Neoconservative agenda as a dispute for educational policy: The discourse of “gender ideology” in news published on the internet (2019-2021)

Abstract

In the last decade we have witnessed the advance of neoconservatism in politics in Latin American and European countries. In the case of Brazil, religious actors of the conservative Christian strand appear at the center of political disputes around gender and sexualities in the field of education. Thus, the objective of this article is to analyze the discourse of “gender ideology” in the news published on the internet, from 2019 to 2021, identifying its subjects, reiterated gender meanings and the impacts on educational policy. The news was collected on the Google search site using descriptors and analyzed as discourses in the Foucauldian perspective and based on the theoretical references about neoconservatism by Lacerda (2019), Apple (2003), Biroli, Machado and Vaggione (2020). The results indicate that in the Bolsonaro government there was a strengthening of the phrase “gender ideology” in the political arena, being used as a reactionary political-discursive tool in the dispute for a conservative agenda in educational policy, whose interest is to contain the advances around the agendas. of gender equality and the recognition of diversities. There is a shift from politics to the sphere of morals, which puts democracy at risk