Policies, Projects, and Initiatives for Sustainable Higher Education with Gender Equity: Literature Review and Case Study—Universidad de La Frontera

Abstract

Today, sustainability in higher education is a key factor for our society, and women play a fundamental role. However, gender faces a series of inequalities in this field of action, and from this point of view, university education is not left out. It is necessary to incorporate strategies and initiatives to reduce these inequalities within the classroom, supported mainly through public policies, which represents a challenge. It is a practical and essential challenge for public and private universities to ensure that their students are prepared for a globalized, sustainable, and gender-sensitive world. In the 2030 Agenda, two Sustainable Development Goals are proposed to address these issues, targeting SDG 5 gender equality and SDG 4 inclusive education. This study considers that to address this issue, it is necessary to identify initiatives that aim to propose measures for sustainable education and reduce the gender gap, to know which and what types of policies or strategies aim to address these issues in higher education in the same way of identifying good practices focused on inclusive policies, models, and teaching styles, also considering scientific research for sustainable education. This study considers the review of policies to reduce gaps in the STEM areas of university education and whether these measures address the goal of sustainable development. As main findings and conclusions, this study highlights the initiatives and good practices found in the literature review since 2007 but concentrated during the last five years. In addition to the literature review, this bibliographic review is complemented by presenting a practical case study with real data from a public, state, and regional university in the south of the country of Chile that takes on this challenge and shares it. The PRISMA protocol guided this study, finding 341 relevant articles to be analyzed, which mainly show how it is possible to implement measures and improve sustainable education with a gender focus through policies and initiatives within a university in the short term.