I recently conducted a small workshop on gender awareness at Ramanujan College, Delhi University. The workshop was organized by the college’s Equal Opportunity Cell, along with gender awareness there were talks on personality development. The lecture was attended by about 60-70 undergraduate students of the college from all streams. The workshop went very well due to the students who were very attentive and responsive. These were students from socially and financially marginalized background, yet they were more articulate than the ones I have sometimes met in some of the top colleges I have spoken at. The boys were receptive and understanding of gender discourse. The best moment was when I said, "Gender stereotypes hurt men as much as they hurt women, it is wrong to stereotype boys and men as unemotional, why won’t boys have emotions, don’t they have a heart, don’t they have feelings?” The whole lecture hall burst in an overwhelming roar of clapping. I saw hope there. It is clear that if you just make a little effort to sensitize men and boys about gender equality they would easily understand. We just have to start early. I am sharing my presentation with brief notes on each slides. Hope this helps in creating more workshops, also speak to your children about gender in these lines. --- I own the copyright to all the photos on the ppt. They are not from Google, all are shot by me.

1. GENDER SENSITIZATION
INTRODUCTION TO GENDER, SEXUALITY RIGHTS AND
PATRIARCHY
By Sanjukta Basu
Writer. Photographer.
Feminist Researcher.

2. REVERSE THE GENDER, IMAGINE THE SPACE Fisher men in Puri sea
beach

3. REVERSE THE GENDER, IMAGINE
THE SPACE
Mall Road, Manali

4. REVERSE THE GENDER,
IMAGINE THE SPACE
Women’s rightful place? A
kitchen at a village home
in Bihar

5. SEX AND GENDER – WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE
•Biological Signs
•Determines physical
appearance and capabilities
•Social Constructs
•Determines social roles and
responsibility, limits our
choices
•Determines what is masculinity
and feminity
•Determines what is good and
bad
•Determines our identity and
fate

6. GENDER IS ABOUT POWER
A Ladakhi kitchen where
the man, head of family,
sits away from women
folks, closer to the guests

7. MASCULINITY TO FEMINITY IS A SPECTRUM
In April 2015, Supreme Court of India affirmed the constitutional rights and freedoms
of transgender persons, including those who identify as third gender and those who
identify in a gender opposite to their biological sex, i.e., persons, assigned female sex
at birth, identifying as male and vice-versa. By this Court has broken the binary gender
construct of ‘man’ and ‘woman’.
“It is the right of every human being to choose their gender”
~Supreme Court
National Legal Services Authority v. Union of India & Ors. [Writ
Petition (Civil) No. 400 of 2012 (‘NALSA’)]

8. “One is not born, but
rather becomes, a
woman”
“If we believe men
are innately
aggressive and
violence there is little
chance of change”
Simone de Beauvoir
The Second Sex (1949)
“We've begun to raise
daughters more like
sons... but few have the
courage to raise our sons
more like our daughters.”
Gayle Rubin
The Traffic in Women:
Notes on the 'Political
Economy' of Sex
(1975)
Gloria Steinem
My Life on the Road (2015)
Outrageous Acts and
Everyday Rebellions (1995)

9. PATRIARCHY
A social system where
power lies in male head of
family. A family and
society based upon
gender, age and caste
hierarchy
In the film Mrityudand (1997) Madhuri Dixit and Shabana Azmi play sisters-in-law
(bahu) of a patriarchal, patrilocal family. In a particular scene where Shabana was
visibly pregnant, Madhuri surprisingly asked, “yeh kiska hai?”
Shabana replied, “Mera”

10. FROM HUNTING GATHERING  AGRICULTURE  PRIVATE
PROPERTY  INDUSTRIALIZATION
•Primitive society more egalitarian –
simple division of labour and common
property
•Emergence of private property and
man’s need to own and control it -
World historic defeat of the female
sex
•Agriculture needed labour –control of
women’s reproductive potential
•Brahminical Patriarchy led to caste
based society, ownership of land,
‘purity’ of blood – control of women’s
sexuality and reproductive rights
•Industrialization gave way to sexual
division of labour – gender
segregation of space as private and
public space
•The Origin of the Family,
Private Property and the
State (1886) by Friedrich
Engels
•The Creation of Patriarchy
(1986) by Gerda Lerner
•Gender and Caste Through
Feminist Lens (1994) by
Uma Chakravarti

11. GENDER SEGREGATION OF SPACES
HAPPEN AT ALL LEVELS
Boat in river ganges

12. PUSH THE BOUNDARIES,
CHALLENGE THE RULES,
RECLAIM OUR SPACE
Out of hundreds of
boatmen in the river
ganges in Varanasi, this
brave girl is the only
female ‘Boatman’