Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (UC): Short based on studies by Claudia Matus wins international award

This is the piece #NormaDeGéneroBinaria Niñas, which won the Quirino award for Best Commissioned Animation. Produced by the “Interdisciplinary Research Platform Normality Difference Education”, in conjunction with the production company Pajaro, the animated work is based on ethnographic studies led by researcher Claudia Matus, who seek to identify how girls are constructed in schools as subjects of second category.

What is considered appropriate as behaviors and activities in boys and girls at school and how patterns are reproduced that seek to define a correct form of childhood, are the questions behind the “Gender and School” research. Led by Claudia Matus , director of the Center for Advanced Studies in Educational Justice (CJE) , during her direction of the Rings Project in Social Sciences and Humanities The Production of the Gender Norm (2019-2021) , found a series of animated short films by the Pajaro animation studio.

The first of them, #NormaDeGéneroBinaria Niñas , won the Quirino Awards of Ibero-American Animation for Best Commissioned Work.

“It is a very good example to highlight the importance of being able, from academia and research, to be able to translate the results and conclusions to an audience that does not have to be linked to traditional broadcasting spaces,” says Claudia Matus about the interest of the project in materializing other formats for disseminating the results.


Claudia Matus leads the Center for Advanced Studies in Educational Justice (CJE). During her direction of the Rings Project in Social Sciences and Humanities The Production of the Gender Norm (2019-2021), she found a series of animated short films by the Pajaro animation studio as the final format for dissemination.
The same was achieved after months of work with the audiovisual production company, to translate the results of field work, achieving a script capable of spinning different stories and events that occurred in different spaces of ethnographic studies. The audiovisual production company Pajaro is the animation studio responsible for the documentary series “Why in my garden” and “Petit, the series”, winner of the Latin American Prix Jeunesse.

“It was important to spread, in a clear way (…) that relevant element that these conclusions have in relation to the production of the gender norm. And more specifically, to the construction of girls as second-class subjects in schools” – Claudia Matus, director of the Center for Advanced Studies in Educational Justice (CJE)


This type of audiovisual record was chosen to consistently account for the content of the investigations. “It was important to spread, in a clear, transparent, articulated way and in a language that could communicate that feeling, that relevant element that these conclusions have in relation to the production of the gender norm. And more specifically, to the construction of girls as second-class subjects in schools”, Matus explains about the research, analyzing the data produced in ethnographies in educational establishments (since 2015) in different districts of Santiago.

The team in charge of the ethnographies is also made up of the researchers Valentina Errázuriz, Érika González and Luna Follegati. “For us it was an interesting and demanding experience, but we firmly believe that we are at a very important moment in which research, especially on issues that have to do with the reproduction of inequalities and inequities regarding the Gender Norm, are communicated to a much larger audience, because we can project, in some way, that there is the possibility of change and transformation”, concludes Matus.