Parental Rights Politics in Florida Schools: The Interplay of Gender, Sexuality, and Race-Based Inequality

• In Event: The Political Context of Education

Abstract

In Florida, a Parental Rights Movement seeks to reduce teachers’ and students’ engagement with topics such as race, gender, and sexuality in public school classrooms. Yet discussions of gender and sexuality are already rare within schools. Why, then, does the movement campaign over these topics and with what consequences? I examine this through content analysis of gender, sexuality, and race-related language in parental rights texts and through 50 interviews with secondary social science teachers in two public school districts in Florida. Drawing upon theories of framing used by social movements, I argue that by advocating for reductions in mentions of gender and sexuality in classrooms, in addition to race, parental rights groups broaden their appeal compared to if their activism surrounded race-related topics alone. This allows them to further enact their goals, which limits what little discussion of gender and sexuality takes place in classrooms and more broadly suppresses race-related content in schools. This reveals how historical patterns of using gender dynamics to uphold white supremacy manifests in political debates surrounding K–12 schooling. By showing how social movements can mobilize gender and sexuality to maintain inequality in education settings, this study expands upon scholarship arguing that gender, sexuality and race-based inequality are mutually sustaining.

Author

• Hannah Castner, Harvard University