Neoconservative anti-gender action strategies in education: A comparative analysis between Brazil and Peru

The neoconservative anti-gender movement is a global phenomenon that acquires local specificities, making it essential to understand its development in Latin America. In Brazil and Peru, anti-gender actors have increasingly conquered spaces in the political arenas and influenced debates related to education, with the objective of removing gender and sexuality issues from curricula and public policies. In Brazil, these actors succeeded in removing "gender" from the National Education Plan and have introduced bills to censor discussions on gender and sexuality in schools. In Peru, the movement managed to judicially halt the implementation of a curriculum with a gender equality approach; a decision that, although later reversed, demonstrated its capacity for mobilization. This neoconservative anti-gender movement shares strategies, but the political and institutional specificities of each country influence its mode of action and level of success. Therefore, this paper aims to compare anti-gender activism in education in Brazil and Peru and its impacts on their democracies, answering the following question: In what ways do the repertoires of action of neoconservative anti-gender movements in Brazil and Peru coincide and differ, and how do institutional specificities explain these variations? Through documentary analysis and the analysis of repertoires of action, the activism in both countries will be compared to understand how they mobilize the notions of gender and sexuality to position themselves against sex education and its impacts on democracy.