On Wednesday, September 9, 2015, the European Parliament adopted the Rodrigues Report; by a vote of 408 in favor vs. 236 against and 40 abstentions. Entitled: Emancipation of young girls by education in the European Union,” the resolution elaborated by the Portuguese European Deputy, Liliana Rodrigues, had been first adopted on June 16th by the Commission for Women’s Rights and for Equal Genders at the European Parliament.
This report “aims at assuring equality and autonomy of girls, via education, at complying with the Istanbul convention as a tool to prevent discrimination between sexes, at creating cultural thinking at school based on equality of sexes, at supervising in a critical manner the programs and pedagogical material, at assuring equality of the sexes concerning personal and professional decisions and at improving the percentage of women in positions of responsibility and higher executive positions.” declared Liliana Rodrigues.
The resolution promotes measures of equality of the sexes, which should apply to all levels of the educational system, including teacher-training programs in order to put an end to these sort of stereotypes.
The Parliament’s press release defines the objective of the Rodrigues report: “The deputies consider that education related to questions of sexual equality, should be included in the scholastic program, and that the didactic material should not contain discriminatory, stereotypical, or sexist material. To promote an education without stereotypes, teachers should receive training on equality and the educational material for their programs should be reviewed in a critical manner. In addition, the member States could envisage a plan for making sexual education compulsory according to each age in every primary and secondary school education program (…). And to fight against the discriminations founded on sexual orientation and gender identity, the deputies have asked the Commission to support including objective information concerning questions of gender in their Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) scholastic programs.”
Hoping to have a large impact on the educational content and on “educating parents”, this report, which contains numerous references to gender ideology, had aroused enormous controversy. To denounce the risks, a petition addressed to the President of the European Parliament has already been signed by more than 160 000 people.
