‘If She Can, All of You Can’: Violence as a Restoration of the Male Mandate in Vocational Education Training

Abstract

This paper analyses violence as a restoration of both male mandate and power in male-dominated fields, such as in the context of Vocational Educational Training specialising in Transport and Vehicle Maintenance in the Spanish city of Valencia and how women who enter it struggle against it. Our theory is based on the developments made by Judith Butler, who understands gender as a power device, and by Rita L. Segato through the concepts of male mandate and moral violence. We also analyse the resistance that is being deployed against gender normativity. To offer an account of these ideas, our research was designed on a qualitative basis following an abductive approach. We conducted eight biographical interviews, throughout the 2019–2020 academic year, with women who are linked to the automotive sector and to the VET area in question. We can state that their entering into this productive field leads to a denaturalisation of the hierarchy imposed by the male mandate and that in challenging things, it exacerbates the violent practices as a restoration of the male mandate.

1. Introduction

Being a woman—or being seen as one—and studying or working in the automotive sector continues to be seen as an act of heroism, queerness or, indeed, revolution. Industrial sectors continue to be dominated by normative masculinity, whilst women in these sectors are still up against a genderised and exclusive culture [1,2,3]. This paper draws upon how violence constitutes the mean through which the male mandate is enacted in the context of Vocational Educational Training (hereinafter, VET) specialising in Transport and Vehicle Maintenance in the city of Valencia (Spain), a field of study that qualifies those who go into it to work in the mechanical sector through learning the technicalities of the automotive industry.

The reform introduced by Order 85/2016 is driven by the Directorate General for Vocational Training and Education with Special Regulations, which is concerned with and committed to promoting the female presence in traditionally masculinised branches of VET. This reform targets the bodies of people who are officially ascribed to the female category, offering them monetary grants, which are supposed to promote labour market access plans. Our previous findings have led us to conclude that not only does this policy fail to fulfil its goal of encouraging women to enrol in certain studies, but its theoretical implications have paradoxically been found to heighten the gender divide [4].

We focus on how women who enter this field struggle against violence, as well as the reported experiences of violence exerted on bodies and subjectivities that defy both dominant embodied and legitimized gender patterns.

Far from seeking to place the women who partook in our research in a victimizing position, we emphasize their courage in facing these practices and social relations, in standing their ground, and in exercising their agency. This is our approach to address the effects of the male mandate and the implications and ruptures that emerge when the lost and improper referent speaks [5]. Nevertheless, we would also highlight anything that helps to overturn or evince the heterogeneity of gender practices in VET [6], as well as all acts of resistance against hegemonic norms in VET [7].

In our theoretical framework, gender is understood as a power device and violence is seen as a material and discursive phenomenon that allows us to reinstate the regulatory norms that designate which subjects are intelligible and which are unintelligible in a given context. The context of our research refers to the VET pedagogical practices shaped by the intersection between social class and gender, or, in other words, working class and masculinization. The methodology used is qualitative, with eight interviews having been carried out throughout the 2019–2020 academic year with women who are linked to the automotive sector and to the VET area in question. The results are organized in three sections, and we conclude the paper by arguing that violence is a way of restoring the male mandate whenever this mandate is perceived to be endangered by women’s access to masculinised contexts.

2. Theoretical Framework

In this paper, we understand gender as a regulatory apparatus of society that operates within social practices by defining the parameters by which some subjects are considered intelligible and others unintelligible in a given context [5]. Gender distributes and selects the recognition of subjects according to regulatory norms; those who are intelligible achieve a certain level of social recognition, while others are considered, under this matrix, as less human, and their recognition is a matter of struggle in the cultural and social arena. Intelligibility and unintelligibility are defined by norms and ideals, producing traces that allow for the recognition of which bodies and genders are thinkable and which are unthinkable or abject; these norms and ideals define the constitutive exterior of gender.

