Gender and Education

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cgee20

Beyond the neoliberalized academy: caring and

careful practices of women full professors

Isaura Castelao-Huerta

To cite this article: Isaura Castelao-Huerta (2022): Beyond the neoliberalized academy:
caring and careful practices of women full professors, Gender and Education, DOI:
10.1080/09540253.2022.2147148

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2022.2147148

Published online: 25 Nov 2022.

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GENDER AND EDUCATION
https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2022.2147148

Beyond the neoliberalized academy: caring and careful

practices of women full professors
Isaura Castelao-Huerta
Interdisciplinary Group of Gender Studies, National University of Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This article reveals how some women full professors have Received 6 April 2021
developed caring and careful practices with their students Accepted 9 October 2022
despite the neoliberalization of public higher education, thus,
KEYWORDS
avoiding individualization and establishing trust and solidarity. It Care; neoliberalism; public
presents interviews with 24 women full professors from a higher education; rebuscarse;
Colombian public university, an ethnographic study with three of women in academia; Latin
them and nineteen interviews with their students and colleagues. America
The content analysis of the fieldwork shows that the professors
have caring practices, which include rebuscarse to ensure the
well-being of the students and providing financial support, as
well as careful practices such as intervening to prevent harm and
being open to listening. Caring and careful practices of the
professors serve to improve the lives of the people that are close
to them and to build a much friendlier and more supportive
university. However, care activities are complex, undervalued and
represent a double burden, which is why modifying university
policies is an urgent task.

Introduction
The aim of this article is to highlight the caring and careful practices that some of the
women full professors of a Colombian public university (CPU) have developed with
their students to navigate the scarcity of resources and the individualization of the neo-
liberalized public higher education. Caring practices include rebuscarse to ensure the
well-being of the students and providing financial support, meanwhile careful practices
involve intervening to prevent harm and being open to listening. Rebuscarse is a wide-
spread term in Colombian slang and it refers to a strategy that entails a ‘struggle for
survival through different mechanisms of action. In a literal sense, it is an incessant
search for possibilities through which the popular sectors invent ways of living in
the city in an informal way’ (Mendoza V. 2015, 39). Following that idea, in this
article, I mainly draw in this ‘literal’ meaning of rebuscarse to emphasize the constant
search of the professors for economic means to ensure the well-being of the students.
But in addition, it can be noticed that providing financial support, intervening to
prevent harm and being open to listening are also part of the professors’ rebuscarse

CONTACT Isaura Castelao-Huerta icastelaoh@unal.edu.co Unidad Camilo Torres, Bloque A5-A6, C.P. 111321,
Bogotá, Colombia
© 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 I. CASTELAO-HUERTA

to push through the neoliberalized university. After all, these practices can be con-
sidered parts of a struggle for survival through different means within the academia,
which are informal in that they are not officially recognized nor sought. Caring and
careful practices become ways of survival and resistance for the women professors,
while enabling the new generation of researchers to access the resources and
support they need as best as possible within the conditions of precarity resulting
from neoliberal policies.
According to neoliberalism, the best way to achieve human well-being is to allow indi-
vidual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills (Harvey 2007). Beyond this, neoliberalism is a
rationality that propagates the values and measurements of the market in all aspects of
life (Brown 2015), including higher education where ‘new forms of governmentality pre-
mised upon competition and comparison’ have been produced (Lipton 2020, 81). In
opposition to this neoliberal rationality, caring and careful practices permit establishing
trust and solidarity. However, it is necessary to emphasize that these are complex prac-
tices since they represent a double burden, they go unrecognized by the institutions,
they can cause misunderstandings and feelings of differential treatment, and they
allow the continuation of neoliberal policies.
The integration of the university into the neoliberal rationality occurs under a process
of ‘academic capitalism’ (Slaughter and Rhoades 2004), where education is seen as an
‘investment’ whose objective is to train people to succeed in the market (Castelao-
Huerta 2021b; Hernández Gutiérrez 2016). In addition, neoliberalism has established a
gender division since institutions promote ‘toughness, boasting, individualism and com-
petition, downplaying the emotional side of life’ (Acker and Wagner 2019, 4). Because of
the hierarchical gender order where the differentiated perception of biological sex is
taken as a reference to attribute people characteristics according to which they are
expected to behave and develop in society, men usually have the permissibility to
devote themselves to their work, which allows them to be highly productive, while
many women are forced to deal with what the neoliberal system deems worthless:
care (Acker 2012). Thus, ‘the ideal academic’ is conceptualized as a competitive individual
with no care obligations outside and inside the ‘care-free’ university (Henderson and
Moreau 2020). The neoliberalization of the university ‘marginalizes the expression of
emotions like fear and anxiety and privileges mastery, instrumentality, invulnerability,
and emotional self-control’ (Gannon et al. 2016, 193). This generates silence around vul-
nerability issues (Gaudet et al. 2021). Another significant aspect of neoliberalization is that
teaching is positioned as taking precious time away from research, while academics can
be stigmatised because of supposedly lacking market intelligence (Angervall 2018; Brown
2015). In this context, this article examines caring and careful practices of some women
full professors of the CPU.
The structure of this article is as follows. First, I briefly present the literature that
focused on care in higher education. Second, I highlight the defunding process of Colom-
bian public universities. Afterward, I explain my methodological approach based on fem-
inist standpoint epistemology. In the next part, I point out the caring and careful practices,
which include rebuscarse to ensure the well-being, providing financial support, interven-
ing to prevent harm and being open to listening. I finish with some reflections on the
importance of care in the academy, while underlining the burden and the challenges
that these practices imply.
 GENDER AND EDUCATION 3

