Sexuality Education and Gender Sensitization: The Case of Armenian Public Schools

This study explores the provision of gender-based sexuality education from the teaching perspectives at Armenian public schools. Armenia is one of the countries with a patriarchal political-social system where the belief that men are superior to women is common in mainstream society (Khachatryan et al., 2015; Durand & Osipov, 2015). One of the objectives of this study is to find out how sexuality educators in Armenia deal with the inconsistency between the mainstream beliefs regarding unequal gender roles held in society, and the “gender equality” content they are obliged to teach. To explore this, the study applies a qualitative approach, employing ethnographic methods as one of the effective ways to become immersed in the target population’s culture and understand their behaviors and beliefs. The literature on Armenian sexuality education has mostly stemmed from international and local organizations’ perspectives; missing the feminist approach from the academic agenda and exploring little in the areas of gender studies.