Replication data for: Tracing the Politics of Sex Education: Religion and Partisanship in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, 1970–2020

This replication dataset contains the data necessary to reproduce the analyses reported in the following article: Kluge, Anna E. (2026): Tracing the politics of sex education: religion and partisanship in Austria, Germany and Switzerland, 1970–2020. In: European Journal of Politics and Gender. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1332/25151088Y2026D000000144 Its contents, processing steps, and inclusion criteria are defined by the publication. The data is also a subset of the following panel database: Kluge, Anna E. (2026): Sex Education Curriculum Database: Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. Version 1.0.0. WZB Berlin Social Science Center. Dataset. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7802/2911 Abstract of the journal article: 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. This replication dataset contains the data necessary to reproduce the analyses reported in the following article: Kluge, Anna E. (2026): Tracing the politics of sex education: religion and partisanship in Austria, Germany and Switzerland, 1970–2020. In: European Journal of Politics and Gender. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1332/25151088Y2026D000000144 Its contents, processing steps, and inclusion criteria are defined by the publication. The data is also a subset of the following panel database: Kluge, Anna E. (2026): Sex Education Curriculum Database: Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. Version 1.0.0. WZB Berlin Social Science Center. Dataset. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7802/2911 Abstract of the journal article: 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.