Challenging gender stereotypes
NORTHCLIFF – No such thing as like a man of like a woman affirm high school learners.
High school learners gathered to discuss issues of gender stereotypes in relation to gender-based violence.
On 20 February, Growing Champions, children empowering organisation, and Reddford House Northcliff partnered to have their say on gender-based violence. The discussion formed part of Growing Champions’s programme to get the youth to participate in such matters directly and actively. Organised and facilitated by Samantha Toweel-Moore, founder of the organisation, she created the space to be led by the learners themselves.
On the day, the learners had a series of meaningful conversations which stemmed from their own thinking, past experiences and the societies they lived in. The first activity they participated in was to separate photos of influential people in the world into a blue and pink group. The aim of the task was to expose and challenge the boundaries and limits in their minds. While some grouped them into humanitarians and artists, artists and sports stars, there were some that paired them according to their gender.
At the end of the exercise, the learners established that there were many groups people belonged to but it didn’t define them – the door to challenging stereotypes had officially been opened.
The next part of the session had the learners discuss how they had been judged and complimented in the past for behaving in a particular kind of way to fit into society’s idea of how men and women should behave. They were shocked to hear some of the experiences of their peers and schoolmates. Some of the boys revealed that they had been judged for being a virgin in the later stages of high school and crying in public spaces. The girls shared their experiences of being told what jobs were for men and not for women, that they could not beat boys at sport and in competitions, and how standing up for themselves was ‘unladylike’.
The activity had pushed them to think outside the box when thinking of sex and gender.
With a ‘man’ and ‘woman’ box being written on the board, the learners discussed the qualities that were often associated with the two. The woman box included emotional, weak and objects of beauty while the man box had the terms superior, sex-hungry, showing no emotions and so forth.
During this session, they learnt that instead of looking at gender and sex as male or female, or man and woman, they should understand that a spectrum existed. The learners understood that everyone existed on this spectrum and there was nothing wrong with those that existed fluidly between the two ends of the spectrum.
The conversations are set to continue on 5 March.
Related article:
https://www.citizen.co.za/northcliff-melville-times/296967/south-africas-shocking-gender-based-violence-statistics/
