Report
Supporting Intersex Students
Every child has a right to education, including free and compulsory primary education and accessible secondary education.14 Educational environments frequently fail to recognize diversity in sex characteristics and bodily development, including intersex people’s variations in anatomy, chromosomes, and hormones.
Discrimination against intersex youth in educational settings takes many forms, from the absence of inclusive curricula and school policies to discriminatory laws and practices, bullying, and violence that can harm intersex learners physically, emotionally, and psychologically.
Key Points
- Intersex children and young people face barriers to education due to stigma, misinformation, and pressure to conform to binary expectations about female and male bodies.
- Intersex learners experience violence and discrimination from peers and school staff, increasing the risk of dropping out. In Outright’s global education survey, 54% of intersex respondents reported violence or discrimination from other students.
- Binary school policies and practices can exclude and harm intersex learners. Gendered uniforms, bathrooms, changing facilities, sports, and other sex-segregated activities can compromise students’ privacy, dignity, safety, and bodily autonomy.
- Intersex people are largely invisible in school curricula. In Outright’s global survey, 73% of LGBTIQ respondents said their teachers did not discuss sex characteristics or the existence of intersex people in class.
- Legal protections are inadequate. Only 15 countries explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sex characteristics in education.
- Governments and schools should ensure intersex learners can access education safely, equally, and with dignity through antidiscrimination protections, inclusive curricula and educator training, supportive school policies and facilities, participation of intersex learners in decision-making, and improved research and data.
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