Gender and Daily School: Dilemmas and Prospects of the School Intervention in the Affective-Sexual Socialization of Adolescents

Abstract

This article examines the classification of gender used by teachers who develop projects on sexual education in Rio de Janeiro to explain the views and the dilemmas of school intervention in the affective-sexual socialization of adolescents. The empirical material that supports the arguments is composed by 16 in-depth interviews, conducted with teachers responsible for school spaces where sexual education projects are developed in basic schools of Rio de Janeiro: The Centers of Adolescents Multipliers (Núcleos de Adolescentes Multiplicadores-/NAM‘s). Remarks were also made in a training course for teachers who wish to work with sexual education in school. The representations of gender classifications presented range from modern to traditional concerning femininity and masculinity. The projects were coordinated mostly by teachers, and pupils’ participation was basically composed of women. The teachers sought consistency between their performance in school and family spaces. But at the same time that they guided their students to combat the inequalities of gender, they had doubts and uncertainties about the possibility of educating their own children according to ideals of gender equality, especially the sons. Familiar situations contrasted with performances in the classroom, presenting tensions between denial and assertion of masculinity and traditional femininities.