Defining the constitutive exterior is, to a certain extent, a violent action, since selection criteria are established and end up suppressing the ways of living that are considered a rejection of social conventions and even a threat to them [8]. Displacing or subverting the norm may make it possible to inhabit a bearable life, but it also entails both material and symbolic risks; it entails the risk of suffering, and even enduring, violence. Faced with this phenomenon, there is an immediate problem: what is violence?

In this paper, we understand that violence is both material and discursive. Given the complexity that both the meaning and what constitutes violence require, violence here refers to the multiple ways in which humans—and non-humans—can be attacked, destroyed, assaulted, etc. It may take on a direct materiality, but it goes beyond that [9]. We can differentiate three types of violence: subjective, symbolic and systemic violence [10]. Subjective violence occurs in and is experienced by the bodies of concrete subjects, and the most visible. Symbolic violence is related to language and the imposition of certain meanings. Systemic violence refers to the effects of domination and exploitation in a given social, economic and political system. Also, violence is a mean of imposing power relations, distinguishing and distributing subjects both individually and structurally [11].

Violence is not only defined as using physical or sexual force, but also as a moral element of subjugating the social positions of subjects through everyday actions and habits [12], with acts that range

[…] from ridicule, moral coercion, suspicion, intimidation, condemnation of sexuality, everyday debasement of a person, their subjectivity, their body, their work or their moral worth. Thus, it may not even develop into verbal violence, since it can be exercised through gestures, attitudes and glances.

(ibid., p. 113)

We frame violence as forms of power, inequality and control that distribute the social positions of who does what to whom. The practice of violence, as a social relationship, does not refer to individual, psychological or pathological characteristics of those who exercise it, but rather reveals how power relations are limited to the reproduction of indisputable meanings or the reaffirmation of positions of power in the face of a possible loss of control [13].

Therefore, violence enables the male mandate to continue subordinating and exploiting women, on the one hand, and masculinities that differ from the norm, on the other [14]. The male mandate is understood in the sense of a corporate pact by which masculinity is renewed and validated as a hierarchy of prestige [15].

In this research violence is not a libidinal or personal matter, but the means or instrument by which the form of power required by the male mandate is asserted [15]. According to Jeff Hearn et al., p. 576 [9], violence is a regime in that it has four potential meanings: “(1) a mode of rule or management; (2) a form of government, or the government in power; (3) a period of rule; or (4) a regulated system”. In all these meanings, there is the possibility of resisting violence. This resistance rests on a political expression, which is not necessarily discursive, as it can also be a gesture or a movement in which the body becomes a political contest to oppose the power relations to which it is subjected [16].

Hence, if violence is one of the means by which the male mandate is reified, it is worth asking about the resistance that unintelligible positions carry out in order to survive in a highly masculinised environment. We locate this resistance through feminist political expressions. Expressions that, following Sara Ahmed [17], emerge through the feminist snap from a point of rupture in which mechanical women can no longer endure what they have endured for a long time.

3. Context of Research

The VET context is strongly tied to professional identities [18,19], and although research on Vocational Educational Training has predominantly focussed on social class rather than gender [20], the fact is that both aspects influence this organisational context [21]. From a global standpoint, VET is moulded by the sexual division of work and the gender patterns legitimised by VET organisations; this learning context reveals society’s structural patterns and standards on gender [22,23,24]. Social class divisions are evident when comparing academic and vocational programmes, while the gender division is more apparent when comparing various vocational programmes [18,25]. Helena Korp [26] says that automotive vocational training is a context that receives students—mostly male—who have been defined as bad students—in relation to traditional notions of success linked to academic knowledge. In these contexts, masculinities are materially performed through the mastery of practical and manual skills historically linked to male-dominated industrial occupations, emphasizing the “culture of the street” as opposed to the “culture of books”, distancing themselves from theoretical learning [27]. Other research, such as that conducted by Per-Åke Rosvall [28] in Sweden, shows that young people in this professional family are aware of the changes in the vehicle industry and the need for info-productive skills, and that they sometimes also express disenchantment with the level of education they receive.

