Sensitizing a Disability Rights team on Gender

Last weekend we facilitated a workshop for Action on Disability and Development (ADD) India at our Bengaluru campus. ADD works with persons with disabilities in rural areas with a community-based rehabilitation approach. The aim of this workshop was to develop the sensitivity of ADD staff on gender.

Asha and Raaj facilitated the day-long workshop in Kannada. “We used a simple activity to learn the difference between sex and gender”, shares Asha. “Once all of us became clear of that difference, we then went deeper into how gender is socially constituted and why it is so unjust.”

The highlight of the workshop were the role plays participants enacted to show how we learn gender in the family, in our schools, in religion and media. There was much laughter and learning, as participants “acted out” the various denials girls and women experience.