Latin America’s battle over “gender ideology”

THIS year Peru introduced a new curriculum for its primary schools as part of an effort to improve education. One of the new curriculum’s principles is that boys and girls have the same right to education. It notes that “while what we consider to be ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ is based on biological-sexual differences, these are roles which we construct from day to day, in our interactions.” And “some of those [socially] assigned roles” lead to girls dropping out of school to take on domestic chores.

To many people, this is a statement of the obvious. Yet it provided fuel for a growing campaign that holds that there is a conspiracy in Latin America, known as “gender ideology”, whose aim is to feminise boys, turn girls into lesbians and destroy the family. This might come as news to many in a region notorious for machismo. Nevertheless, the campaigners are scoring victories.