Gender Sensitivity Training

(GST)
• Gender sensitivity training is an initial
effort to show how gender shapes the roles
of women and men in society, including
their role in development, and how it
affects relations between them.
• It is given to those who have very little
gender awareness or none at all.
Gender Sensitivity Training
(GST)
• For people in government to appreciate
GAD and eventually become its advocate,
they first have to heighten their awareness
of gender concerns and be willing to
respond to gender issues. GST makes this
possible.
 FOUR PREMISES OF Gender
Sensitivity Training (GST)
• GAD is not a war of the sexes
• GAD is not anti-male
• Both women and men are victims of gender
inequality, although the victims are more often
women than men
• Both women and men have a stake in the
struggle for gender equality.
SEX AND GENDER: CORE MESSAGE
• Sex is a natural distinguishing variable
based on biological characteristics of
being a man or a woman.
• It refers to physical attributes pertaining to
a person’s body contour, features, genitals,
hormones, genes, chromosomes and
reproductive organs.
• Sex differences between women and men
are biological.
SEX AND GENDER: CORE MESSAGE
• Gender refers to the socially differentiated
roles, characteristics and expectations
attributed by culture to women and men.
• It identifies the social behavior of women
and men and the relationship between
them.
• Gender roles and attributes are not natural
or biologically given.
SEX AND GENDER: CORE MESSAGE
• Sex is a biological fact, while gender is a social
construct.
• Sex is a natural attribute that a person is born
with. Gender, on the other hand, is created,
produced, reproduced, and maintained by
social institutions, a process otherwise referred
to as the social construction of gender.
• Because gender roles, attitudes, behaviors,
characteristics and expectations are learned,
they can also be unlearned.
Gender ISSUE
Gender ISSUE
GENDER ROLES AND ISSUES
• Society tends to assign roles, attitudes,
behaviors, characteristics and expectations
to individuals based on biological
differences.
• This tendency results in unequal relations
between women and men, with men being
considered as the superior sex mainly
because of their stronger physical
characteristics.
GENDER ROLES AND ISSUES
• Gender roles are the product of a society’s
culture, beliefs, and values.
• They are taught and reinforced by society’s
structures and institutions, such as the
family, school, community, church,
government, media, and other social
organizations.
GENDER ROLES AND ISSUES
• Gender stereotyping and the subordinate
status of Filipino women have historical
roots.
• The centuries of colonization left remnants
of a feudal view of women as properties of
men.
• Capitalism, on the other hand, regarded
women as objects of pleasure and
commodities for exchange.
GENDER ROLES AND ISSUES
• These beliefs are still mirrored in state
policies and institutional practices that
affect women’s rights, especially their
reproductive health rights, and in women’s
limited access to and benefit from political
and economic processes.
GENDER ROLES AND ISSUES
• Patriarchy is also a legacy of colonization.
The colonial thinking was that men are
superior to women. Therefore, men should
dominate the exercise of political and
economic power in society’s institutions,
including the family.
GENDER ROLES AND ISSUES
• The learning of gender roles begins in early
childhood. Girls are taught to be feminine, while boys
are taught to be masculine.
• Feminine traits include being modest, submissive and
nurturing. Masculine traits include being
domineering and aggressive.
• Women, because of the feminine traits attributed to
them, are expected to be good homemakers and
nurturers of family members. Men, as masculine
beings, are expected to be the family provider and to
be responsible for its survival.
GENDER ROLES = GENDER BIAS
• Gender stereotyping, or the tendency to
assign fixed, unquestioned and
unexamined beliefs and perceptions about
women and men.
• Violence against women whether
threatened or actual, perpetrated on
women simply because they are women.
WHAT IS GENDER STEREOTYPE?