Peru congressman challenges gender ideology training for public employees

Nancy Tolentino, minister of women and vulnerable populations of Peru. / Credit: Andean Agency

ACI Prensa Staff, Aug 25, 2023 / 16:00 pm (CNA).

Congressman Alejandro Muñante has asked a committee of the Peruvian Congress to summon the minister for women, Nancy Tolentino, and another high-ranking official “as a matter of urgency” to give an explanation regarding mandatory training in “gender perspective” (a Latin American euphemism for gender ideology) for public employees.

In a letter sent Aug. 21 to Martha Moyano, president of the congressional Constitution and Regulations Committee, the lawmaker asked that Tolentino and the executive president of the National Civil Service Authority (SERVIR), Ana Isabel Pari, be summoned to appear at the next regular session in order to report on the “Progressive implementation plan for mandatory training in gender perspective 2023–2030,” which affects public servants.

Muñante, a member of the Renovación Popular party, has requested that the officials explain in detail what is “the usefulness of the training, its legal justification, who will be the providers or trainers, and the amount of money that will be paid for it, among other things.”

According to the official newspaper El Peruano, training for public servants and workers began Aug. 23. The first workshop, called “Gender Perspective on Decision-making in Public Management,” was addressed to a group of 15,755 civil servants, lasting approximately 12 hours.

It was also announced that close to a million and a half managers, civil servants, and other staff of state entities “must take a training course on a gender perspective that lasts no less than 24 academic hours.”

For Muñante, “this obligation violates the constitutional right to freedom of conscience, thought, and free development of state workers, which in practice translates into pure, hard-and-fast indoctrination with Peruvian taxpayer money.”

In addition, the legislator considers that these courses disrupt the freedom “of those who sustain with sufficient grounds that these courses on gender do not really promote true equality between men and women, and that the only thing they achieve is to sustain a fallacious narrative that sharpens the contradictions between the sexes in order to continue supporting NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] that only make their living by that, but zero results.”

Another critic of the “gender perspective” workshops is Congressman José Cueto, who described it as “unfortunate that SERVIR wastes valuable time, money, and public resources from state institutions for ‘mandatory training on gender perspective.”

“Aren’t there more urgent citizen needs to attend to in education, health, and security?” he questioned.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.