Although we are witnessing a change in discourses regarding gender and the global power of the feminist movement in its will to alter everything, as upheld by Verónica Gago [29], the search for gender equality and the presence of powerful feminist movements allow discriminatory practices—including violence—to be frowned upon. Rafael Merino [30] asserts that in Spain, masculinisation and feminisation continue to occur in certain professional fields of VET, where it remains particularly difficult for women to enter male-dominated professions. In this paper, however, we raise the question of whether gender democratisation in VET goes beyond the discursive sphere and affects relational models and practices at this educational level.

A report published in 2019 on VET in the Region of Valencia, highlighted that this region has a greater number of students than the national average [31]. As far as the statistical share of students by gender is concerned, although it is relatively balanced in overall terms (44% are “female” according to official data), the numbers are significantly uneven in specific professional fields. For instance, the field on which our research focusses, Transport and Vehicle Maintenance, shows the smallest percentage of women, with just 1%.

One of the core goals of Spain’s public policies over the past few decades is to achieve gender parity in the workforce by implementing measures that incentivise women to join male-dominated sectors [32,33]. The public administrations of the Spanish regions of Valencia and Catalonia1 have both launched subsidies to encourage women to enter highly masculinised VET programmes, including those leading to work in the field of mechanics. Yet, we agree with Georgine Clarsen [34] in her belief that insisting on the statistical side of the issue draws attention away from the fact that masculinisation does not happen merely by chance.

4. Materials and Methods

Our research was designed on a qualitative basis and, as pointed out above, the questions that guided this analysis were the following: how does the male mandate affect women linked to VET specialising in Transport and Vehicle Maintenance in Valencia? How do women in VET specialising in Transport and Vehicle Maintenance in Valencia exercise their agency in a context that enables the male mandate? To answer those questions, we conducted semi-structured biographical interviews throughout the 2019–2020 academic year with women who are linked to the automotive sector and to the VET area in question. This method has enabled us to examine how gender is (re)produced, prioritising subjectivities within organisations [35].

The interviews lasted from 35 min to 100 min, and were recorded, transcribed and returned to the interviewees for further editing. They were conducted in different locations—such as the interviewee’s workplace, the interviewee’s home, or a café. The interview guide followed in these interviews is based on a phenomenological introduction that provides insight into the path taken by these women prior to entering VET, as well as an approach to their own experience inside the classrooms and inside the educational organisations.

If violence is the means by which the male mandate is reified, the path leading to the visibilisation of this reification must contain (1) data on the lived experiences of those in unintelligible positions, (2) the particular ways of organizing social relations in a given context, (3) the meanings contextually attributed to certain social practices, and (4) the forms of resistance that are encountered. Therefore, the interview focus throughout especially targets the interactions and social relations that take place within these organisations, the meanings attributed to the occupational context of the automotive sector, the resistance and responses against gender normativity, and the (dis)identification of such patterns. The results are based upon how the women describe their experiences in retrospect, and the four items listed at the beginning of this paragraph are developed in three subsections in the next section of this paper.

The participants are women linked to the automotive sector, with such heterogeneous links to the sector due to the snowball effect method we followed, but it is also due to differences in their educational–occupational paths and generational disparity. The selection criteria for the participants was having a link with the automotive production sector and having studied or being a teacher in this VET branch.

Our focus in this paper is solely on their experience in the educational sphere. In any case, we believe this heterogeneity proves potentially convenient for the research process since such differences mean a range of variations can be analysed in their accounts. The eight interviewees2 are

• Students taking VET in Transport and Vehicle Maintenance: Marina and Esther;
• Teachers imparting VET in Transport and Vehicle Maintenance: Laia, Berta and Cristina;
• Former workers in the sector: Lorena and Raquel;
• Workers in the sector: Sofía.

