The writer, educator, and researcher analyzes how patriarchy continues to shape power within higher education institutions and what collective strategies are opening new horizons for transformation
As part of the campaign “It’s not personal, it’s structural: for educational institutions free from gender-based violence”, we spoke with Cristina Burneo Salazar — scholar, writer, and feminist activist — to reflect on the progress made, ongoing challenges, and urgent tasks in the fight against gender-based violence within educational institutions across the Americas.
Throughout this interview, Cristina discusses the importance of recognizing the structural inequalities that affect women and gender-diverse people in universities and higher education spaces; the impacts these forms of violence have on academic and professional life; and the collective pathways that students, faculty, researchers, and staff are building to transform these institutions into safe, equitable, and truly democratic spaces.
“Gender-based violence in universities — transphobia, homophobia, machismo — means that students, administrative staff, and women professors enter these spaces already at a disadvantage,” she states.
Read the full interview:
We are currently developing our campaign “It’s not personal, it’s structural: for educational institutions free from gender-based violence” and we thank you for joining this conversation to deepen our understanding of progress and challenges in confronting gender-based violence in educational spaces across the Americas.
To begin this interview, we would like to ask: why is it so important to recognize the gender-based violence that exists in educational institutions, particularly in universities?
Cristina Burneo Salazar – Thank you for the invitation — this campaign is so important and so necessary. The importance of recognizing any form of inequality, violence, or injustice lies precisely in mitigating the conditions that produce it. If entire groups within universities experience violence or begin their academic lives already facing disadvantages because of their gender — and this affects not only women — then we must name it. Why? Because gender-based violence in universities — transphobia, homophobia, machismo — means that students, administrative professionals, and women professors enter these institutions at a disadvantage.
Every day, we are perceived differently; we inhabit a different space on campus. Gender-based violence in universities is perpetuated. Inequality persists, for example, in relation to the right to education — a right that is not abstract. Violence is part of the violation of that right: my right to study, to inhabit the space, to be there with no disadvantage or with as few disadvantages as possible, which intersect with my socioeconomic conditions, where I come from, my nationality, whether I have legal documentation, whether I am undergoing gender transition… Many factors condition us as groups, and these conditions hinder the guarantee of the right to education.
What are the most frequent forms of gender-based violence in academic settings?
Cristina Burneo Salazar – In the universities where I have spent so many years — as a student, researcher, and professor — the most frequent type of gender-based violence, as global statistics show, is that exerted by men in positions of power against women students, administrative staff, and professors. It is not the only form, but it represents the largest and most visible group.
We see professors engaging in sexual harassment of students; university authorities engaging in ideological persecution against both men and women — and when women are targeted, this persecution often combines with patriarchal abuses of power, machismo, and restrictions on academic freedom. That is the largest category.
But of course, there are also other persecutions. We have seen homophobic attacks against queer students and faculty — people who identify somewhere across our wide and diverse spectrum of gender and sexual identities. For example, queer educators who are also students in teacher training programs report violence: ideological persecution, restrictions on academic freedom, constant reprimands simply for exercising their right to be who they are and to pursue diverse pedagogical projects.
This is a highly complex issue. Universities remain largely governed by powerful men — educated, credentialed — who operate within systems of mutual loyalty. Violence is never isolated: it is embedded in institutional structures designed to preserve certain privileges and to impede the advancement of rights for groups that challenge the status quo. Because granting those rights would require the institution itself to transform.
So when we ask what happens, who wields power and abuse, and which groups are targeted, the answers relate to these structural elements.
What are the main impacts of gender-based violence in universities — on women and on society as a whole?
Cristina Burneo Salazar – Let’s bring together what we have discussed so far: the university is an institution with 1,200 or 1,300 years of history. It gradually became secular and expanded worldwide as a structure for the production and organization of knowledge. But from its origins, it was not created for women, nor for enslaved people, nor for any sexual or gender dissidence — nor for foreigners.
Transformation has always involved opening the university to more people — slowly, over centuries. We still believe education and knowledge can transform societies, making them less violent and less unequal.
But if violence remains normalized as a system that maintains small groups — predominantly men — in power, accepting only their experiences as the standard for producing knowledge, then the impacts will fall on me: especially if I am a woman, a young student, a migrant woman — a Venezuelan in a xenophobic country that refuses to regularize my status — or someone from a precarious socioeconomic background.
If I am a trans man who is also Afro-Ecuadorian or Afro-Colombian, who must migrate to a big city to study and work to survive, the impacts will fall on me. These are entire groups at a disadvantage.
Even when statistical data remains limited, we know from reports across the region that women students are most affected; and administrative staff — particularly secretaries and cleaning staff, who must endure whatever it takes to keep their jobs — also face severe impacts. And women faculty — especially those who are politically engaged through feminism or trans-feminism, or who work with trans epistemologies, as in my case — are persecuted. Because these epistemologies necessarily demand institutional transformation.
The impacts continue to fall on large groups of women students and professors, on administrative staff, and on gender-diverse students and faculty who do not conform to gender norms. It is clear how difficult it remains to transform patriarchal university structures.
What is the pathway to combat gender-based violence in universities?
Cristina Burneo Salazar – We often speak more about problems than possibilities — so thank you for this question, because not everything is inertia or the perpetuation of what I call “enlightened ignorance,” choosing not to see gender inequalities in universities.
Much has already been done — including by CAFA [Coalition for Academic Freedom], through the Academic Freedom Working Group across the continent — and that work is essential.
I always remember that we must name the Feminist Springs of 2017 and 2018. Students were showing us the way: the fight for free education and safe education requires analyzing gender issues.
I always think of the Chilean Feminist Spring: students reported a professor who was sexually harassing them, and the movement spread across the country and throughout the continent. At that same time, we were commemorating the centennial of the Córdoba Reform in Argentina, yet gender was not part of the conversation. In my own university, I remember professors saying to me: “In Córdoba, in the struggle for university reform and autonomy, there were no women.” We still say this.
I believe the path forward is to retell the story: to recover the rebellions, the gestures, the moments of feminist disobedience — in Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Colombia… There were complaints everywhere: clotheslines covered with testimonies of harassment, a great reveal of what women — especially students — have long endured in universities in Latin America during those years. And many other revolts followed.
We must reclaim and strengthen the feminist memory of student rebellion — and also recognize the work of those who study the university itself to dismantle its violence. Feminism teaches us that to transform the world we inhabit, we must first study it.
The university is the perfect place to do this — it already has the infrastructure to teach, debate, share knowledge, rethink policies, and reconfigure its own foundations. Recognizing the problem is the first step toward correcting inequalities that become violent. That is the path.
We are educators in a space designed for learning — and therefore, the university can also offer a path toward gender-aware transformation.
Is there anything else you would like to highlight before we conclude?
Cristina Burneo Salazar – I want to underscore that in recent years, reporting gender-based violence in universities — whether ideological persecution, sexual violence, or sexual harassment — has become a struggle in itself. These complaints have mostly been driven by women, but they increasingly reveal other forms of violence too, including homophobia and transphobia.
I myself publicly denounced my university, and I always say: I could never have done it alone. I was really supported — surrounded by a collective of lawyers, students, activists, and artists who understand how crucial educational and creative spaces are in our lives. These paths of collective support emerge through learning.
We learned so much about what violence in universities really is. Awareness means listening to those who have lived it — and studying, discussing, reading, informing ourselves. That is also a beautiful path: it allows us to politicize ourselves and to build pedagogical, political, and cultural processes that enable us to imagine the university differently.
That is why talking about this matters so much: because there is a horizon of transformation — fertile, powerful — already showing us the way.