Students in France will learn about something new starting in September: sex, gender stereotypes and consent.
Nearly a quarter-century after the French government passed a law mandating — but never putting in place — sex education for every student, it has finally developed and approved a curriculum for sex education classes, with a plan for teacher training and course materials.
“We have been waiting 25 years for this,” said Sarah Durocher, president of Le Planning Familial, a French equivalent of Planned Parenthood — one of three nonprofit organizations that sued the government in 2023 for not implementing its own law.
That lawsuit has yet to be resolved in court. But the government pushed the curriculum through on its own, over the protests of opponents who criticized it as “ideological brainwashing” and harmful to children’s development.
More than 100 senators with the conservative party Les Républicains signed an op-ed, published in Le Figaro newspaper, opposing the program’s “woke ideology” and demanding all mentions of “gender identity” be removed.
But Elisabeth Borne, the education minister, called the new program “absolutely essential.”
She highlighted the findings of an independent commission, which showed that one child in France is sexually abused every three minutes, mostly by a male member of their family. Many kids now learn about sex from online pornography sites, she pointed out.
Although the curriculum is set to take effect in September, opponents are still fighting; a coalition of a few groups have filed a lawsuit to stop it before France’s top administrative court.
Activists and experts say adoption of the curriculum was propelled by changing attitudes in France about sex since the #MeToo movement.
“Public opinion now understands it’s necessary to talk to children about this kind of thing, because otherwise they will stay silent,” said Yves Verneuil, a professor of education at the University of Lyon. “The ministry, consequently, saw this change of mentality.”
The highly publicized trial last fall of dozens of men, found guilty of raping a woman named Gisèle Pelicot while she was deeply sedated, also had an effect, experts say. The case ignited discussions across the country about the casual banality of rape, the objectification of women and the lack of understanding of what consent is, and how it should be given before sex.
“How could those men have said they got consent when seeing a drugged, passed-out woman?” Ms. Durocher said. “It raised the question of how we teach consent.”
On paper, the French government has offered sex education since 1973. But the courses were optional and parents could pull their children from them, explained Mr. Verneuil, the professor, who has written a book on the history of sex education in France.
In 2001, the government introduced a law specifically requiring three annual sessions of sexual education for every student. Subsequent governments expanded the course contents to include not just classes on STDs and the risks of pregnancy, but sexism, homophobia, sexual violence and the concept of consent, Mr. Verneuil said.
However, no specific curriculum was developed, no budget or specialized training introduced and no personnel put in place to teach the classes, said Audrey Chanonat, a leader of the French union representing the principals of middle and high schools.
At the middle school in Cognac where she is a principal, those courses required more than 100 hours of staff time.
“I don’t have the personnel for it,” she said, noting that the staff did cover some of the topics in ninth-grade biology.
“A real education program for sexual and intimate relationships with three hours per class? That exists almost nowhere,” Ms. Chanonat said.
A 2021 report by the auditing department of the Ministry of Education, Sport and Research confirmed Ms. Chanonat’s point: Only 15 to 20 percent of French students were offered those three classes a year.
“It is clear that many students go through their entire schooling without having benefited from a single lesson,” the report stated
The French feminist philosopher Camille Froidevaux-Metterie said the failure to put sex education in schools reveals a deep social conservatism in France.
“Education about sex, but also about emotional and sexual relations, is learning to respect others and the difference between genders and sexualities,” she said. “And that pushes against a Conservative tradition that has always existed in France.”
The government did keep trying to implement its law, but each time, it was met by fierce opposition, Ms. Froidevaux-Metterie said.
In 2014, after the government trained teachers in 10 school districts to detect gender stereotypes and help children overcome them for a pilot program, some parents organized boycotts and pulled children out of school for two days. Activists who opposed gay marriage said the program would destroy the traditional heterosexual family model and teach children they could choose their gender.
After one teacher was targeted on social media with personal threats, the program was cut, said Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, who was the country’s minister of women’s rights at the time.
The same opponents protested and circulated petitions this past fall and winter, opposing teaching on gender identity.
Ludovine de la Rochère, the co-founder of France’s major anti-gay marriage movement in the early 2010s that later led the opposition to the sex education program, told a Catholic radio station the program would introduce to children the possibility of gender transition. Her organization is part of the coalition that has sued to stop the first sex education classes this fall.
The new curriculum, published last month in the official bulletin of the Ministry of Education, focuses on the themes of equality between men and women, the fight against discrimination, the principle of consent, and the prevention of sexism and sexual violence.
Though they consider the curriculum cause for celebration, the activists who have been fighting for it have not withdrawn their lawsuit against the government. Essential to its success, they say, is funding — up to 620 million euros annually, or 52 euros per student, by one estimate, which is about $67 million, or about $56 per student.
So far the education ministry has committed no money.
“We know the implementation will be difficult,” Ms. Durocher said. “It will be a new feminist battle.”
Ségolène Le Stradic contributed research.
