Tracing the politics of sex education: religion and partisanship in Austria, Germany and Switzerland, 1970–2020

Abstract

Sex education is one of the most contested yet least examined morality policies. In contrast to issues like abortion or same-sex marriage, research on the regulation of sex education is scarce, despite its centrality to debates on gender, family and sexuality. This article applies computational text analysis to an original regional-level data set of school curricula from Austria, Germany and Switzerland (1970–2020). In doing so, it breaks ground as the first longitudinal and comparative assessment of changes in sex education over time and across contexts. The analysis shows that religion is associated with curricula that cover fewer topics, while more culturally liberal governments are linked to curricula covering more topics, and that these associations vary by religious context. These findings position sex education as a gendered site of moral and political struggle, offering new insights for political science, public policy and education research for the governance of contested value-based policies.