The Tools to fight against stereotypes
Our aim has been to find practical activities to help our students and ourselves to reflect on how stereotypes are so deeply embedded in our lives that we are not aware of them most of the time.
So, we propose to work with our students (any age adapting the contents) in workshops:
*** A photography workshop:
We can use photography as a way of expression and communication to visualize the gender stereotypes analyzing sexist publicity and making group suggestions to change it.
*(As a example we have chosen an ad by Dolce and Gabbana that was withdrawn because of what it suggested)
We’ll show students the ad and ask them if they agree with the controversy it generated.
Try lo analyze if there’s anything that incites to violence.
We’ll ask them if they think this kind of ads influence in our behavior.
What about other people’s behavior?
Why do we look for trades then?
***Theatre workshop:
Use body and theatre language to send messages that help them to get conscious of how important it is to fight to reach equality between men and women, specially to prevent home violence.
In our school, we had a theatre workshop and our students played what we call “sainetes” they are short humorous plays and most of them (nearly all of them) have very stereotyped characters: women are “silly” or too “clever” or they usually use sex to get what they want from men. Men are usually cheated by them.
They are usually funny (easy and vulgar humor) so most people just laugh at it.
After watching the plays we used to talk about it and tried that our students (adults) reflected about it. We encouraged them to see that sexist stereotypes are usually funny and that’s why people don’t think they are wrong at all.
It was interesting because some of them saw it clearly and got angry about the play (before knowing what our aim was) but some of them didn’t find a reason to be upset about, they thought it was fun and that was all.
***Audiovisuals workshop:
Motivate students to make videos or short spots without sexist stereotypes. How could they be? (We don’t want them to change roles, and make women behave as men or the opposite, that’s no our aim).
***Tales workshop:
Analyze traditional children tales and find how they have influenced in our gender stereotypes.
Encourage them to rewrite famous tales avoiding gender stereotypes.
Encourage them to write their own tales with no gender differences.
Encourage older students to analyze the younger students’ books : images, text... and make their own conclusions.
***Songs workshop:
Use music and songs to send messages about equality and at the same time analyze the words of sexist songs (most of them) People ( any age) usually sing songs without realizing that sometimes the songs are really sexist and even include violence against the other.
So, we propose to work with our students (any age adapting the contents) in workshops:
*** A photography workshop:
We can use photography as a way of expression and communication to visualize the gender stereotypes analyzing sexist publicity and making group suggestions to change it.
*(As a example we have chosen an ad by Dolce and Gabbana that was withdrawn because of what it suggested)
We’ll show students the ad and ask them if they agree with the controversy it generated.
Try lo analyze if there’s anything that incites to violence.
We’ll ask them if they think this kind of ads influence in our behavior.
What about other people’s behavior?
Why do we look for trades then?
***Theatre workshop:
Use body and theatre language to send messages that help them to get conscious of how important it is to fight to reach equality between men and women, specially to prevent home violence.
In our school, we had a theatre workshop and our students played what we call “sainetes” they are short humorous plays and most of them (nearly all of them) have very stereotyped characters: women are “silly” or too “clever” or they usually use sex to get what they want from men. Men are usually cheated by them.
They are usually funny (easy and vulgar humor) so most people just laugh at it.
After watching the plays we used to talk about it and tried that our students (adults) reflected about it. We encouraged them to see that sexist stereotypes are usually funny and that’s why people don’t think they are wrong at all.
It was interesting because some of them saw it clearly and got angry about the play (before knowing what our aim was) but some of them didn’t find a reason to be upset about, they thought it was fun and that was all.
***Audiovisuals workshop:
Motivate students to make videos or short spots without sexist stereotypes. How could they be? (We don’t want them to change roles, and make women behave as men or the opposite, that’s no our aim).
***Tales workshop:
Analyze traditional children tales and find how they have influenced in our gender stereotypes.
Encourage them to rewrite famous tales avoiding gender stereotypes.
Encourage them to write their own tales with no gender differences.
Encourage older students to analyze the younger students’ books : images, text... and make their own conclusions.
***Songs workshop:
Use music and songs to send messages about equality and at the same time analyze the words of sexist songs (most of them) People ( any age) usually sing songs without realizing that sometimes the songs are really sexist and even include violence against the other.