Gender in the Brazilian National Education Plan: Between Omission and Outright Attacks

The 2014-2024 National Education Plan (PNE) is widely regarded as the primary site of the dissemination of catholic theses about feminist movements' public agendas in Brazil. These agendas - in reality about gender equality and sexual diversity - were derogatorily characterized as "gender ideology", a kind of transnational "symbolic glue" that united different conservative sectors against advances in policies regarding sexual and reproductive rights. The 2014 PNE was sanctioned without any mention of these topics after heated debates in Congress. Bill 2614/2024, which will result in the new PNE for the next decade (2025-2035), was sent to Congress by president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, of the center-left Workers' Party (PT), with no reference to gender (substituted by the word "sex") and sexual diversity, representing a significant loss to progressive social movements. This paper intends to follow through on these discussions by analysing the 4.448 amendment proposals to Bill 2614/2024 presented in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, cathegorized by authorship, party alignment and, most importantly, whether gender and sexual diversity are included or excluded from the starting text. Through this analysis, we find evidence of a clear divide between center-left/left and center-right/right parties: the word "gender" and any mention of the LGBTQ+ community are only present in left-wing proposals, while proposals by center and right-wing deputies attempt to remove even small references to women's rights. Why did a center-left president, whose previous terms were of vital importance to feminist movements' access to the State in Brazil, decide against including any and all reference to gender and sexual diversity in the main guidelines that will direct Brazil's education for the next decade? And how did the progressive civil society in Brazil react to such an omission? Besides the amendment proposal analysis, this paper adresses these questions through semi-structured interviews with key actors involved both in the government's formulation of Bill 2614/2024 and the progressive civil society's opposition to this decision, as well as document analysis of the public statements of both sides throughout 2024 and 2025.