Care in higher education

When talking about care, the reference is often made to reproductive work, as well as
feeding, clothing, raising and assistance, especially for infants and the elderly (Comas-
d’Argemir 2019). However, as Zembylas, Bozalek, and Shefer (2014) assert, care is a
labour-intensive activity that involves thoughts, emotions, actions and work. Despite its
importance, care is a devalued and naturalized work, unpaid and underpaid (Breeze
and Taylor 2020a). In the academy, this devaluation has been exalted by neoliberal pol-
icies. As Lynch (2010, 59) argues, neoliberalization of universities ‘exacerbated the care-
lessness of higher education’, grounded in the classical Cartesian view of education
that considers academic work separate from feelings and emotions, which construct
the universities as ‘dispassionate and objective emotion-free zones’ (Lipton 2020, 205).
As a result, care is dismissed as a ‘soft’ factor less important than intellectual or technical
abilities (Clegg and Rowland 2010; Keeling 2014). The gender order urges most women to
undertake large amounts of unpaid work for ensuring the increase of academic pro-
duction. In this way, care in universities ‘is an unwelcome interruption to the avowedly
rational-intellectual character of academic endeavor’ (Breeze and Taylor 2020a, 51).
Thus, ‘a culture of hierarchy, competition and individualism’ prevails through ‘the eradi-
cation of cultures of solidarity, care and collectivity’ (Motta and Bennett 2018, 634).
Despite this, previous studies demonstrate the spectrum of care for which women are
primarily responsible. These include a wide range of care practices, such as the care pro-
vided to partners, children, pets, friends and kin (Burford, Bosanquet, and Smith 2020;
Burford and Hook 2019; Henderson and Moreau 2020; Jackson 2019; Moreau and Robert-
son 2019; Toffoletti and Starr 2016), as well as institutional practices, i.e. the care provided
to students, mentoring activities, and establishing friendship bonds and collectivity.
The care provided to students includes traditional care practices, such as teaching with
critical feedback and review, flexible pedagogy, democratic management and academic
manoeuvrability (Cardozo 2017; Gaudet et al. 2021; Horncastle 2011); kindness, under-
stood as a feeling of an active concern that one has for the life projects of the other
(Clegg and Rowland 2010; Motta and Bennett 2018; Walker and Gleaves 2016); and pas-
toral care, that is, giving personal attention and emotional support (Dowie-Chin and
Schroeder 2020; Lu 2018). These practices involve ‘attentiveness, openness, awareness
of students’ lives and other commitments, responsiveness to students’ learning needs
and investment in students’ well-being and learning’ (Anderson et al. 2019, 11).
Mentoring can be considered a care practice with ‘early career’ academics and gradu-
ate students. It is labour-intensive and not necessarily acknowledged institutionally. Men-
toring implies collaboration since casualized labour of PhD students and postdocs is
fundamental for tenured professors (Acker and Wagner 2019; Breeze and Taylor 2020b;
Gaudet et al. 2021; Moreau 2017). When it comes to establishment of friendship bonds
and collectivity, this is a care strategy to build a cohesive team and resist the neoliberal
environment (Acker and Wagner 2019; Puāwai-Collective 2019).
It is necessary to highlight that, despite its importance to students and the reputation
of the university, care is undervalued and represents a double burden. Care work is con-
sidered ‘domestic’ work of the organization, ‘academic housework’, or ‘academic house-
keeping’. This means that women usually are disproportionately encouraged and
pressured to do it, and this work is under-recognized and underappreciated, therefore,
4 I. CASTELAO-HUERTA