Since social relations in the VET context are readable as a dichotomy (man/woman; male/female) based on sexual difference, the aim of interviewing women was to fully understand how social relations in the VET context (re)produce genderised social positions and binary gender norms.

An analysis3 of the qualitative data was undertaken through the use of MAXQDA 2022 software using an abductive approach, in which we applied theoretical codes, with ad hoc codes emerging from the empirical material [36]. We used a theoretical frame of reference in order to structure the empirical findings, focusing on the question of violence. This structure provides us with categories and dimensions that are specified through different codes in the analysis. We used the method of discourse analysis and interpretation on the basis that it allows the concept of power to be specified and detailed. After all, violence cannot be (re)produced in a context with no discourses or ideologies, and the qualifications and social institutions behind violence are obviously also expressed discursively [37].

5. Results

Our findings have been arranged according to three topics: masculinities in VET in Transport and Vehicle Maintenance; the male mandate in VET in Transport and Vehicle Maintenance; and subverting and responding through (feminist) resistance. The first topic analyses which is the predominant identity in this type of training and its effects on bodies that differ from the norm in that context. In the second topic, we resort to the developments made by Rita L. Segato to comprehend the violent ways in which masculinities restore their position of power in classrooms where mechanical knowledge is imparted. The third and final topic expounds the actions our participants take to resist the male mandate that reigns in the sector.

5.1. Masculinities in VET in Transport and Vehicle Maintenance

The masculinisation of VET in Transport and Vehicle Maintenance is tied to the history and culture surrounding cars and motors. The statistical distribution is by sex—not gender; although it is balanced in overall terms in VET (44% of the student body is ‘female’ according to official data), if analysed by professional families, the distribution is considerably unbalanced. Transport and Vehicle Maintenance has less than 5% for women enrolled in it [31].

Bearing in mind that, as with any other object, their material existence takes on gender meanings, vehicles—especially cars—and gender are constituted reciprocally [38,39]. Cars stem from a masculinised culture ever since this icon of industrialisation became a mass commodity, one that was initially linked not only to masculinity, but also to male heterosexuality [40,41]. It is precisely this culture that leads many young men to want to enter this field of study and this sector.

“I always say when they walk through the door, ‘you come here with that Fast & Furious4 mindset’. They see ‘wheels’, as they call them. They see machines on wheels and, since this is usually a male sector, they tend to be linked to films showing stunning girls, speed, often sex, drugs… That’s the scene they’re picturing.”

(Laia, teacher)

Yet, this idea is not only shaped by the cultural field and the collective imaginary of youths; it is nurtured by the career guidance teams at teaching schools [42], who steer people towards the professional field of Transport and Vehicle Maintenance or other areas according to their personal profile.

“Some professional fields are severely punished. For instance, if I get a controversial young man who likes car video games and I send him into mechanics, it doesn’t bode well. He will never be sent to study anything like nursing.”

(Laia, teacher)

A certain type of profile or, in the words of Basil Bernstein [43], a retrospective pedagogical identity, can be identified among young people who choose to undergo VET in mechanics. This can be defined as the effect of the great narratives of the past which are recontextualised to stabilise the past and project it towards the future.

“Yes, there is a profile… because there are other fields that are also masculinised, such as electronics or electricity, though less so now—they have progressed more than us in this (…). The personality of this professional field is, above all, sexist.”

(Cristina, teacher)

The discourse and practices that this identity encourages continue to exist, both at an economical and cultural level, shielding a traditional masculinity that has not been broken by the progress of feminist movements [44,45]. In light of this masculinity, it is little wonder why the participants in our research were uncertain to enter these studies.

“When I started, it was basically like ‘I don’t understand a thing!’ Starting from scratch. Of course, I thought ‘well, let’s see how it goes (…). I’m the only girl. What will it be like?’ I didn’t know what the social interactions would be like. To be honest, I was bit unsure about coming here because I thought, ‘I don’t know what to expect’.”

