A YOUTH group urged the Department of Education to re-evaluate its approach to gender education and form a curriculum without portraying women as weak.

Samahan ng Progresibong Kabataan said that DepEd’s curriculum relegated women in a “subordinate socio-economic position,” while also erasing the narratives of gender minorities such as the LGBTQ+ community.

“It is appalling that while DepEd Secretary Leoner Briones prides herself as a gender advocate, the main agency tasked to manage the system of basic education continues to perpetuate sexist socialization and gender hegemony that have long regarded femininity and womanhood as a weakness,” SPARK said in a statement.

Earlier this week, a letter addressed to DepEd went viral on social media as an 11-year-old student in South Cotabato pointed out the gender bias and stereotyping from an activity included in the Self-Learning Module of Grade 5 learners.

In the SLM for their Health subject, students were tasked to categorize certain traits belonging to either male or female.

The answer key suggests that characteristics like “strong” and “tough” are for the males, while being “modest” and “fragile” were attributed to the females.

In the past, DepEd released policy guidelines in the integration of Comprehensive Sexuality Education in the basic education curriculum. However, SPARK stressed that gender equality and empowerment “will fall short when DepEd is dead silent on pressing concerns.”

“While they already have formal channels to address complaints about modules, DepEd must do their job and proactively address these issues themselves,” the group said.

“As this is not the first time a DepEd module promoting harmful mindsets have circulated around social media, this shows that the problems of backward ideologies in DepEd exist at an institutional level,” it added.