Many Argentinians are worried that President Javier Milei’s Decree of Necessity and Urgency and “omnibus bill” may threaten the Comprehensive Sexual Education Law (Ley de Educación Sexual Integral, or ESI), passed in 2006. Neither initiative explicitly refers to ESI, but the rolling back of public policies related to gender equality along with the President’s previous statements indicate that it may be at risk.
The ESI legislation requires that all Argentinian schools offer age-appropriate sex education to teach students about the “biological, psychological, social, emotional and ethical aspects” of sexuality, to promote “responsible attitudes towards sexuality” and to assure “equality in both treatment and opportunity for men and women.” In practice, topics can range from consent and contraception to identifying abuse and gender inclusion.
Implementation of the law has been uneven throughout the provinces, but it is notably credited with being a key tool for detecting of the sexual abuse of children. According to official figures from the City of Buenos Aires, 80 percent of children and adolescents who reported sexual abuse in 2020 did so after having received an ESI course in school.
In addition, a study carried out by Casa FUSA in 2021 among people between 16 and 24 years of age in the provinces of Salta, Jujuy, Buenos Aires, Córdoba, and Río Negro showed that ESI had helped them to identify personal cases of gender-based violence or cases within their family environment, and to respond to that violence. The law has also had a significant impact on teenage pregnancies: In 2021, the adolescent fertility rate in Argentina was 57 percent lower than it was in 2005.
This impact notwithstanding, President Javier Milei sees ESI as part of a “post-Marxist agenda” linked to “the destruction of the most important social nucleus in society, which is the family.”
Defunding the law is one way to slow its implementation, leaving its continued application up to provincial governments. Critical attitudes expressed at the highest levels of the national government (ESI has been called “indoctrination” that “deforms people’s minds”) are also emboldening people throughout society to use violent discourse to attack sex ed.
In this complex context, educators from different regions have organized to defend the law. “We know that they are not going to allocate any of the federal budget to the implementation of the law,” says Ana María Vega, a specialist in health promotion and education, in an interview with elDiarioAR. “Besides, there is Article 5, which provides an out for those who don’t want to apply it.” While the law states that the national, provincial and municipal jurisdictions must guarantee the mandatory implementation of ESI, Article 5 establishes that each institution can adopt the law’s guidelines according to its values, meaning that a Catholic school, for example, may provide sex ed that reflects only Catholic beliefs.
A qualified trainer in ESI, Vega went on to say that, “the National Secretary of Education (Carlos Torredel) comes from the private education sector and has always relied on Article 5 not to apply the ESI law. They are not going to abolish it, but they are going to gut it. They have already done that by sacking a lot of people and not renewing their contracts. With fewer people and a reduced budget, the application of the ESI legislation is dwindling because there are no public policies to keep it going.”
Psychologist and social psychologist Eugenia Otero told elDiarioAR that “we are painfully concerned.” Otero is the coordinator of the Postgraduate Specialization in Comprehensive Sexual Education at the Joaquín V. González Institute of the City of Buenos Aires and works with educators on a daily basis. “A government such as Milei’s questions many of the things we have been trying to think and rethink for a better, less unequal world. When we listen to the people who are studying in the postgraduate program, and they tell us about the suffering of those they are working with, it becomes clear that the world needs to change. And it hurts very much to see that the transformation that is happening is going in the opposite direction. We were in a cruel world that needed to be transformed, and what we see now is even crueler.”
Otero added, “We see with great concern that, instead of thinking of how to improve the severe situations of violence and inequality, what we get from the state are ideas, speeches, and actions that have to do with the abolition of rights, with ceasing to take care of people in order to take care of things. In the name of a supposed ‘freedom,’ they deny and hide the existence of very deep inequalities and abolish the possibility of thinking about how to connect with others.” Yet despite this evolution, Otero insists on the need to keep hope alive and to defend the gains made.
Graciela Morgade, a leading authority on ESI, claims that the term “indoctrination” seeks to manipulate families by creating a “moral panic.” “It is an attempt to create terror in families about what ESI is going to say or do to their daughters, sons, and grandchildren. It is a strategy to manipulate families and individuals.”
Morgade previously worked for the Ministry of Education and is now vice-dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the University of Buenos Aires. Drawing on this experience, she says, “I am not saying that there are no families for whom comprehensive sex education is bad news; some families have a certain view of gender relations and believe that those who are different should not be tolerated but rather should be educated or criminalized. But we also know that ESI has had a positive impact over the years. Children and young people want to talk about issues related to their sexuality, to their life plans, to their fears, to their lack of knowledge, to issues of violence. All the studies show that, especially for girls, ESI is an opportunity to talk about what is uncomfortable and painful.”
She adds that “It is very difficult to argue with someone who talks about ‘ideas of freedom’ and doesn’t think that these ideas are part of a doctrine. Moreover, they don’t see that there is another way of thinking about bodies and sexualities. The traditional ways are also ideological and doctrinaire.”
What will happen in schools if ESI is gutted? How will families react when faced with a rise in hate speech? What is the impact of the current “official discourse”? Experts agree that it has already allowed the proliferation of speech that attacks and criticizes sex education.
Otero said that this can be seen in an exercise that teachers have been doing every year since 2009. Teachers are asked to think of a scene that frightens them, and many times they cite scenarios where students’ parents are outraged at the work they do with ESI. When asked if this had ever actually happened at school, the answer was no.
In recent years, however, this has changed. “It is no longer a fantasy,” says Otero. “Today there is talk within school communities, and there are families who ask questions. These reactions to ESI began even before Milei arrived. We do not see it as an innocent concern. These families do not react because they see something in their sons or daughters that worries them, but because they are responding to an organized reaction from sectors such as some churches or other places that have a lot of power. It is worrying to see how they are distorting ESI.”
Morgade echoed this sentiment, framing it within a more general reaction. “Since before Milei took office, before the elections, what we started to observe is a sort of ‘permission’ to say anything. There started to be more permission to question ESI, gender politics, feminism, and the women’s and LGTBQI+ movements. We started to see certain forms of violence in families. That is why we formed the Movimiento Federal por más ESI (Federal Movement for More ESI) to give us support, to warn about these processes of violent resistance, to provide us with materials, because what was really beginning to be permitted was the expression of hate speech and violent discourse.”
In this context, the action of provincial governments to maintain vigorous ESI has taken on central importance. “With a situation like this at the macro level, the micro level will depend on the positioning of each province, its minister of education, and also the allocation from provincial budgets, which are very limited,” says Vega. “For many people, ESI does not seem to be a priority, even though it solves many other problems.”
She points out the vicissitudes that the law has experienced at the federal level, depending on the leanings of each government. “The political commitment at the national level has had an impact. All progressive governments have earmarked a considerable budget for the national sex-ed program, with the possibility of extending ESI training to many provinces. But during the presidency of Mauricio Macri, a large number of people were dismissed, and the program focused only on sexual and reproductive health, limiting other aspects related to gender, human rights and diversity.”