Activity Report
Location: Remand Home
Activity Date: 11.10.2023
Start Time: 10:00 AM End Time: 12:00 PM
Facilitators: Adelaide, Sophia, Dilara, Dahlia, Ruth, Yoda
Number of Participants: 36
Male: 34 Female: 2
Activity Purpose/ Summary:
Our purpose was to educate the older boys at Remand Home on the importance of gender equality and sentizice them on the topic of stereotypes towards women and men. We also pointed out that in relationsships as wells as communitys and societys we as human beings need both: the masculine and the feminine energy and strenghs.
Personnel Input:
We started with a warm up, followed by an introduction to the topic of gender equality. We talked about stereotypes and gender roles.
What is a stereotype?
A gender stereotype “is a generalised view or preconception about attributes, or characteristics that are or ought to be owned by women and men or the roles that should be performed by men and women”. A gender stereotype is harmful when it limits the capacity of women and men to develop their personal attributes or professional skills and to take decisions about their lives and plans.
Gender Roles:
What are gender roles?
Gender roles in society means how we’re expected to act, speak, dress, groom, and conduct ourselves based upon our assigned sex. For example, girls and women are generally expected to dress in typically feminine ways and be polite, accommodating, and nurturing. Men are generally expected to be strong, aggressive, and bold.
Every society, ethnic group, and culture has gender role expectations, but they can be very different from group to group. They can also change in the same society over time. For example, pink used to be considered a masculine color in the U.S. while blue was considered feminine.
How do gender stereotypes affect people?
A stereotype is a widely accepted judgment or bias about a person or group — even though it’s overly simplified and not always accurate. Stereotypes about gender can cause unequal and unfair treatment because of a person’s gender. This is called sexism.
There are four basic kinds of gender stereotypes:
Personality — For example, women are often expected to be accommodating and emotional, while men are usually expected to be self-confident and aggressive.
At Home — For example, some people expect that women will take care of the children, cook, and clean the home, while men take care of finances, work on the car, and do the home repairs.
Jobs — Some people are quick to assume that teachers and nurses are women, and that pilots, doctors, and engineers are men.
Physical appearance — For example, women are expected to be thin and graceful, while men are expected to be tall and muscular. Men and women are also expected to dress and groom in ways that are stereotypical to their gender (men wearing pants and short hairstyles, women wearing dresses and make-up.
These exaggerated gender stereotypes can make relationships between people difficult.
Extreme gender stereotypes are harmful because they don’t allow people to fully express themselves and their emotions. For example, it’s harmful to masculine folks to feel that they’re not allowed to cry or express sensitive emotions. And it’s harmful to feminine folks to feel that they’re not allowed to be independent, smart or assertive. Breaking down gender stereotypes allows everyone to be their best selves.
Achievements:
The sexist and partriarchal views of society under the culture that the boys are are surrounded by are heaviliy ingrained into their minds making the discussion today very active and challenging for us to educate the boys on how equality within society and cultures is beneficial to not just women but also to men. Nevertheless we were able to have an active conversation with the boys where we saw that a majority of them were engaged in understanding the concepts we were presenting to them.
Unanticipated Achievements:
We found out that behind the prejudice of most of the boys there is a lot of fear of the effects that equality would have on their own life and their chances on jobs. A positive suprise was that th boys were very open and motivated on listening to our personal views as women.
Supporting Partners:
n/a