not considered useful for individual career advancement (Burford, Bosanquet, and Smith
2020; Cardozo 2017; El-Alayli, Hansen-Brown, and Ceynar 2018; Gaudet et al. 2021; Grum-
mell, Devine, and Lynch 2009; Heijstra, Steinthorsdóttir, and Einarsdóttir 2017; Jackson
2019; Lynch 2010). While most women are pressured into assuming care work, they
find out that such activity is ‘interpreted as a lack of productivity that counts against
them in promotions processes’ (Breeze and Taylor 2020a, 53). In this way, ‘universities sim-
ultaneously repudiate and depend on feminized forms of labor’ (Gannon et al. 2016, 195).
In addition, the neoliberal demands for productivity, added to the increased amount of
administrative duties, are in constant tension with efforts to be kind, supportive, caring
and collaborative. Thus, care practices are a double burden because they require
energy and conscious awareness (Acker and Wagner 2019; Horncastle 2011; Lolich and
Lynch 2017).
I show in this article that some of the women full professors have caring and careful
practices, even though these are undervalued and represent a double burden. Olarte-
Sierra and Pérez-Bustos (2020) propose two dimensions of care: caring practices – display-
ing kindness and concern for others, and careful practices – making sure of avoiding
potential harm. I contribute to the literature by highlighting caring practices such as
rebuscarse to ensure the well-being of the students and providing financial support, as
well as careful practices such as intervening to prevent harm and being open to listening.
Efforts of professors to support students in their financial and emotional problems allow
them to develop trust and solidarity, which can create bonds that continue even after
graduation.

The defunding of public universities in Colombia

In 1992, Law 30 was approved in Colombia with the purpose of establishing a system to
promote and evaluate the quality of higher education. To this end, the State ceded some
of its administrative control functions with the intention of guaranteeing the autonomy of
the institutions to provide an educational service of a high academic and administrative
level (Giraldo, Abad, and Díaz 2017). From that moment onwards, public universities are
considered autonomous entities endowed with legal personality; academic, administra-
tive and financial autonomy; independent assets; and the power to elaborate and
manage their budget. This implies that the national government contributes only a
part of the university resources. The State budget allocation projected in Law 30 has
affected universities because it does not take into account the growth of the institutions
over the years. In other words, the base budget for universities has remained the same
since 1993. This means that the public resources allocated to university administrations
did not change over time while there has been a big change in the number of students,
as well as in the infrastructural and technological needs of the universities (Mazo and
María 2017; Quimbay Herrera and Villabona Robayo 2017).
The State’s financial participation in universities has decreased from 79% to 48% from
1993 to 2013 (Piraquive and Lucila 2013, 18). This reduction has been sustained to the
level that the contribution to public universities as a percentage of GDP declined from
0.71% in 2002 to 0.42% in 2016 (Dirección Nacional de Planeación y Estadística 2018).
This has led to a high deficit in the budgets of the institutions (Arteta Ripoll 2012; Piraqu-
ive and Lucila 2013; Jaramillo 2010).
 GENDER AND EDUCATION 5

A key point to note is that the deficit has increased as public universities have to
accommodate a growing number of students. Piraquive and Lucila (2013) points out
that when Law 30 was passed, the higher education coverage rate was about 10%,
while recently it has reached 45%. This situation has damaged the quality of education
because professors have to deal with larger and larger groups of students. As a result,
‘Colombian public universities do not have enough resources for research and scholar-
ships, and all students have to pay tuition fees. The fees are especially high for postgradu-
ate students […] over 4000 US dollars annually’ (Tutkal et al. 2021, 326–327).
Under this circumstances, I present how some women who are full professors have caring
and careful practices that contribute to reducing the financial pressure over their students
and avoid individualization. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that these practices
are complex, undervalued and imply an additional burden for the professors.

