• Understanding what gender means
• Understanding our personal stories related with gender issues
• Recognising situations our behaviours that impede us to do things because of our gender

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Duration : minutes

>Step 1 : Walk the talk

By pairs, share a personal memory where in your childhood or adolescence you acknowledged that society sees them either as women, either as a man, either because a relative told you or an institution or a friend. Give 2’ min for personal reflection, then each person will have 5’ min to share their personal story.

> Step 2 : Gender definition and guided reflection Gather all the participants and debrief about the 1st Step (The debrief is not about sharing the stories because they have to stay personal, but to share if something surprised them and who assigned them as women or man). Before going to the next exercise, provide the participants with a definition of gender. We used this one “Gender = a social construction to which are associated the psychological attributes, activities, roles and social status culturally assigned to each of the categories of sex [and constituting a belief system whose principle of biological determination]” The next exercise will be in 2 different steps :

1st step By pairs share a real life experience where you become aware of the gender that society assigns to you. What happened ? Who was/were the person(s) that made you aware? Did they want to prevent you from doing something ? or did they want to encourage you to do something ? (5’/person)

2nd step With a new pair, What do you envy about the other gender (the one that society doesn’t assign to you)? Do you allow yourself to do such things? (5’/person)

Gather the group and propose a debrief.