Gender, Race, and Class in the University Curriculum: Structural Silences and Epistemic Tensions in Course Syllabi at a Global South Public University
This study analyzes 3,248 course syllabi at Brazil's Federal University of Bahia to reveal that despite regulatory frameworks, gender, race, and class remain largely absent from the curriculum due to a model of selective incorporation that preserves epistemic hierarchies by concentrating critical content in the Humanities while maintaining "technical neutrality" in STEM and professional fields.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
Imagine the university as a giant, bustling library where students go to learn how the world works. For a long time, this library was built by a very specific group of people who decided which books were "important" and which were just "fun stories." They filled the shelves with ideas about science, history, and society that mostly reflected their own lives, ignoring the experiences of women, people of different races, and those from poorer backgrounds. This isn't just about who gets to walk through the front door; it's about what's actually on the shelves.
In recent years, many universities have tried to fix this by inviting more diverse students to join. But a big question remains: did the library actually change its books, or did it just invite new people to read the same old stories? To understand this, researchers look at something called "epistemic justice," which is a fancy way of asking: "Whose knowledge counts as real, and whose is treated as invisible?" They also look at "intersectionality," a concept that helps us see how things like race, gender, and social class mix together to shape a person's life, rather than looking at them as separate problems. If a university claims to be fair but only teaches from one narrow perspective, it's like a restaurant that says it serves everyone but only has one dish on the menu.
This study dives into that exact problem by investigating a massive public university in Brazil called the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA). The researchers wanted to see if the university's course syllabi—the official lists of what students will learn—actually include topics about gender, race, and social class, or if those topics are missing in a way that suggests the old, narrow view is still in charge. They didn't just guess; they used a clever mix of human reading and computer analysis to scan thousands of documents, looking for the "silences" where these important topics should be but aren't.
The team examined 3,248 course syllabi from 81 different undergraduate programs, ranging from engineering to art. They were looking for specific words related to gender, race, racism, feminism, and social class. The results were a bit like finding a treasure map where the treasure is buried in only a few spots, while the rest of the island is empty. Out of the more than 3,000 syllabi they checked, only 126 (which is just 3.9%) actually mentioned these social markers directly. This suggests that even though the university has rules saying these topics should be included, the actual classes often ignore them.
When the researchers used their computer software to group the syllabi that did mention these topics, they found four distinct "types" of how the information was handled. First, there was a group that talked about philosophy and science in a very abstract way, critiquing old ideas but not necessarily connecting them to real-life inequalities. Second, there was a group that focused on art, cities, and Africa, treating race as a specific topic for artists or urban planners rather than something that affects everyone. Third, and most importantly, there was a large group (making up 56.3% of the relevant syllabi) that directly tackled gender, race, and class together, seeing how they overlap in real life. Finally, there was a group that only mentioned these topics because a law told them to, listing them as a box to check rather than a deep part of the learning.
The most striking finding was where these topics appeared and where they didn't. The syllabi that included these critical discussions were mostly in the humanities, health sciences, education, and the arts. However, in areas like engineering, computer science, accounting, and natural sciences, the topics were almost completely absent. The researchers suggest that these "technical" fields often claim to be "neutral," meaning they think they don't need to talk about race or gender because they are just about numbers and facts. But the study argues that this "neutrality" is actually a trick; by pretending these social issues don't exist, these fields are actually keeping the old, narrow way of thinking alive.
The paper concludes that the university isn't just accidentally missing these topics; it has a pattern of "selective incorporation." It's as if the university has a few rooms where the walls are painted with vibrant, diverse colors, but the rest of the building remains painted in the same old, dull gray. The researchers suggest that simply having laws that say "include these topics" isn't enough. Without a deliberate effort to change the culture of every department, especially the ones that think they are "neutral," the university will continue to teach a version of the world that leaves out huge chunks of human experience. The study offers a new way for other universities to check their own shelves, using the same computer tools to see if they are truly teaching everyone, or just the same old story to new students.
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