Methodology
This article is part of a larger research focused on understanding how neoliberal policies and
gender shape the practices of women full professors. As gender is a social arrangement, this
methodological approach focused on women allows me to distinguish the socially situated
character of the experiences of women professors (Harding 2011), thus gaining insight into
their experiences and practices. Therefore, a qualitative approach that included both inter-
views and an ethnographic study was the most appropriate. The interviews allow us to under-
stand the perspectives of professors and their students as they express them in their own
words (Taylor and Bogdan 1994), while ethnography allows collecting data that can lead
to unravelling the complex social reality (Strathern 1999). My observations of several inter-
actions during the ethnographic research provided me with important details that professors
do not explicitly mention or, in some cases, do not even notice.
My interest in women full professors lies in the fact that most of the literature has
focused on analysing the detrimental effects of neoliberalism on academics who are
neither tenured nor at the top of the academic ladder (Ivancheva 2015; Lipton 2020).
This article shows how the precarization of universities also has repercussions for
faculty members who are in a better position due to their working conditions.
The fieldwork was conducted between June 2018 and December 2020 at the CPU and
included several stages. The first consisted of locating women full professors and quanti-
fying their academic production. This allowed me to identify 48 women with the highest
publication outputs. I chose to contact these professors because I wanted to find out how
they manage to have such a record of publications knowing the lack of research funds
(Castelao-Huerta 2021a). The second stage was conducting semi-structured interviews
with 24 of them between November 2018 and February 2019. Professors from all areas
of knowledge (Sciences, Health Sciences, Social Sciences, Engineering, Agricultural
Sciences and Arts) participated in them, with ages between 47 and 67 years, and who
had joined the CPU between 1974 and 2006. All encounters were recorded and tran-
scribed in a word processor. The information was subjected to content analysis based
on grounded theory (Charmaz 1996). The content analysis process involved revision
and codification of transcripts in RQDA programme (R package for Qualitative Data Analy-
sis) in order to organize them by emerging categories. Then, I grouped the categories into
two main topics: caring and careful practices.
6 I. CASTELAO-HUERTA

At the same time, I first carried out ethnographic explorations in the classroom with 11
professors. The observations were made on a single occasion in four cases. I have made
observations with each of the four other professors between three and six sessions.
Finally, with three women professors, I conducted observation for more than one seme-
ster (2019-1 and 2019-2). The choice of these three professors was because during their
classes they expressed a critical position against the consequences of the neoliberal pol-
icies and I was interested in their strategies and practices in navigating a neoliberalized
university. The observations were recorded in a field diary, whose complete information
was transcribed into a word processor. This information was coded and systematized fol-
lowing the procedure indicated above with the interviews. Thanks to this daily immersion
with the three professors and their students, I was able to conduct nineteen interviews
with their students and colleagues. The main criterion for choosing these interviewees
was that they had a relationship of at least two years with the professors. The sample
includes students (that are also part of their research group) and former students in
levels of undergraduate and postgraduate studies (who in some cases still maintain a
work relationship with them, which is why I call them colleagues).
I conducted more interviews in July and August 2019, this time in-depth, with the three
professors from my ethnographic study. Finally, in April 2020, I conducted interviews with
ten of the 24 professors and three of the students to delve into details central to research
arguments, including caring and careful practices.
Caring and careful practices emerged from the field when I questioned the professors
about what teaching and being a professor mean to them; what are the most complicated
parts and the most satisfactory aspects about being a professor; and, how their relation-
ship with students is. I confirmed that caring and careful practices were an important
topic during my interviews with students by asking them about what they appreciate
the most about the professors and asking questions about the specific interactions that
I had observed. The students told me about how the professors take care of them,
mainly with financial issues, but also with emotional problems. In this way, despite the
work overload and the scarcity of resources, some women professors spend their time
and energy for caring and careful practices.

Caring and careful practices: analysis of findings

The analysis exposes that some of the women professors take care of their students. Fol-
lowing Olarte-Sierra and Pérez-Bustos (2020), I present that professors develop caring and
careful practices. I also briefly mention the complexities of each practice at the end of rel-
evant sub-sections, which is important to avoid idealizing such practices.
Caring practices involve conscious and responsible commitment, attitude and concern
for the needs of students, especially the financial needs. I highlight two caring practices:
rebuscarse to ensure the well-being of the students and providing financial support.

