Vrouwenraad and Towards Gender Sensitive Education project
Webinar, 22 October 2020
The importance of education as a lever for emancipation and gender equality has been a common thread throughout the history and achievements of Vrouwenraad.
The gender gap in education is one of the main causes underlying the gender wage gap.
The newly developed educational objectives for secondary education explicitly include attention for gender as part of identity development. In addition, understanding the mechanisms of prejudice and stereotyping has been retained as a transversal objective.
Vrouwenraad questions its steering and/or binding nature. Will it say that sexism and gender stereotypes are also part of this mechanism? Will it say that gender bias has a structural dimension? Does it mean that the attainment targets and learning content of the curricula should pay sufficient attention to the gender perspective?
Therefore, Vrouwenraad was very eager to respond to the request of the initiators of the Towards Gender Sensitive Education project to contribute to the dissemination of their experiences regarding the integration of a gender perspective in the education of Czech Republic, Austria and Hungary.
This complex international project presents in-depth gender analyses of both national regulation and curricula of pupils and students, and syllabi for teacher trainings. Furthermore, it gives us tools to introduce gender sensitivity in teacher trainings.
Vrouwenraad went looking for answers in Belgium, and found these in the operations of the Artevelde University of Applied Sciences and in the operations of the coordinators of Sophia (a bi-communal network of Gender Studies) and Weerbaar.be
PROGRAM
9:00 AM |
Registration for webinar via received link |
9:15 AM |
Welcome and introduction by Magda De Meyer, president of Vrouwenraad |
9:30 AM |
Towards Gender Sensitive Education, Réka Sáfrány, Hungarian Women´s Lobby and Kateřina Hodická, Gender Information Centre NORA (Czech Republic) |
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Towards Gender Sensitive Education is a three-year long project implemented by five organisations from three EU countries in a strategic partnership within Erasmus+ Programme: Masaryk University (Czech Republic), Gender Information Centre NORA (a member of the Czech Women’s Lobby), Hungarian Women's Lobby (Hungary), Eötvös Loránd University (Hungary) and Verein EfEU (Austria). The project aims to enhance gender sensitivity of current and future teachers and to develop, pilot and disseminate a methodology for training in gender sensitive education.
First of all the project partners have compiled the comparative research report entitled Gender in National Education Documents and Teaching Resources, and in Teachers´ Pedagogical Approaches and Everyday Teaching Practices in Austria, the Czech Republic and Hungary.
A summary of this report is available in English and Dutch .
They have also made five awareness raising videos tackling Sexual harassment at school, Homophobic bullying,Career counseling, Double standard and Parallel scene: This way or That way.
Last but not least, they have prepared a publication introducing the best practices of the gender-sensitive courses which were held within the project. The publication is designed to serve as a toolkit for teacher trainers and lecturers who aim to sensitize teachers and pre-service teachers to the topic of gender in education.
See: gendersensed.eu
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10:30 AM |
Q&A |
10:45 AM |
Good Practices in Flanders
- Network ‘Gendre & ESNU’ (gender and non-academic higher education)/Network ‘Gender en Vlaamse hogescholen’ (Sophia) – Vera Cortese, coordinator Sophia
Sophia vzw, the Belgian network for Gender Studies, founded the French-speaking network Genre & ESNU. This network brings people together who are active at the colleges of higher education of the French-speaking Community and who are committed and interested in gender and diversity issues. As a Belgian network for Gender Studies, Sophia wants to reach out to committed individuals in the Flemish landscape of colleges of higher education. They want to start up a parallel network on the Flemish side, based on the same principles:
- Exchange of gender-related (research) initiatives
- Reflection on the integration of a gender dimension in education
- Facilitating the exchange of teaching and research experiences
- Examination of any problems or barriers
- Make your childcare, school or organisation genderproof (Artevelde University of Applied Sciences) – Hilde Van Liefferinge (lecturer-researcher), Els De Latter (lecturer and researcher in the Bachelor of Primary Education programme)
In order to stimulate and support gender sensitive thinking and acting in school teams and childcare teams (both care of babies and toddlers as after-school care), a two-year project (Sept. 2019 – Sept. 2021) is setting up a support trajectory for care workers, for teachers and school teams.
The project strongly focuses on raising awareness of one’s own gender-stereotypical thinking and actions, but also on providing tools and interventions to evolve towards a gender sensitive living and learning environment. The most important target groups are the childcare organisations and school teams in primary education, but also children from 0 to 12 years and their parents.
- Resilient in education (2020-2024), Leonie Nelissen, weerbaar.be
Over the past two years, YWCA, in cooperation with weerbaar.be, has developed a program to make students from the second grade more resilient, to make them recognize their own limits and desires, and focuses on sensing and respecting the limits of others. In addition, the way in which young people think about sexuality and gender relations is addressed. Themes such as sexting are not being avoided.
The program alternates psychophysical exercises with social-emotional and cognitive tasks. Through these different methodologies, they try to fill in the existing knowledge vacuum. By means of two modules, young people are invited to reflect on their image of society and of gender relations. They are being challenged to question these ideas without taboos. The program was designed to ensure a sustainable implementation of the gender perspective and awareness for sexually transgressive behaviour in both school curricula and rules.
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11:45 AM |
Q&A |
12:00 PM |
Closing remarks by Magda De Meyer, president of Vrouwenraad |

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