(Esther, student)

Emotions, as pointed out by Sara Ahmed [46], should not only be seen as psychological dispositions, but as what defines the boundaries of the worlds that subjects inhabit, aligning the collective with the individual. The uncertainty we can read between the lines of Esther’s words lead us to wonder what it is she was uncertain of. The answer to that question is directly linked to a matter of power, and we believe it portrays a deeper concern that Esther harboured, whether consciously or subconsciously: what happens when my body and I enter the classroom? How firm and strong is the male mandate in these educational organisations?

Pondering the answers to these questions calls for us to consider that the ambivalence caused by the uncertain is not lacking in significance or discernment; it relates to the exposure and the potential consequences of censorship [16], but also because entering a masculine and masculinised world involves questioning the very female mandates.

5.2. The Male Mandate in VET Specialising in Transport and Vehicle Maintenance

Violence and its repetition and dangers are understood in terms of the normalising effect they produce, with moral violence constituting one of the pedagogical forms of cruelty defined by Rita L. Segato [15] (p. 11), like “any act or practice that teaches, accustoms and programmes subjects to transmute the living and its vitality into things” and that enables the predatory and individualised subjectification that the neoliberal system requires.

Regarding the external form of hegemonic masculinity, which refers to the relationship between masculinities and femininities, the male mandate is reiterated based on ties of commitment and expropriation [15].

“The way boys interact amongst themselves is what you would call playing the tough macho, seeing who manages to get a bit above the others. But normally this type of relationship doesn’t happen between a boy and a girl. You get other kinds of situations, but not that competitiveness.”

(Laia, teacher)

Picking up from this idea, some girls who enter these studies end up involved in a sentimental relationship with a classmate. Heterosexual romantic ties could be established in response to a survival technique in a particularly hostile context for femininities, given that engaging in some form of heterosexual relationship with a classmate involves a kind of protection from the group, along with the risks that it entails.

“The girls, maybe even as a strategy to protect themselves from the rest of the group or something, can end up pairing up in a relationship with someone from the same group. And any conflict ends there. (…) They are young too. They suddenly find themselves in the middle of a group of rough guys and they actually like some of them and give in to affection. But there is also fear (…). They always set an uncrossable boundary.”

(Berta, teacher)

This shows us one of the most important rules both at the organisational level and in peer culture: the institutionalisation of heterosexuality as a code governing interaction between youngsters [47].

“That typical little game of seeing who gets to sit next to me because I’m the only girl in the class, (…) sending me notes with hearts on so they can sit beside me. (…) Even though they thought I was a lesbian because I went into mechanics.”

(Sofía, worker)

The ambivalence of being seen as a lesbian and being the target of sexualised practices seeking intimateness and flirtation from classmates leads us to the words of Cheri J. Pascoe [48], who states that masculinities are expressed through discourses surrounding sexualities and practices that represent dominance or control over other bodies, specifically women.

So far, we have analysed the male mandate in relation to a peer group of students, but we will now go on to discuss how male teaching staff in the field of Transport and Vehicle Maintenance further legitimise that order. They achieve this through social relations with both their female students and fellow female teachers. In regards to their approach towards students, it is defined by seeing them as bodies and subjectivities that comprise the minority within the majority [49], sparking ambivalent discourse and practice that illustrates some form of essentialist paternalism, reinforcing a sexist gaze that judges women incapable for certain functions [50].

“My teacher, I remember during a trip, he would show off saying there was a girl in his class. I remember we went to see boat engines, which are huge, and he would grab me and say, ‘look, this is the girl in my class’.”

(Sofía, worker)

“One of the teachers, I guess because he was old-school (silence), would make sure that anything we did in the workshop followed this logic: first, Marina will do it so you know that, if she can, all of you can.”