Rebuscarse to ensure the well-being of the students

‘Honours!’ happily screamed Professor O as she left the classroom with a big smile
and told us that now we can go back inside. In the hall, the jury congratulated E
for obtaining her PhD with nomination to honours distinction (Field diary). Professor
 GENDER AND EDUCATION 7

O and E have known each other for more than ten years, all the way back to when E
was an undergraduate student and asked the professor if she could direct her thesis
(2009). Afterwards, she also did her Master’s with Professor O (2012). For the docto-
rate, the professor invited her to do it in the frame of a research project for which
she had obtained funding. This is relevant because in 2012, only 10% of those study-
ing a postgraduate degree in Colombia had a credit or grant loan from the State
(Wasserman and Ruíz-Rodgers 2014), which means that most people must find
other ways to finance their studies. Thus, rebuscarse for financial and material
resources through research projects is a caring practice since many students do not
have scholarships and the resources managed by the professors become opportu-
nities for the students to continue their studies and research, thus ensuring their
well-being. Ñ, who was a student of Professor O and currently works with her, empha-
sizes how rebuscarse is a caring practice of the professor:
I have met professors who don’t care about anything other than receiving their salaries. They
are fine here because they are permanent staff, their salary is fixed every month, so they don’t
care about the students at all. But Professor O has this thing that I find so incredible. Look,
projects and proposals are time-consuming and sometimes stressful for her, but she
always does it to increase the knowledge, to help the community, to help her students.
Not all professors do that. She could perfectly well be at home at this hour, but she is
always looking for ways to do, to grow. I admire her for that, because she shows solidarity.

Professors’ care is associated with concern for the financial and material needs of their stu-
dents. Thanks to their rebuscarse, some professors provide the students with peace of
mind so that they can continue their academic formation, both by granting them a
monthly stipend and by keeping the laboratory equipment updated, which is mostly
dated due to lack of university funding. In relation to this, Professor B details that the con-
stant search for resources benefits her students because they have the opportunity to use
that equipment and then they become competitive, which makes it easier for them to win
scholarships. By obtaining resources for funding fieldwork and purchasing equipment,
she looks after her students and takes responsibility for them. In her own words: ‘it is
for solidarity, I do it for them’. This means that students do not have to work or rebuscarse
to obtain the required materials for their research.
Care is present in the concern about what happens to students, in identifying their
needs and in working hard to ensure their well-being. Without this caring practice,
research could be weakened or even abandoned. This is beneficial for professors and stu-
dents because they can publish the results of the research together. However, rebuscarse
is playing the neoliberal game in that it responsibilizes the individuals for institutional
shortcomings, it does not always yield positive results meaning that there is a constant
search of resources and unpaid work, and it is not possible to fund everyone’s research
in this way which may create rivalry among some students.

Providing financial support

J knew Professor R since he was an undergraduate student. This generated proximity due
to the fact that J also regularly talked to her about his personal problems. When J started
his Master’s studies, he had to work for five months without receiving payment, and Pro-
fessor R lent him money more than once. Afterwards, when J lost his job, the professor
8 I. CASTELAO-HUERTA

hired him for three months for assistance with administrative activities. For J, counting on
that money paid directly by the Professor R was a fortune:
… in some occasions, I was economically very, very bad, and she supported me with those
job opportunities, and by staying with the professor I was able to continue learning from
her. For me, these are things that I keep in my heart.

When J’s Master’s thesis was evaluated, he was in another city. The professor found
him an appointment with one of the evaluators because he had not approved J’s
document. J remembers that the professor helped him with money so that he
could continue working on thesis adjustments. In this way, Professor R has had
caring practices with J on various occasions. This allowed him to complete his under-
graduate and Master’s studies. Thus, the professor became aware of his material
needs and acted accordingly to prevent him from psychological harm, such as
anxiety, and physical harm, such as malnutrition. But this did not only benefit J
since Professor R is always overwhelmed: ‘he helped me and I helped him, right? I
mean, so you don’t have a job, I do need [you to help me]’. In addition, this informal
working relationship allows the professor to build a close relationship with someone
who later becomes her colleague. Professor R points out how she has supported
herself and her students by requesting assistance and paying for specific assignments:
When I started with Z, it was out of my pocket […] I literally didn’t have time to do a bibli-
ography of twelve articles, and she started to do it […] Sometimes I’ve been told, ‘professor,
I don’t have a job’, and I make up jobs, right, I say, ‘I just needed someone to help me with
this!’ […] I could do it, but I get overwhelmed, so, I see it as an agreement about the mutual
recognition of the work.

