Abstract
Conservative religious, activist and political groups fuel gender backlash in many spaces. This paper explores this phenomenon and its effects on educational programs designed to prevent gender-based violence in Brasilian schools. It argues that this gender backlash in educative spaces violates fundamental rights, like the right to equality and protection against discrimination and violence, and ultimately contributes to the continuity and escalation of gender-based violence in Brasil. This context shapes advocacy work and the facilitators and participants of its programs. Primary prevention research is mainly conducted in the Global North. This article, guided by a southern feminist framework and informed by 14 interviews with Brasilian advocates engaged in youth gender-based violence prevention programs, addresses a significant knowledge deficit and offers new insights in working in challenging contexts. It suggests that the backlash is mostly directed at LGBTIQA+ cohorts due to the ongoing political attacks on these groups, but it has also undermined the capacity of educational prevention strategies for gender-based violence more widely.
Highlights
Education is pivotal in preventing gendered violence among young people as it is a period of development in which they are forming their relationships and identities
It is necessary to be attentive to race and ethnicity, age, social and cultural aspects, along with gender inequalities, which increase girls and women’s vulnerability to gender-based violence (GBV) in the country (Campos 2020; Debert and Gregori 2016). All these intersecting categories must be addressed in prevention and responses to GBV. This qualitative work draws on 14 semi-structured interviews conducted between June and July 2019 with advocates engaged in preventing youth GBV in Brasil to answer the following questions: 1) How has the gender backlash affected education programs to prevent GBV against young people aged between 12 and 18 years old? 2) What strategies have advocates used to resist and respond to this backlash? Ethics approval was obtained from the QUT Human Research Ethics Advisory Team
This article has examined the consequences of the gender backlash in education from the perspectives of advocates engaged in education programs in Brasil at a time of deeply conservative political and ideological change in the country, during and after the election of Bolsonaro
Summary
Education is pivotal in preventing gendered violence among young people (here understood as those aged 12–18 years old) as it is a period of development in which they are forming their relationships and identities. Terms like ‘gender’ and ‘gender equality’ were seen as indicative of a ‘gender ideology’ framework, which anti-gender groups said had to be removed (Luna 2017: 24; Pasinato and Lemos 2017: 21; Vianna and Bortolini 2020) This suppression ignored the extensive body of Brasilian legal and political guidelines and seriously affected the development and implementation of public policies to prevent GBV against women and girls, in schools (Nascimento and Arruda 2015: 4–6; Pasinato and Lemos 2017: 21). While there is a robust body of literature examining the origins of the ‘gender ideology’ in Brasil, including documental and political analysis (Corrêa and Kalil 2020: 85; Miskolci and Campana 2017), its illegality (Campos and Bernardes 2019; Leão 2019) and monitoring bills at the Supreme Court (Ação Educação Democrática et al 2018; Leão 2019), there is limited empirical research with advocates about the implications of this backlash in the prevention of GBV among youths. All these intersecting categories must be addressed in prevention and responses to GBV
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