This blog is written by: Ján Michalko, Fernanda Gándara, Rachel Marcus, Sheena Hadi, Natalia Sanchez-Corrales, Fabricia Devignes, and Sarah Lane Smith.
This blog summarises a symposium organised by ODI Global at the recent 2025 UKFIET conference. The symposium gathered scholars and practitioners from around the world to share strategies to counter resistance to gender equality in education – from ideologically driven and politically motivated attacks in schools and ministries of education, to parental fears rooted in misinformation, often amplified by social media.
Resistance to gender equality in education has been common for decades, but recent years have seen it intensify across the world. While it takes different forms in different countries, it inevitably undermines rights and freedoms for all of us, in all our diversity.
Tackling resistance to gender equality should be a priority for the education community and demands our urgent attention and collaboration. That is why ODI Global hosted a symposium at the 2025 UKFIET conference, that analysed various forms of resistance, its drivers and strategic responses.
A global movement weaponising gender norms
The symposium was anchored in the findings of a recent ODI report, outlined by Rachel Marcus, which illuminates how organised anti-gender politics affects education systems worldwide. A well organised, funded and disciplined global movement has a clear and long-term strategy to reinforce or reinstate a conservative, patriarchal vision of gender relations by smearing gender equality in education in the name of cultural or national interests, often in service of authoritarian agendas. This anti-gender movement has shifted the public narrative and gained tremendous traction.
Much of the anti-gender movement’s success lies in its ability to tap into existing social structures and unequal gender norms, as well as people’s anxieties about the uncertain world around them. Fernanda Gándara, from Room to Read, described how fear and misconceptions about life skills and gender equality programmes – sometimes created or amplified by anti-gender campaigns – can generate resistance among some parents and potential participants, who may fear, for example, that such programmes would make boys less manly.
From ministries to classrooms, resistance to gender equality affects every aspect of the education sector
Resistance to gender equality is seen throughout various education spaces, from ministries to schools. While governments may have progressive laws and ministries of education may have gender policies, they often exist in name only, and lack implementation, budget, monitoring or ownership. Fabricia Devignes from UNESCO IIEP, highlighted how subtle institutional resistance can sideline gender focal points and weaken cross-departmental coordination.
Sheena Hadi from Aahung, Pakistan spoke about cultural pushback at all levels of government. With gender seen as a controversial, non-academic or irrelevant issue, gender-specific content is often removed, diluted or delivered in a manner that negates its purpose. For example, after life skills-based education content, developed and piloted by Aahung, was approved for government secondary schools in Sindh province, gender-focused segments were removed without notice.
Governmental anti-gender resistance is also politicised when gender equality is framed as a foreign or donor-driven agenda, resulting in its removal from national plans or its dilution to avoid controversy. Such political resistance is often deeply embedded and enabled by civil servants as a result of their own internal biases. Consequently, the progress and ambition of gender equality efforts are systematically stalled and accountability weakened.
In Colombia, while there is resistance to gender equality at the ministerial level, research by Natalia Sánchez-Corrales from Universidad de la Salle and colleagues also found teachers facing direct opposition from students and their families, as well as professional persecution from peers and administrators. This resistance can escalate to stigmatisation, false accusations, and a hostile environment, with confrontations from parents and religious leaders, and even armed groups.
People find solutions to stand for gender equality
For every challenge that the education sector faces, there are tried and tested solutions. As Rachel noted:
Anti-gender campaigns around education are based on disinformation. Therefore, a key question for our times is how do we tackle it? While there are no definite answers, building critical digital and media literacy skills for people of all ages is an important part of it.
Additionally, Room to Read programme evaluations showed that continuous and consistent provision of life skills and gender programming allows for deeper transformation of relationships and increased parental support for these programmes. After witnessing changes in their children and talking with them, parents were also more likely to distribute household chores more fairly.
A similar community engagement strategy worked in Pakistan. Aahung’s life skills school programmes had greater success when there was significant groundwork to build trust with community members, school personnel and parents. As Sheena stated:
There is a strong correlation between rapport and trust with the community, and ensuring that learning content is locally relevant and connected to the needs in that community.
In Colombia, teachers’ collectives can be vital sources of protection, offering legal and social support to those facing persecution for their work. They are also communities of practice where educators share successful strategies. So Natalia and her colleagues have established a collaborative network to scale up these efforts and unite organisations to combat anti-gender campaigns
Finally, the root causes of resistance can be better addressed if education institutions and their staff involved in addressing gender inequalities have greater ownership of the process. IIEP-UNESCO, for example, uses participatory approaches to diagnose hidden institutional inequalities. Based on their analysis, ministerial staff can ground conversations about cross-sectoral reforms in their own relevant data and identify internal allies and coalitions to transform the system from within.
Courage and conviction to take action
The conference symposium showed that overcoming resistance to gender equality in education requires courage and conviction from all stakeholders. Committed and informed action by practitioners and policy makers has the potential to dismantle resistance. As Sarah Lane Smith from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office concluded:
It is critically important to take a systems lens and systems-informed approach to addressing the rollback of rights in education. We must look at interventions to tackle the root causes at all levels of the system.
Our symposium identified eight actions to tackle resistance to gender equality.
Civil society and educators:
- Increase collaboration and coordination in the sector: With widespread defunding of gender equality initiatives, collaboration among civil society actors trumps competition. By leveraging our networks and platforms, we can learn from and amplify each other’s messages and practices.
- Elevate stories of counter-resistance: To combat hate speech that targets marginalised groups, it is crucial to present education stakeholders, including funders, governments, as well as parents and community members, with authentic, human stories of resilience and resistance that foster empathy and understanding.
- Use every tool in the social justice toolbox: Practitioners should deploy every strategy that has been developed by social justice movements, including building alliances with politicians, using strategic litigation to assert children’s rights, engaging broadcast and social media, and grassroots mobilisation.
- Build knowledge and capacities of education actors: Support policymakers, planners and managers to anticipate, identify and address resistance within their institutions. Aim to mainstream ideas about gender and the consideration of gender in ministries and schools, not only in all learning outcomes, but also in in outcomes for young people’s health and social and emotional growth.
- Invest in community engagement: Profound changes have happened when substantial time and energy were dedicated to working with all communities, which shape young people’s lives, including their education. These are increasingly digital and must be included in our work.
- Find innovative ways to integrate gender: This is vital for the younger years when children first absorb information about gender roles. Sensitising early years practitioners to gender equality can shift both their perspectives and those of the children in their care.
Donors:
- Fund women’s and feminist organisations and other civil society actors working on gender equitable change. This is essential, given sweeping cuts to both education and gender equality efforts.
- Support critical literacy initiatives: Embed critical media and digital literacy skills in formal and informal education, especially in partnership with popular content creators, to help people of all ages identify and confront
