• 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

Duration : 40 minutes

>Step 1 : Walk the talk

By pairs, ask participants to share a personal memory where in their childhood or adolescence they acknowledged that society sees them either as a woman, either as a man, either because a relative told them or an institution or a friend.

Give them 2 minutes for personal reflection. Then each person will have 5 minutes to share their personal story with their partner.

When the time is up, gather all the participants and debrief about the exercise. (Important : 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.)

> Step 2 : Gender definition and guided reflection

Before going to the next exercise, provide the participants with a definition of gender.

For example, we used this one : “Gender is 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, ask participants to share a real life experience where they become aware of the gender that society assigns to them. What happened ? Who was/were the person(s) that made them aware? Did they want to prevent them from doing something ? or did they want to encourage them to do something? (5’/person)

2nd step

With a new pair, ask participants to share what do they envy about the other gender (the one that society doesn’t assign to them)? Do they allow yourself to do such things? (5’/person)

When time is out, gather the group and propose a debrief.

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