Gender Equity and Reconciliation Workshop

LONDON – In every segment of society, irrespective of race, class, religion, or sexual orientation, women and men grapple daily with the profound impacts of cultural conditioning around gender and sexuality. Moreover, it is the daily acts of violence and micro-aggressions which take place within many intimate relationships that establish the social conditions which bring about manifestations of violence on a greater scale. Given that gender is a central fault-line in all societies, sustainable peace requires the transformation of gender relations.

GERI’s three-day introductory workshops offer practical steps to confronting and dismantling personal and cultural patterns of gender conditioning at multiple levels so as to address the ways in which men and women perpetuate gender injustice. Through skilful and creative collaboration, participants gain insight from this process that contribute directly to addressing and transforming gender relations. New relational skills and a culture of deep respect and integrity between the sexes are fostered, fuelled by heightened mutual awareness of the gender conditioning experienced by both women and men in our society.

The long-term objectives of Gender Equity and Reconciliation International are to contribute towards:

1. Transforming underlying gender and sexual injustice and inequality in all countries where GRI works.
2. Reducing levels of gender-based and sexual violence, including among communities at particular risk of it.
3. Establishing just and compassionate relations between women and men.

Workshop Methodology

Gender Equity and Reconciliation workshops apply an experiential learning methodology facilitated in a group or community setting, providing a community-based approach to gender analysis which complements activist, political, and academic approaches. An experiential and reflective methodology shape the techniques employed. Workshops combine a broad range of modalities necessary for skilful navigation through the sometimes delicate, and volatile, dynamics of transforming gender relations and gender-based violence; always ensuring respect for both women and men’s experiences. Workshops are highly participatory, and comprise experiential processes and exercises; discussions and dialogue in plenary, small groups, pairs; and debriefings. Through this approach, a forum is provided in which participants can enter into an exploration of their own gender conditioning, and can challenge their assumptions about the other gender through hearing their stories. In this forum, the witnessing and understanding of the pain of both genders is carefully facilitated. The process requires the fullness of participants’ humanity, and participants are encouraged to integrate their physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual dimensions, so as to create the conditions for genuine gender transformation.

Workshop Objectives

• Create a safe forum for the sexes to jointly confront dysfunctional gender and sexuality conditioning in society, and in the workplace.
• Facilitate skilful acknowledgement, truth-telling, and deep listening in relation to participants’ personal histories.
• Foster new levels of sensitivity and mutual awareness among women and men, and between gender and sexual minorities.
• Cultivate respectful and authentic dialogue between the sexes on sensitive gender issues, including communication skills for addressing conflicts.
• Promote new forms of relating between the sexes imbued with mutual appreciation, compassion, and trust.
• Build a collaborative network of people who are committed to transforming gender relations, and who are mutually accountable to one another.

To read a Concept Note from GERI’s past UK workshops, click here.