Together for gender equality

Our commitment to gender equality

We are four coordinating organizations from Spain (Altekio, Madrid), Italy (Xena, Padova), Germany (Social Impact, Berlin) and Switzerland (Altekio Swiss, Geneva) as well as local associations in respective each city. During the last months we developed our project idea, wrote a long proposal for Erasmus+, set up the project framework and waited…and waited…for the final project confirmation to make our idea come true. And yes, we got it! GATE process was born.

Because we are convinced that we don’t want to wait another 100 years until we see gender parity in our world! Working with organizations and promoting educational tools will help to accelerate the transformation toward more gender equality. At the end of our 8-months innovation process, we create a methodological guide for the transition of organizations towards gender equality.

In our second project phase, we develop an innovative toolbox to support young people to understand the impact of gender differences in the social context of power and discrimination. Starting in September 2021, we design and implement workshops for youth workers and develop innovative methods to promote gender awareness.

For the next 20 months, we aim to raise awareness for gender equality, especially addressing youth, as well as speed up the transformation towards more gender equal workspaces.

A thought on International Women’s Day

There are situations that make us feel uncomfortable. There are realities that hurt us. There is violence that we can no longer accept. Our project arises from the decision to work together on those inequalities that we cannot tolerate anymore. March 8th was a day of women’s struggle for their rights.

On days like these we embrace this struggle that has never ceased, that has become stronger and has united women around the world in the construction of a fairer world free of violence. Women´s rights are violated in multiple ways, they work more, earn less and have fewer options; they suffer multiple forms of violence in private and in public spaces. We cannot allow that a friend, a sister, a daughter does not come home anymore. We cannot ignore so much unjustified pain.

We need to build new forms of life, new structures – even if they are small-, new ways of relating to each other. We must work on alternatives to this unequal society which excludes and marginalizes. Today, we reaffirm our conviction and our commitment inspired by the struggles of all women – of those who take it to the streets (like in our photo taken in Madrid last women’s day), and those who resist invisibly. Let´s create change!

Our first gender training

In the first week of February our first gender training took place. We were up to thirteen members of partner organizations from Spain, Italy and Germany. During multiple training sessions, we took advantage of the opportunity to prepare ourselves for our big goal. In these three sessions, we covered a broad range of topics. Basic concepts such as the sex-gender system or gender roles and stereotypes marked the beginning. Based on these fundamental theories, we dug deeper into the field of gender equality. We completed our gender training with input and exciting exchange on different dimensions of gender inequality, intersectionality, organizational change as well as inclusive and non-sexist language. On the last day, we concentrated on important topics such as care work and reconciliation and gender violence in organizations.

Our next steps

Taking into account these important gender topics, we started our work with different local associations. We designed a questionnaire to find out on what we might work to transform the organizations towards more gender equality. It’s complex. It’s individual. It’s based on trust.

That’s why we started more individual coaching sessions with each organization to get better insights and collaborate in the most trustful way during this pandemic.

The different experiences with our local partner organizations will help us to feed our methodological guide “GATE process in organizations”, that we are going to finish in Summer 2021.

In September our next project phase is going to start: GATE process for individual change. We develop innovative tools and workshops to support people to understand the impact of gender differences. Based on a collaborative innovation process among the partners and participants, we create a toolbox to enhance gender equality.

In May 2022 we finish our project and present our results and insights in - hopefully big - events in Berlin, Geneva, Madrid and Padova.

Interested in more stories of our journey? We will keep you updated about our next steps and all the things we learn in this process on Instagram and Facebook.