Cristina Garcia Married | Salamanca (EFE) .- The first honoris causa awarded to a woman was awarded by the University of Salamanca to Santa Teresa de Jesús three centuries after her death, a significant beginning for a recognition that continues to have a large gender gap in the Spanish university.
Most of the country’s universities only have between 2% and 28% of women honorary doctorates, a recognition that until recently was held almost exclusively by men, so the gender gap is narrowing, albeit little by little. bit.
This is reflected in a study prepared by the University of Salamanca (USAL) with data from 2022, in which the 54 public and private universities that belong to the network of gender equality units were asked about this issue.
Saint Teresa of Jesus, the first
The first woman to receive the honoris causa was Santa Teresa de Jesús by USAL in 1922, 340 years after her death. This milestone was followed by years of almost absolute emptiness for women until the last decade of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century.
Despite the attempt to reverse this inequality in recent years, only 6 Spanish universities have recognized 10 or more honorary doctorate women: the Autonomous University of Barcelona (15), the Complutense University (14), the Universitat d’Alacant ( 13), the Rovira i Virgili University (10), the University of Salamanca (10) and the University of Valencia (10).
“At USAL we only have 10 and by comparing we are fine, we are within the upper average, there are some universities that only have one or two honorary doctorate women,” Professor María Inmaculada Sánchez, director of the study and of the study, explained to Efe. USAL equality unit.
The number of honorary doctorates is influenced by “the size of the university” but above all “the date of foundation of the universities and the moment in which they begin to be granted in each one of them”, as reflected in this study in which they responded 85% of the centers consulted.
More equality in new universities
The best numbers of equality in the honoris causa are those of the universities that have been created since the 1990s, the decade from which most of these awards have been given to women.
For example, the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) -founded in 1995- has 62% of women honorary doctorates, a figure that is very far from the average range, which ranges from 2% to 28%.
The promotion of recognition of women has been linked to the implementation of the equality units of the universities, which in the case of the USAL, for example, was at the end of the 2000s: 8 of the 10 honorary doctorates have have been awarded ever since.
Thus, until this unit was created in Salamanca, only the Norwegian researcher Kirsten Osen accompanied Saint Teresa of Jesus as an honorary doctor, an award she received in 1997.
Recognized very late in their lives
The candidacy of the feminist jurist María Telo, recognized by the USAL in 2008, was the first promoted by the equality unit, given the absolute disproportion between the number of university women and the number of honorary doctorates.
“He was a key person for the end of the marital license, which forced women to have the approval of their husbands to move their finances,” said Professor Esther del Brío, who coordinates an exhibition with Sánchez to make the doctors visible. honoris causa from USAL.
Telo received the recognition at the end of his life, at the age of 93, something that is very common especially among honorary women, since among men you can find more young awardees.
“Many of the doctors are elderly, it seems a proof of longevity and not of excellence. We cannot wait, there are very valuable women much younger, let’s focus on women of 40 or 50 who already have splendid careers and have been the first in something”, Del Brío claimed.
The two teachers carry these messages through the corridors of the faculties, schools and institutions to “move the conversation” among those who decide and to show the girls and young people “that they can also be one of them”.
