Abriendo la caja de pandora: las pedagogías feministas contra la violencia sexual en las instituciones educativas de Bogotá

Abstract

The severity of sexual violence against children and youth in Bogotá led to denunciations and mobilizations against this crime in secondary educational institutions during 2022 and 2024. This accelerated the implementation of protocols and campaigns against all forms of sexual violence by the pertinent authorities. The peak of said mobilizations was reached during the post-pandemic period in 2022, which triggered a series of "sexual panics." This fostered the construction of discourses by various educational actors regarding the manifestation of the structural, institutional, and situational conditions of sexual violence in the school context.

This study adopts a qualitative approach, based on the paradigm of critical hermeneutics and the narrative method. The objective of this research was to understand how the discourses of educational actors and teachers employing feminist pedagogical practices in Bogotá's public district institutions have contributed to modifying the structural, institutional, and situational conditions related to sexual violence against children and young people between 2018 and 2024.

The data collection instruments were sensitive and ethically designed to address this issue; thus, semi-structured and in-depth interviews, documentary and press analysis, the creation of educational narratives, and body mapping were employed. This was conducted in three institutions in Bogotá, located in the localities with the highest rates of sexual violence occurrence. In total, the work involved 39 educational actors, including teachers working from the framework of feminist pedagogies.

The central categories of this research are sexual violence and feminist pedagogies. Secondary categories included the pedagogy of cruelty, and the processes of accumulation, production, and reproduction of sexual violence. Furthermore, the categories included processes of transformation, disruption, and deconstruction based on feminist pedagogies.

The conclusion of this study is that sexual violence intertwines with the pedagogy of cruelty at the structural, institutional, and situational levels, thus reinforcing the mandate of hegemonic masculinity. This fosters an institutional environment that encourages a culture of silence and reporting that perpetuates testimonial injustice against victims, as well as protocol-driven processes that do not lead to a decrease in sexual violence. At the situational level, it generates processes of regulation and control over behaviors, bodies, and spaces (bathrooms, affections), generating a pedagogy of fear.

However, some teachers working from feminist pedagogies develop training, listening, and recognition activities with the purpose of preventing, addressing, and repairing sexual violence. Thus, feminist pedagogies constitute educational initiatives of testimonial and restorative justice directed at the subjectivities affected by sexual violence, the establishment of safe and caring spaces for children and adolescents, and the lived experience of human rights within schools.