CGDS/EU Community Capacity Building and Training: Second Day

The second day of “Introduction to Social Justice,” a four-day workshop offered by the Center for Gender and Development Studies with support from an EU grant on gender education in the MENA region, focused on gender and the media during the first half of the day. Dr. Choman Hardi, CGDS Director, presented an overview of sexism in the media, followed by CGDS’ short film on sexist language. Mr. Shko Shwan, EU Project Manager, facilitated an exercise on current examples of sexism in advertising. After lunch, Dr. Choman discussed UNSCR 1325, the United Nations Security Council resolution on women, peace, and security, followed by a role play exercise, “Domination Techniques.” The day closed with a summary of the workshop’s main ideas to this point, along with a survey of what the participants wanted to learn in the remaining two days. Thirty two NGO workers from Baghdad and southern Iraq were hosted at the Titanic Hotel in Sulaimani, where the workshop took place. The workshop opened on September 14th, 2019, and continues until September 17th. The logistics of the workshop were coordinated by CGDS MENA Community Liaison Mr. Miran Fattah, assisted by EU Project Manager Mr. Shko Shwan and Mr. Ali  Hussein Abo-Jadya, CGDS Research Assistant. Mr. Jamil Ali once again provided superb consecutive translation into Arabic, English, and Kurdish. Ms. Dastan Jasmin, CGDS Visiting Scholar; Dr. Lynn Rose, Deputy Director of CGDS; and Mr. Ramyar Ismael and Mr. Hawar Jamal, CGDS Research Assistants for our LSE Project on masculinities, also attended.