A one-day training to the youth leaders on Gender Concepts was organised on 6th December at Hyderabad. The youth were sensitised on the importance of their role in curtailing the gender disparities, discrimination in the family and community. Bringing change in the elders/parents is an uphill task. The gender equality practiced by the youth will set a role model for the children to follow the same and thus build a gender sensitised society. The impact of the social media, society and other evil practices is more on the dalit youth and therefore they need to be very cautious with the mobiles, surroundings etc and nurture their behaviour/attitude in an useful way to them, family and society.
The youth were initially given a small exercise to denote the members of their family with symbols. If it was a male they denoted with a circle and it was a female they denoted with a square. After the exercise, each member was asked to explain which symbols were given to
whom. The participants went on to explain that their fathers or brothers were denoted with male entity, a circle and their mothers or sisters were denoted with a female entity, a square. After the first exercise an interaction with the participants helped to understand that their recognition of gender entities was mainly because of the physical / biological interpretation of gender. The youth were then asked to completely wipe off the biological interpretation of gender and were asked to re-do the exercise. During the second time few participants had denoted their mothers with a male entity, a circle. This is mainly because their mothers show authoritative
behaviour in the family, or in some cases the mothers are working women who have economic independence. The interaction after the second exercise opened up a new perspective for the youth to look at gender not only from biological aspects but from a lot other perspectives.
The youth felt it was a new opening for them and have promised to perceive all the issues in gender lens.
