Workshop on Gender Sensitisation for Model City Delhi Coalition Members

Background: As part of the capacity building initiatives for coalition members of the Model City Delhi (MCD), a gender training and sensitisation workshop was commissioned by Laureus Sport for Good. The workshop was organised and facilitated by Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) and Pro Sport Development (PSD) in collaboration with the Martha Farrell Foundation (MFF) from 5th to 6th April 2021 at PRIA, New Delhi.

Participants: A total of 26 coalition members participated in the workshop, of whom 20 were women and girls. Moreover, the group constituted of diverse stakeholders from within the coalition, including members of youth groups (8), school management committee members (4), anganwadi workers (1), members of local women’s groups (5), local NGO members (7) from the community of Seemapuri as well as some members from state and national level NGO’s (1).

The workshop was led by MFF’s Director Nandita Bhatt, along with two co-facilitators – Nitya Sriram and Samiksha Jha. They were provided additional support from members of the MCD evaluation team at PSD and PRIA.

A customised training design was developed for the purpose of workshop, which helped the MCD coalition members develop a sound understanding of the concepts of gender, the cross-cutting and pervasive nature of gender barriers, misconceptions and gaps in awareness, and initiation into the complex nature of issues intersecting with gender.

Objectives Of The Workshop 

The objectives of the workshop were to ensure that participants have:

• Conceptual clarity and awareness of gender and sex.
• An understanding of the societal conditioning that shapes the views, beliefs and attitudes towards being a man or woman, and their impact on our daily lives.
• An understanding of the structures of patriarchy, to be able to look at resolution of skewed gender dynamics as a multi-layered, complex issue.
• An understanding of the extent, causes, and implications of gender discriminations in everyday life.

Key Workshop Activities

1. Self-Imprinting Exercise

For this exercise, the participants were split into pairs and asked to imprint a part of their bodies on a chart. Within these drawn out prints, participants were asked to write down the qualities that they admire in the women and girls in their families, as well as the men and boys. After completing this activity, various individuals presented to the group what they felt the positive qualities of the women and men in their families were, which were informed by their perspective on gender.

Key takeaways

• Participants were able to reflect on the 'qualities’ of men and women in their families and why these were in fact considered good qualities.
• Participants learned that society expected them to do a number of things because of their gender identity and restricted them from a host of other activities (regardless if they wanted to do them or not).

2. Understanding Gender in Own Life

Based on the discussions on gender roles in families, participants split up into groups and presented their thoughts and experiences through art in the form of short skits, poems and even a rap verse! The skits performed by two groups illustrated several examples of the socialisation process and stereotypical gender roles, ranging from children receiving certain toys (dolls for girls and cricket bats for boys) to discriminatory treatment at the workplace and how menstruation is taught and often not taught at school.

Key takeaways:

• Participants were able to further deepen the analysis of their own lives
• Participants showed incredible ingenuity to put up creative performances, drawing from examples of socialisation and discrimination in their own lives and experiences.

3. Myths and Facts

For this activity, participants were divided into small groups and provided a list of statements, which were based on their reflections and sharing from the previous activities. The participants were then asked to discuss these statements and decide if they were myths or facts.

Key takeaways:

• The discussion on myths and facts was an open and candid discussion, with various participants voicing their opinions and conflicting opinions. However, with guidance from the facilitators, they were willing to change their opinions on certain statements and look at things with a more refined gender lens.
• Participants were able to draw from their own experiences and knowledge to add a number of myths regarding gender to the list provided by the facilitators.