Shaping Society Together: Social Inclusion and Engagement through Comprehensive Sex Education

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Wednesday V)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Making empowerment sustainable

Proposal

The importance of implementation of comprehensive sex education with an emphasis on the perspectives of gender and sexual minorities will be discussed. Despite the fact that gender and sexual equality has become one of the major concerns on the global stage, sex education has gained less attention. In order to acknowledge the role of sex education in a global society, the structure of comprehensive sex education will be explained. Although comprehensive sex education has impacted the development of the social awareness of gender and sex related issues, such as HIV prevention and reproductive health rights, there is still a lack of the gender and sexual minorities’ perspectives. By having a more holistic view toward matters of gender and sexuality developed through comprehensive sex education that includes the perspectives of gender and sexual minorities, there will be a greater impact on the empowerment of those of diverse gender and sexuality in society. By looking at the Japanese sex education curriculum as an example of a system with a limited view toward gender and sexual diversity, and comparing it to comprehensive sex education, possible impacts of more holistic comprehensive sex education on Japanese society will be discussed. The importance of “school-to-society” and "society-to-school" pipelines, and the roles of education and socialization in the context of gender and sex education will also be considered.

Author

• Paul Carley, Soka University of America