Peer-to-Peer Activity: Linking the Dots
Overview
Participants identify and discuss practices and perceptions within their faith community that raise difficulties for women and girls.
Competencies
- Participants will be able to identify cultural particularities (behaviors, traditions, and belief) that overlap with religion.
- Participants will be able to determine and articulate how cultural particularities influence religious interpretations.
- Participants will be able to articulate their responsibilities to enable women and girls to influence society.
Step-by-Step Instructions
Discussion Questions
Resources
Facilitator Tips
Faith Quotes
Step-by-Step Instructions
INTRODUCTION
- The facilitator can separate participants into small groups if appropriate or do this exercise with the entire group. See Facilitator Tips.
The facilitator provides each group or students a copy or link to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (see Resources).
ACTIVITY and DISCUSSION
Participants identify human rights that are not fully respected or may raise difficulties for women (or girls) in particular as a result of perceptions and practices in their own religious communities.
Participants come back together as a group to share their findings and the reasons why they chose specific rights or issues. About 10-15 minutes should be allotted for this Part I.
Participants define and express the interdependence and intersectionality of human rights and gender equality.
Optional Additional Activity
- The Facilitator presents cases that may have been recently at the centre of public attention or controversy in the country or province where the training takes place (Collective exercise for 15-20 minutes).
- The facilitator refers to discussions concerning “Faith for Rights” during the consideration by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women of reports from States parties to CEDAW, including Botswana, Costa Rica, Fiji, Niger and Nigeria (INSERT LINKS TO REPORTS in Resources?).
CONCLUSION
The facilitator will share examples showing that gender discrimination has never been limited to one or some regions, but extends to the whole world.
Discussion Questions
- Why might women and girls experience discrimination in faith communities?
- What are the origins of this phenomena?
- Is gender discrimination a conscious attitude?
- What is the responsibility of male religious leaders in this regard?
- Would the situation differ if there were female religious leaders?
- What issues might be resolved if women served as religious leaders?
- Is the media a source of gender prejudice?
- What negative stereotypes about women prevail in your cultural environment?
- Have you ever addressed such stereotypes within your functions as a faith actor? How, or otherwise why not?
Additional Questions:
- What are the origins of the problem of gender bias? For example, are they theological, economic, or cultural?
Resources
Facilitator Tips
Participants should use this activity to identify issues related to human rights and gender equality and not try to find solutions to these issues.
Additional Tips:
- The #Faith4Rights modules are flexible and require adaptation by the facilitators before their use. Case studies related to peer-to-peer exercises in the 18 modules need to be selected by the facilitators from within the environment where the learning takes place. The #Faith4Rights toolkit is a prototype methodology that requires contextualization, based on the text of the 18 commitments, context and additional supporting documents.
- Not all issues raised need to be resolved. This would be an impossible and even a counterproductive target. The aim is rather to enhance critical thinking and communication skills, admitting that some questions could receive many answers, depending on numerous factors.
- Tensions may occur during discussions related to “faith” and “rights”. Most of these tensions are due to human interpretations. Learning sessions are spaces for constructive dialogue in a dynamic process where tensions can be reduced with the help of clear methodologies, including pre-emptive situation analysis and evidence of positive results in areas of intersectionality between faith and rights.
- When preparing the sessions, facilitators need to factor in the profile, age and backgrounds of participants. Focused attention on the learning objectives can transform tensions into constructive exploration of new ideas.
- Meaningful engagement requires democratically pre-established rules. Facilitators should dedicate time with participants to elaborate these rules together at the outset and acting all along the training as their custodians.
- The time frames suggested in this #Faith4Rights toolkit are merely indicative. Facilitators may adapt them freely to suit the needs of their group of participants. The key balance is between respecting the overall timeframe while not cutting short a positive exchange momentum.
- To ensure optimal and sustainable benefit, facilitators may create a “training notebook” for participants during their peer-to-peer learning sessions. It would contain a compilation of templates to help participants keep track of what they have learned throughout the programme and eventually use this notebook as their personalised follow-up tool.
- When technically feasible, facilitators are also advised to project the module under discussion on screen in order to alternate between discussions thereon and showing the audio-visual materials listed in each module or any other items selected by the facilitator themselves.
Faith Quotes
- “A man should respect his wife more than he respects himself and love her as much as he loves himself.” (Talmud, Yebamot, 62,b)
- “Never will I allow to be lost the work of any one among you, whether male or female; for you are of one another.” (Qu’ran 3, 195)
- “O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another.” (Quran 49:13)
- “In the image of God He created him male and female. He created them.” (Genesis 1, 27)
- “The best among you is he who is best to his wife.” (Hadith)
- “It is a woman who is a friend and partner for life. It is woman who keeps the race going. How may we think low of her of whom are born the greatest. From a woman a woman is born: none may exist without a woman.” (Guru Granth Sahib, p. 473)
- “The world of humanity is possessed of two wings – the male and the female. So long as these two wings are not equivalent in strength the bird will not fly. Until womankind reaches the same degree as man, until she enjoys the same arena of activity, extraordinary attainment for humanity will not be realized” (‘Abdu’l-Baha)
- “A comprehensive, holistic and effective approach to capacity-building should aim to engage influential leaders, such as traditional and religious leaders […]” (Joint general recommendation No. 31 of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women/general comment No. 18 of the Committee on the Rights of the Child on harmful practices)