The configuration and the practice of citizenship and gender equality are some of the formal missions of the Portuguese public schools. Historically, these matters have also been the subject to concern, struggles and interventions by Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) (Magalhães, 1998). This paper addresses the results of the first study of a PhD research that aims to understand the educational profiles and roles played by different CSOs, concerning citizenship and gender issues in local school contexts. We analyse the Portuguese policies for gender equality and discuss their main dimensions considering some of the most recent changes in the Portuguese educational field. By doing so, we intend to identify the way the current policy architecture conceives the encounter between CSOs and schools, regarding gender equality and citizenship education.
Since 1997, Portugal addresses gender equality through specific policies, named National Plans for Gender Equality. These documents try to define a political meaning for gender equality, but due to the openness and contested nature of the gender equality concept (Lombardo, Meier & Verloo, 2009), several meanings can co-exist. In an era of risk, different political ambitions and societal ideals can emerge from individualized risk governance agendas, magnifying the tension that underlies the gender equality concept. Risk governance tends to emphasise an individualized political definition of equality – narrowing its meaning – and to subordinate equality initiatives to broader neoliberal policy agendas (Amery, 2018).
Concerning some of the most recent Portuguese educational policy changes, is being implemented, since 2017, a pedagogical strategy which seeks to enhance the autonomy and the curricular flexibility of primary and secondary education (Project for Autonomy and Curricular Flexibility). In the same year, the National Strategy for Citizenship Education (NSCE), in convergence with the Student Profile at the end of Compulsory Education and with the Essential Learning Outcomes, became a reference document for schools. In NSCE, Gender Equality (among other subjects such as Human Rights, Interculturality, Sustainable Development, Environmental Education and Health), appears as a mandatory theme that must be addressed along the whole educational journey. For each of these topics there are educational reference guides, provided by the Ministry of Education, and schools are encouraged to engage with their communities, namely with CSOs, enriching the educational curricula with concrete social experiences and practices.
CSOs have progressively become recognized as legitimate and formal interlocutors in the formulation and in the execution of citizenship and gender equality public policies (Alvarez, 2009). Still, it is important to consider that, beyond the gender equality label, there can be a wide range of goals and policies, namely risk governance agendas (Repo, 2016) that tend to narrow its political meaning. Therefore, these policies can also play a wider influence in the ways CSOs conceive gender equality (Monteiro, 2013) and the topics that are prioritized in their own political agendas and in their educational strategies.
This research is funded by FCT PhD studentship (SFRH/BD/128591/2017)