female writers, How to Suppress Women’s Writing, and this first volume is both a "manual" and an "anti-manual". On the one hand, the first two parts of the book serve as a "manual" that situates the Chilean case, clarifies the methodological construction of the research project and discusses the limitations and possibilities of feminist methodologies in the social sciences. On the other hand, the third and fourth parts of the book are ironically presented as an “anti-manual” that explain how the careers of female social scientists are destroyed by intersectional gender-based inequalities and violence, even in social contexts that are open to equity policies.