Do You Genderalise?

Can a girl make it as a rapper? Can a man be accepted as a belly dancer? Around 25 young men and women, gathered Thursday evening to break down stereotypes about the two sexes These were some of the questions the participants had to ask themselves and each other.

Claudia El-Hage

24. March 2010

When talking about gender, many come to think of equal rights for men and women. Of course this is a big issue we need to acknowledge, but before getting there, we also need to recognise the frames we set for each other and are sustaining each other in fulfilling. That is why the MENACT meeting Thursday the 18^th of March was focused on finding out where we position ourselves in the gender-focused world as well as challenging each other’s preconceptions about what men and women can do.

Group discussions

In order to relief the participants from the often heavy and serious atmosphere in which gender issues are often raised, we wanted to encourage debate through games. A lot of laughter was heard among the groups as well as deep discussions.

As differences between boys and girls can be a sensitive and personal issue to discuss in an open forum among unfamiliar people, all the discussions took place in small groups.

Let’s play!

The games were meant as a tool to bring matters to a head and thereby making it easier for people who have not beforehand dealt with gender issues, to participate in discussions. There were two games to be played. One was a sketching game, where the participants had to act the part of, for example, a “househusband” or a “female taxi driver”. For each sketch, questions relying to the characters were debated.

The other game was a role play-game. Each participant had to take on a role, such as “financially independent woman” or “traditional man” and through the eyes of the character, discuss issues like “should weddings be separated between male and female?” or “should girls and boys have the same curfews?”.

Finishing in forum

The evening ended with a forum discussion, picking up some of the subjects the groups found relevant. Especially the question on what is socially acceptable took up some space. There were many different perspectives on this matter but what few could imagine was a male belly dancer.

This was the third MENAct meeting conducted in the Regional Office of MS Actionaid Denmark. Some participants had attended before, for others it was the first time, but what they all had in common was the eager to discuss gender issues.