(Marina, student)

“There was a teacher who said to me, ‘you’ll never get a job doing this. Bear that in mind’.”

(Lorena, former worker)

Regarding the relationship among teachers, we realise that the current social order on gender discursively breaks away with the past in an official recontextualisation that promotes formal equality. Nevertheless, looking at the relations and social practices that take place within highly masculinised organisations, as is the case with mechanical VET classrooms, the social gender order of the past is still present.

“Everyone’s discourse tallies with the official discourse. There is no sexism at all; here, everyone is treated equally. There is some degree of camaraderie, but it is kind of layered. And there is a deep layer of ‘your female self’ which is where the conflict lies.”

(Berta, teacher)

By analysing the relations between female teachers of technical mechanics and their male students, we see that the teachers’ mechanical knowledge and skills are delegitimised, whilst they are acknowledged for their emotional ties, thus reproducing binary genderised positions.

“‘What, a woman teaching me mechanics? Please! I know everything and my dad knows even more,’ is one attitude. And it’s the same with the parents, you know? They seem a bit surprised. (…) A male student, who wouldn’t normally question what a teacher says, challenges everything you say just because you are a woman.”

(Berta, teacher)

By now, we can state that the male mandate is renewed through moral violence, yet there are times when it can come to its highest extreme: verbal, physical or even sexual violence. Cristina tells us how some colleagues verbally abused female teachers from other professional fields.

“I have always seen female co-workers suffering a great deal. A lot. And some are from other fields. (…) Not sexual, as far as I know, but certainly verbal abuse. (…) Insulting them in the middle of the corridor: ‘Of course, it’s always the same with you women in Occupational Qualification and Guidance. First, you spread your legs and then you want to do this and that.’ In front of thirty students aged 18 and over… I mean, that is the level a teacher can come to.”

(Cristina, teacher)

Other times, the violence is physical. In this case, Raquel suffered two instances during her training.

“Two guys had to be expelled because they hit me at break time. They hit me twice while I was a student, because I’m a girl. Bear in mind that my grades were outstanding while others struggled. (…) This guy in particular was retaking a year.”

(Raquel, former worker)

Lastly, violence can be sexual, as in Marina’s case, where one of her classmates tried to rape her.

“At our school, there is an alleyway at the back where everyone parks, by the railways tracks. There is never anyone there and it’s dark, so I don’t know what compelled me to wait for him [her partner] there by the car because I had left early. That was where he tried to do it, but he [her partner] came and he left. Had it not been for him, this would have gone further. That’s what made me so afraid that I said, ‘no, this simply cannot be tolerated’.”

(Marina, student)

As pointed out by Jeff Hearn [51], when two people know each other or share some sort of bond, a series of violent episodes can occur prior to sexual abuse.

“Before it got serious, there were incidents. Once, near the classroom, he sent me messages saying, ‘watch out ‘cos the guy next to you has a knife. Do whatever he wants or else…’, and he even cornered me and kissed me. Afterwards, he told me he couldn’t remember any of it, he had no idea what had happened. He would text me on WhatsApp because we weren’t allowed to talk in the classroom.’

(Marina)

The way we interpreted it, Marina’s abuser is a moraliser of gender relations, on the basis that we see the act of rape or attempted rape as a strategy to restore the power that earns recognition amongst peers, as well as being a disciplinary act [10]. Also worthy of note is the institutional silence on behalf of the school, who failed to protect Marina (student). One must remember that despite the existence of protocols that address these issues, it is up to the people in each educational context to deal with conflict resolution.

“Instead of expelling him, they switched him to the morning slot: from evenings to mornings. In any case, they handled it really poorly because I kept on bumping into him. (…) They only expelled him for a week […]. But, of course, the morning group leaves at 3 pm and we started at 3 pm, so I kept bumping into him. I went to complain and […] it took about three weeks before they told him to leave early.”

