Irruption of anti-gender discourses in the educational debate in Chile

• In Event: Gender, Race and Disabilities in Education

Proposal

The Chilean school system opened an agenda of educational policies about gender and sexual diversities since Michelle Bachelet’s second presidential term (2014-2018). This agenda embraced principles from different international treaties on the subject, while responding to the growing demand for inclusion and non-sexist education led by LGTBIQ+ and feminist grassroot organizations (GEDIS, 2022). The current government headed by Gabriel Boric (who took office in 2022 with the support of the left-wing coalition), proposed continuing with this agenda, promoting national regulations that invite schools to counter sexist, homosexual and transphobic discrimination. At the same time, he promised to pass a law on affective and comprehensive sexual education from early childhood throughout K-12.

However, these advances have been resisted by conservative groups linked to right-wing parties and religious movements. In 2017, the movement No te metas con mis hijos (Don't mess with my children) made its first public appearance in the streets of the country's capital, using the so-called Bus de la Libertad (Freedom Bus) to protest against the LGTBIQ+ rights agenda. Moreover, ultra-conservative groups lobbied strongly to reject a bill on comprehensive sexual education that was presented in Congress in 2020; and was ultimately not approved (Astudillo, Reyes and Ríos, 2022). Furthermore, in 2022 Chile held a referendum for a new National Constitution. Among many topics, the constitutional proposal established an educational system with a gender perspective, population-wide early sexual education and legalized abortion. However, this text was rejected by the vast majority of the population, an issue that undoubtedly endangers the advancement of the gender agenda in the school system.

Considering this background, this paper communicates the results of a study about the notion of neoconservatism in Chilean education, to understand its trajectory in recent decades. Neoconservatism is part of a global process that includes other Latin American countries, especially Brazil. However, its development in Chile presents special characteristics, because of its convergence with the neoliberal and mercantile agenda promoted in the last 40 years since Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship.

Within the framework of our research, we conducted in-depth interviews at the end of 2022 with 15 actors who have participated in the public debate on gender policies, sexual diversity, and sexuality in the field of Chilean education. Each actor interviewed has a political position in the public debate. Some are members of political parties, others work in academic or public institutions or belong to civil society organizations. All have participated in legislative debates, worked advising parliamentarians have written reports, or have shared opinion letters through the press, other media and through public spokespersons. The interviews were conducted either in-person or online. All interviews were transcribed and then analyzed following the general principles of grounded theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1998).

The central question of the study referred to the relevance and meaning that different public actors attribute to the educational policy agenda for gender and sexual diversity that has been installed nationwide since 2017. Among other things, we investigated if these actors believe that this agenda promoting the recognition and inclusion of the LGTBIQ+ population inside schools favors the advancement of social justice, reduces violence and discrimination based on gender, and creates the conditions to promote a culture of respect for human rights in the school system.

Specific to this paper, we delve on the opinions of public actors linked to religious groups and parties from the conservative right-wing. For this, we use the concept of Michael Apple (2002) on neoconservatism and the concept of field from the work of Pierre Bourdieu (1996), to understand the nature of anti-gender ideas in Chile, as well as the ideological positions of the actors who disseminate them.

In this regard, we recognize three neoconservative ideas directly linked to anti-gender positions. The first is the radical defense of the right of families to decide the type of sexual education that their children should receive, narrowing the State's action in the matter of the students’ sexual and democratic development. The second idea refers to the dissemination of the notion of gender ideology as expression of a feminist and LGTBIQ+ conspiracy that attack children and threaten others traditional notions of gender and family. The third, derived from the previous one, is the creation of a "moral panic" that binds comprehensive sexual education with the early sexualization of children and the imposition of an LGTBIQ+ agenda in schools.

The paper concludes that Chile is experiencing a resurgence of a neoconservative discourse in education, led by far-right conservative actors and evangelical groups that criticize the progress of debates on gender, sexuality, and diversity in schools. In the Chilean case, this new merge of conservative groups articulates its demands based on the principle of freedom of education; the core idea of the neoliberal ideology that gave rise to the educational market system in Chile since the 1980s.

It is relevant and urgent for us to think about these results comparatively, with other countries in Latin America and the Global South and North. This would allow us to understand the scope of these discourses in other school systems and raise voices of alert about the risks that these ideas have in the civic and democratic development of children and youth; as well as the setback that its can mean for social justice in schools.

Authors

• Mariateresa Rojas, Universidad Alberto Hurtado

• Catalina Cuenca, Universidad Alberto Hurtado - Universidad Diego Portales