In this way, the informal work arrangements that Professor R establishes with some
students, based on ‘inventing’ jobs, are a way of rebuscarse since these are informal
practices that address the needs of both of them. Thanks to these arrangements,
the professor’s workload decreases as she does not have to deal with practical activi-
ties. Meanwhile, students obtain financial support for necessary work within the
academy, minimizing both the anxieties of financial difficulties and the risk of dropping
out of university. However, the origin of the needs of both the professor and the stu-
dents lies in neoliberal policies. Professor R would not have so many activities if the
university could hire assistants and administrative staff to take on these practical
tasks. The students, for their part, in a non-neoliberalized public higher education
funding system, could have sustained economic support for the development of
their studies. This is why this caring practice makes the university a friendlier place
for both of them; but at the same time, it allows the neoliberal academy to reproduce
itself by making up for its shortcomings without depending on institutional support.
Furthermore, while these practices can result in precarized labour relations due to
their unstable characteristics, they can also generate feelings of jealousy since these
can be perceived as differential treatment.
Alongside these caring practices, I find that the professors have tried to prevent their
students from suffering harm that could be caused by dropping out or not graduating on
time. Intervening to prevent harm and being open to listening are careful practices that
contribute to academic development.
 GENDER AND EDUCATION 9

Intervening to prevent harm

Q and U came to the CPU from another city to study their PhD in a ‘regalías project’.1 Thus,
their tuition fees, living expenses and materials to carry out the research were to be
covered. When one was finishing her third semester and the other her first, the project
was cancelled because the company that provided the resources appeared on the
Clinton List.2 Both students were left without resources and unable to develop their
thesis: ‘and we were left with the question, what now?’ (PhD student U). In that semester,
they were taking a research seminar with Professor O, who questioned them about their
theses. They replied that the project had been cancelled, so they did not know how they
were going to continue. U recalls the situation:
… and that’s where the story of the three of us begins, because Professor O was really the
only one who told us, ‘come to my office, and we’ll see what we can do.’ […] She sent us
to different entities to look for solutions to continue with the doctorate. We didn’t
succeed, but that semester we applied for a governmental scholarship.

Professor O intervenes and weaves solidarity with U and Q, who were in a hopeless situ-
ation. This is because suddenly they were left without the vital security of having their
research funded, as well as without personal support. It is important to note that they
sought out at least six other professors and an external researcher who could help
them, each time receiving refusals. The careful practice consists of Professor O’s interven-
tion through rebuscarse, looking for how to guide Q and U, as other professors were not
addressing their needs.
Intervening to prevent harm is also present in the interest for students to graduate. P,
who had Professor R as her adviser, points out: ‘she wrote me and told ‘come, are you
going to graduate?’ I was supposed to submit my thesis the previous semester. I
wasn’t able to do that since I had to work and study at the same time’ (Master’s
Student P). P received pressure from the professor, which actually motivated her to com-
plete her work. Thus, there is a careful practice because Professor R seeks to avoid poten-
tial harm to P, such as having to pay for another semester or not being able to graduate
due to lack of financial resources. P sent her a revised manuscript and informed her that
she had a lot of work. The professor took the time to correct the writing so that she could
advance to the final version: ‘I think I was able to finish thanks to her great help in that
sense […] I was very surprised, I was very grateful’ (Master’s student P). P focused entirely
on the corrections to her manuscript and submitted it for evaluation, enabling her to
defend and graduate. Professor R’s interest in her students being able to graduate is
constant:
… when I accept someone, it’s because I feel that I like the subject, I like the people, and I also
feel that it’s my responsibility and my commitment, right? It’s not a thing of ‘oh, another one.’

According to Professor R, the time invested in taking care of her students is important for
both: for the students, because it allows them to move forward in their professional
careers and have the opportunity to get better jobs; and for her, because the recognition
of the work guiding the theses gives her satisfaction. While advisorship is institutionally
recognized, albeit undervalued, practices such as asking about progress or correcting
the writing to make sure that the students complete their research are not recognized,
which makes them informal practices similar to rebuscarse. However, it should be
10 I. CASTELAO-HUERTA

noted that these interventions may be considered a breach of personal space by some
students, and differential treatment by others who do not benefit from them.

Being open to listening

Some professors have developed careful ways to establish relationships with their stu-
dents. They focused on listening, understanding and trying to orient them. Professor J
teaches individual classes, which allows her to establish an intimate relationship with
her students. When she notices that someone is sad, not very active, or not performing
as usual, she asks if they have a problem, rebusca a solution:
… that allows me to be able to help them and also to give them advice on a personal level
[…] to learn to love themselves and to say, ‘well, this happened to me, but I have to go on
because I can’t leave, and let myself be destroyed and crushed.’ Giving them strength, for me
that have been very comforting, you know? I love having that beautiful relationship with my
students (Professor J).