Nevertheless, we believe that using violence, in any of its forms, as a strategy to reinforce the male mandate in VET in Transport and Vehicle Maintenance points to the very fragility of masculinity [52,53,54], spurred by the arrival of the bodies of women who prove to have automotive skills and knowledge. Nonetheless, just as we have emphasized throughout these pages, these women exercise their agency and resistance against this violence. Hence, the reason we have no intention of classing them as victims. Instead, we precisely aim to highlight their determination in facing those situations and providing counter-pedagogical teachings against cruelty by seeking to restore communal ways of life through efforts of resistance, which we see as feminist since they wield the political value of bonds to dismantle the residual value of femininities [55].

5.3. Subverting and Responding through (Feminist) Resistance

According to Michel Foucault [56], any act of resistance is bound to the power to which it responds. Therefore, we will focus on acts of resistance which, as well as reporting retorted behaviour, reveal the deconstruction of small-scale gender relations, which are also linked to localised social battles [57]. The women who took part in our research after experiencing violence have decided to speak out, retorting the strategies performed by external hegemonic masculinity.

“The sad thing is that you can’t care about some things… You no longer stay quiet, right? You can’t stand it anymore. No, I refuse to take it.”

(Cristina, teacher)

They specifically stand up against moral violence by showing that mechanical know-how and the skill required in that productive sector is contingently genderised and that the distribution of certain types of jobs, such as mechanics, according to bodies and genders can be disarmed.

“At the start of the year we placed a bet because they [her classmates] told me I wouldn’t be able to do something and I said, ‘yes, I can’. So, of course, I did it.”

(Esther, student)

“Even the teacher, when he saw me, stopped in the doorway and without even checking the class register, which he didn’t bother to check, said, ‘I think you’ve got the wrong classroom. Off you go to the other hall’. Because there were two halls there: automotive, electronics and mechanics, then hairdressing, aesthetics and administration.”

(Raquel, former worker)

We would like to point out that the battle led by these women is not merely an individual one. They are thinking about the entire group, about the women who they hope will follow in the future. In doing so, they align with the thoughts of bell hooks [58], who states that to pronounce personal pain does not suffice as it could come to absorb the neoliberal and therapeutic presumptions engrained in present-day society. With this, we do not intend to invoke a concept of indeterminate sorority since we are aware that subjects do not always care for or support one another in the will to share a social position. Instead, we wish to shine a light on people—in this case, women—who, as Judith Butler says [16], know what they are up against and what it takes and are aware of the political need to act in unison.

“Throughout the history of women in society, I think if anything is clear—and this is my personal view—it is the fact that what matters is acting big in terms of protests and all that, but without people beavering away quietly, nothing would have progressed. Nothing would have been achieved. It is about the beavering. So, this is the same. Why would it be different?”

(Berta, teacher)

In Cristina’s case, having become a feminist implies that her outrage at the situations she experienced in the mechanics sector is not so much what caused her to be a feminist, but becoming aware of the general sexism in the productive sector of mechanics she and her students were experiencing.

“It [feminism] has helped me to assert myself, it has also caused everything that has happened to me. Researching, reading, becoming even more curious about all this. Because at the end of the day, you’re the one who suffers certain things and you wonder if you’re the only one or ‘is it just me?’ (…) For me, surely my conclusions and things would not be quite so radical if I had worked in a different sector. (…) It’s like a light switches on for me.”

(Cristina, teacher)

Cristina defines herself as a radical due to the irritation she feels from having to endure certain practices and relations that, under the pretext of gender, subordinate social positions. She has a feminist reading of certain situations, taking up an irreconcilable position against the norm within VET in Transport and Vehicle Maintenance. When someone not only takes this stance but also campaigns against ways of exercising power, hostile reactions unfold, and despite causing bodily exhaustion, the feminist snap, as Sara Ahmed [17] would call it, or ‘a light’ in the words of Cristina, enables them to quickly and unexpectedly break potentially violent bonds.

