Affirmative action in high education in Brazil: Tensions between race and gender

Abstract

The essay is a reflection on the usefulness of the concept of non synchrony between gender and racial inequalities in education. It presents and discusses the profile of the students and candidates in the International Fellowships Program of the Ford Foundation in Brazil, proposing interpretations with respect to the over-representation of women in higher education and in graduate studies. It ends by calling attention to the need to open up the discussion about the better educational performance of women in the present context of the debate on affirmative action in higher education for blacks and the indigenous population.