With this practice of asking, Professor J opens herself up to listening and allows her stu-
dents to let off steam and receive advice and support. Careful ways of connecting foster a
sense of community through cooperation, empathy and active listening and they are fun-
damental to the well-being of students and the institution, even if they are not considered
academic activities. Professor M remembers her careful practice when one of her students
failed her doctoral qualification exam:
… I listened to her, consoled her. I told her, ‘go to your house, mija (my child), and lie down,
switch off already, sleep.’ She called me the next day, and she was still crying, ‘darling, move
on, because the world did not end for you.’ I told her, ‘promise me that you will cry in January
of the next year, but now you cannot because you must improve the project, because we
need to defend it […] so, tell me, what do you want, mija?’

The student was able to recover and present her project. In this case, the careful practice
of the Professor M helped her student to continue with her professional career since she
eased her anxiety and showed sensibility. In this way, the professor avoided her student’s
dropout from the university. Similar to previous practices, here too there is an unrecog-
nized effort of rebuscarse to solve a student’s problem. It should be noted that these
careful practices result in unpaid and unrecognized extra work for the professors.

Discussion and final thoughts

An ethics of care in higher education is conducive to good teaching and produces knowl-
edge that cares for the natural world and humanity (Lynch et al. 2020; Puig de la Bellacasa
2017). Following this idea, caring and careful practices of women full professors in this
research serve to improve the lives of people that are close to them, and to build a
much friendlier and more supportive university. These practices can build ‘safe academic
spaces’ for women, which can be difficult to find considering how universities are mascu-
linized in many ways (Mackinlay and Lipton 2020). Rebuscarse shows a contrast with the
findings of Heijstra et al., who claim that ‘academics with well-established symbolic capital
outsource time-consuming and undervalued tasks and that they also feel less obliged to
take on such chores’ (2017, 13). With this, what I argue is that the women professors in this
study can and decide to undertake care practices precisely because they are not racing
 GENDER AND EDUCATION 11

towards the highest academic position anymore. Professors know about their students’
academic, economic and personal concerns because they know them, listen to them
and get involved in their problems: their relationship goes beyond the classroom and
this allows them to build an academic community (Askins and Blazek 2017; Zembylas,
Bozalek, and Shefer 2014). This occurs despite the hostile relations among the faculty
resulting from the implementation of neoliberal policies in higher education (Castelao-
Huerta 2022).
While neoliberal policies can lead to individualism, there are still ways for collective
engagement to improve scientific institutions by advocating for caring and careful prac-
tices, making a deep impact ‘on students’ affective and embodied well-being, openness
to learning, interest in subject material, capacity to understand and aspirations for the
future’ (Anderson et al. 2019, 16). Placing care at the centre of life is one of the feminist
politics of resistance and responsibility within the academy, which is why it is crucial to
incorporate affective and ethical practices in the production of knowledge (Askins and
Blazek 2017; Puig de la Bellacasa 2017). As Horncastle emphasizes, ‘it would be a
shame to lose scholars for the reason that they are not cared for’ (2011, 52). This
implies that the care activity ‘should serve as a reference point, instead of the activity
carried out in the market’ (Carrasco Bengoa 2013, 48).
However, it is fundamental to remember that care is a complex practice, full of tensions
and ambivalences (Motta and Bennett 2018; Zembylas 2017). Professors’ rebuscarse for
obtaining resources allows for the continuation of their students’ academic formation,
but also involves playing the neoliberal game. The professors spend their time preparing
research proposals, so that they can compete for the scarce funds available. This ‘endless
race’, as Professor O calls it, constitutes extra workload, which most of the time does not
have positive results, but with which they are taking responsibility for the lack of public
funds for scientific research. Furthermore, it is impossible for professors to finance all their
students, which can generate envy and competition. An important issue to underline is
that labour agreements between professors and students, both formal and informal,
can place students in a precarious position when their rights do not include access to
social security and health services. This is to say that while rebuscarse and financial
support may be a temporary relief, they do not solve the problem of university defunding
at its root and may contribute to the State’s continuing failure to assume responsibility for
its financial obligations. ‘Supporting ‘younger’ academics can ambivalently do the work of
remediating a lack of institutional care and accountability’ (Breeze and Taylor 2020b, 13),
perpetuating the care-less institution (Breeze and Taylor 2020a). In this way, researchers
devote ‘considerable time and energy’ searching for funding opportunities, which results
in ‘short-term contracts that ironically left workers so insecure that they would perpetually
be searching for another contract’ (Acker and Wagner 2019, 14). The complexity of care
can be seen in that ‘while these forms may be co-opted and put to work in the form of
so-called collaboration, networking and plugging the institutional-care gaps in teaching
and collegiality, they can also provide alternatives to neoliberal, gendered and racialized
forms of governance’ (Gannon et al. 2016, 195).
Another complexity of care is that ‘it can lead to acts that by intention are kind but may
involve misjudgement and harm to the others’ (Clegg and Rowland 2010, 723). In this
sense, intervening to prevent harm and being open to listening can be interpreted as har-
assment if the student feels a persistent intrusion into her/his personal life. Thus, caring
12 I. CASTELAO-HUERTA