For instance, Cristina recounted a situation that stemmed from an informal WhatsApp group, which involved teachers from her professional field who began to share images that sexualised female bodies. When this happened, Cristina left the group and her actions were subsequently criticised by some peers.

“Some co-workers have told me it was ‘too radical’, but I said, ‘no, no, if it seems radical to you, that’s your opinion, but I’m not taking this anymore.’ That’s kind of how they see me [radical], yeah. Like, ‘oh man, if Cristina talks…’ They see you not like you’re going to put your foot down, but like you won’t just keep quiet. ‘You’re always complaining’, but I think I complain for the right reasons. And I don’t just complain about the issue of sexism—I like to speak out when something is unfair. I believe there are times when things have to be said, but by saying them, people easily get offended.”

(Cristina, teacher)

Nevertheless, we must be careful because sometimes they have no choice but to keep quiet and pretend to overlook certain things in an effort to survive within this organisational context.

“Like in any other potentially conflictive situation. You anticipate things and develop your own strategies to ride them out. (…) For survival. You keep quiet, letting them believe that silence gives consent, only to subsequently advocate for what you really want. It has become a strategy. This leads you to be constantly scheming and developing. And protecting yourself. Protecting yourself so much.”

(Berta, teacher)

It is precisely during times of danger when we find ourselves in a social world that acts upon us, where the chance to open up to new forms of action is not always under the subjects’ control [59]. In other words, although we may fight with our own bodies, they are never sufficiently ours because they have been entrusted to social life since the very beginning [60].

6. Discussion

If gender is a regulating device of social norms in particular contexts, in this case, violence is the means to perform intelligible masculinities [61]. This intelligibility makes women’s bodies and that which is considered feminine the constitutive exterior of this formative context. The use of violence, specifically moral violence, is a strategy to maintain the male mandate and thus produce unequal social positions.

The woman presence shows the contingent fictionality of a link between manual and technical knowledge and masculinising practices [62,63]. Faced with the prospect of dismantling the male power that reigns in this sector, their masculinities feel confused and threatened by the denaturalisation of the gender device, by the frailness of their identity, and by the fear of losing privileges. In this situation, they respond by toughening the social relations between masculinities and femininities, seeking to reinsert them within classic blue-collar masculinity frameworks. Violence is a continuum [64]; “violence is everywhere and ever-present and serves to maintain and conform to established gendered and aged social orders” [65] p. 178.

We would define the gender practices and social positions of our participants as feminist practices precisely on the basis that they put the historical male mandate in check, and because they live lives and utilize bodies that are not included in the norm of the context but strive to undo the gender normativity in spite of the efforts made by masculinity and its violent strategies to perpetuate old gender-order patterns. In stating this, we do not wish to say that women entering the sector in itself is enough to deconstruct male genderisation nor that it is a feminist practice per se, but rather it helps to denaturalise and democratise gender at specific points in time, as for instance, one may discover in the Swedish context studied by Ledman et al. [24].

The results from our research support those found by Brockmann [1]. Having conducted biographical research involving two female mechanics, Brockmann upheld that paradoxically, the chance to denaturalise the male mandate in the sector entails risks and dangers for women, which is why the participants in our research strategically combine different gender practices according to the time and the place [66].

7. Conclusions

In light of this analysis, we believe that both masculinity patterns rise to violently renew and impose the male mandate upon the arrival of women in the sector. Even if there have been women in any field since the dawn of time, it is nowadays that we assist in the enforcement of gendered bodies in order to fulfil the equality goals self-imposed by the government in some European country.

In short, and without wishing to belittle the attempts of institutions to promote gender equality but with the intention of being able to problematise what happens in training contexts, it is necessary not only to take into account parity, but also participation in a context of equal conditions. In terms of justice, it is not only a question of being able to access knowledge, but also to access it while being recognised as intelligible subjects.