Lebanon

28 August 2009

Within the "socio economic empowerment of cluster bomb affected communities" project  funded by the Japanese government , youth from Southern "UNDP youth groups" were gathered in a summer camp for five days.  The main topic of the camp was gender. Eighty youngsters from the kadaas of Marjeyoun, Hasbaya, Bint Jbeil, Nabatyeh and Jezzine, coming from a spectrum of mixed gender, religion, education and political affiliations participated to the camp. The camp comprised discussions and analysis around the concept of gender complemented by practical exercises, role plays, and educational games to better grasp the topic. Topics such as: women at work, women as housewives, women as marketing tools, women and violence, women as mothers and women as decision makers, were all engaged through creative and interactive techniques. Training experts and youngsters, who are members of the youth groups who have attended previous training skills UNDP workshops, articulated gender issues to the participants. The interest of the youngsters in openly discussing gender matters and sharing opposing points of view were clearly the highlights of the camp.

The camp succeeded in extracting the deepest feelings of the youngsters related to the sensitive gender topic. Interestingly, findings proved that even some open minded and educated youngsters seemed to practice gender biased behaviors, while some of the young girls seemed to be passively accepting their unequal position in society. This situation is mainly due to social habits and pressure unconsciously influencing the attitudes of the youngsters.
The workshops exposed the youngsters to a variety of situations from which they deducted gender biased attitudes embedded in the Lebanese society, some of which particular to the region itself. For instance, they realized that men have certain behaviors that are "allowed" by society while women should have "obligatory and restricted" behaviors: "boys can go out at any time at night, while girls should be home by 8 pm" explained Lamice. Also, they found out that most of the Lebanese proverbs related to gender give females a "negative" and under estimated role: "listen to what women have to say but do the opposite". They concluded that behaviors changed in terms of social, economic, religious and educational background: big families with low income residing in a village would have a different approach to gender versus a family where both parents work in a city. Some of the exercises were conducted in groups, while others were segregated by gender or discussed in couples; this technique was efficient to surface the opposing opinions and to encourage all youngsters to participate and speak out freely. Some of the findings were shocking: a high percentage of boys would never consider working under the leadership of a woman, they do not consider the work of women at home as a "productive" work since it does not generate income, they consider prostitution as solely a women's vice, they will never engage in cooking and cleaning activities, and will show no respect or trust to a female president. Also, both genders linked the "reproductive" role in a household to a solely female task and 90% of the attendees will rather have a boy as a first kid due to social pressure and to ensure the continual heritage of the family. A simple example could illustrate the situation: each team composed of mixed gender was sequentially in charge of washing the dishes during the camp.  Instantaneously, girls were the only ones present in the kitchen.  When the boys were specifically asked to assist the girls, surprisingly, the girls were the ones resisting!

The most important conclusion of the camp was that it is worth investing in this subject further: this is an awakening alarm targeting government institutions, NGOs and civil societies, demonstrating the extent of work that is needed to cover gender discrimination problems in Lebanon.
In fact, the objective of the camp was not to find solutions to gender discrimination but to open the eyes of the youngsters to what is actually happening around them and to overtly discuss points of views. The next step will be tackled in another session where the youth will get trained on ways they could fight against this problem.  The youth mentioned that it was the "first time they are exposed to such an interesting topic", they said that they learned a lot just by "listening to each other opinions", and most of them finally agreed that "women have an important role in society be it in terms of their productive, reproductive or social responsibility, and people should be mobilized to decrease pressure on women and give them more rights".