practices ‘can cause tension between sensitive students and even caring teachers when
they do not position each other in the same discourse’ (Lu 2018, 16). Likewise, when inter-
vening to prevent harm involves modifying a student’s writing, it could be seen as an
impudence that demerits the work done. It may also cause other students to feel that
they are being treated differently if they do not receive such care.
Finally, it should not be forgotten that these forms of care are gendered since most
women are expected to undertake them (Breeze and Taylor 2020a). Lynch et al. (2020)
emphasize the care ceiling that devalues and silences care-related practices. Moreover,
as care is not a ‘submittable’ product in the culture of productivity, it cannot be measured
or counted, but life itself requires care in order to continue (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017).
Care is productive because it produces a positive response in the students (Clegg and
Rowland 2010). It also implies extra workload, which adds to the teaching, research
and administrative burdens, and therefore adds to professors’ fatigue. As Cardozo empha-
sizes, it is indispensable to ‘reclaim the value of caring while recognizing that working “for
love” renders us vulnerable to exploitation’ (2017, 11). For this reason, we must promote a
structural change that recognizes and values care as an essential practice of higher edu-
cation. Possible actions that may improve the situation include: (a) fostering a pedagogy
that takes into account the importance of feelings, emotions and the effects of personal
concerns in the construction of knowledge; (b) ensuring institutional recognition and
value of caring and careful practices and establishing ways of systematically conducting
such practices within the institution; and (c) working to develop an academic collectivity
with a culture of care and solidarity that opposes individualism and organizes against the
imposition of exploitative working conditions. The institutions must be transformed in
order to reduce the harmful effects of the neoliberalized ‘careless academy’ on the stu-
dents. It is also important to recognize the care work and implement an academic
culture that responsibilizes both the university administrations and the professorate in
order to avoid that some women professors spend unequal time and energy in order
to make up for the lack of institutional caring and careful practices.

Notes
1. As part of the State resources that can be accessed to fund research projects, there is the
General Regalías System, which handles the distribution of income from the exploitation
of non-renewable resources. The system’s resources can be used to finance projects that
are in line with the National Development Plan and the development plans of the territorial
entities. The Science, Technology and Innovation Fund is part of this system (Decree 4923 of
2011).
2. On 24 October 1995, then US President Bill Clinton issued Executive Order 12978, seeking to
block assets and prohibit transactions with those listed as being linked to drug trafficking
(https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Documents/12978.pdf).

Acknowledgement
I want to thank the women full professors and their students that generously shared their experi-
ences with me. I am very grateful for all the suggestions and encouraging comments by Gender and
Education’s anonymous reviewers; they were really supportive and allowed me to improve my
research: thank you so much. I also want to thank Adam Frick for proofreading the manuscript,
 GENDER AND EDUCATION 13

and to Tania Pérez-Bustos for her guidence during my PhD. Finally, I specially thank Serhat Tutkal for
all his support.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor
Isaura Castelao-Huerta has a PhD in Human and Social Sciences at the National University of Colom-
bia. She holds a Master’s Degree in Gender Studies from The College of Mexico (Colmex), and a
Bachelor’s Degree in Communication Science from the National Autonomous University of
Mexico (UNAM). Her research is concerned with the effects of neoliberal policies in higher education
and the ways in which they intertwine with gender. She currently works as a postdoctoral researcher
at the Centre for Gender Research and Studies (CIEG), UNAM.

ORCID
Isaura Castelao-Huerta http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9402-3868

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