REALIZE: Social and Behavioral Change for Gender Equity and Diversity

This manual offers a set of field-friendly activities that are designed to build awareness, facilitate critical reflective dialogue, and explore potential action to improve gender equity and diversity (GED). The activities are also meant to help identify GED linkages within social and behaviour change (SBC) interventions to increase the effectiveness of GED interventions. As explained in the guide, “[T]he activities are designed to be experiential, to encourage new thought and communication patterns that motivate people to change gender norms (and other types of societal norms) that impede the success of development programming – in health, agriculture, and other sectors.”

The activities are primarily intended for development staff; however, some of them are appropriate for use with community members. The activities can be run in the logical order they are presented in, but many of them could be used individually. Each activity section in the manual outlines: the objectives of the activity, the reasons for the activity, the duration of the activity, information on what advanced preparation is required, and detailed instructions for facilitators conducting the activity in a group setting. In some cases, the activity will also include handouts.

The activities included in this manual are as follows:

• Speed Dating — allows participants to share personal or professional experiences of diversity.
• Norms and Guidelines - helps develop a list of agreed behaviour guidelines as norms for the workshop.
• Expectations - helps to develop a list of expectations that are agreed on by everyone.
• Creating Safe Spaces - helps identify characteristics of both safe and unsafe learning environments.
• Differentiation Lab - helps workshop participants reflect on several categories of self-identity.
• Exploring Diversity of Power - helps recognise power dynamics and power imbalances, which will help workshop participants address these with empathy and compassion.
• Our Experience of Behaviour Change - reminds workshop participants that making desired changes in their lives is not always quick, easy, or straightforward.
• Short Stories of Change - helps workshop participants think through the potential barriers to behaviour change that will create empathy, develop patience, and encourage creativity in responding to community needs during the change process.
• Negotiated Behaviour Change - Participants can learn to help their intended audience overcome obstacles to behaviour change by learning Negotiated Behaviour Change Skills.
• Listening Triads - participants learn active listening skills and learn to develop empathy for others when they listen to experiences different from their own.
• Voting with Your Feet - participants explore differences in attitudes, beliefs, and values around gender and diversity.
• Unpacking the Privilege Knapsack - allows participants to discover some of the unconscious privileges they enjoy as part of a dominant group.
• Voices - explores the use of three different voices or attitudes people use with co-workers and community members – critical parent, spoiling parent, and adult.
• Domains and Styles of Learning - explores the three domains of learning and the three styles of learning.
• Birdcage Code - provides an opportunity for small group reflection on where people may be stuck or limited in terms of gender equity and diversity behaviour.
• Gender Box - explores roles, qualities, and behaviours expected of men and women, who imposes them, and the pressures they bring, as well as how they could be changed.
• A Woman’s Life - allows participants to identify norms and their negative effects on women within specific domains of her life, which enables participants to begin to challenge some of their cultural assumptions and recognise ways to improve gender equity in their communities.
• Always, Sometimes, Never - allows participants to explore ways to identify behaviours that could be easier or harder to change.
• Cultures Change, Changing Culture - helps participants explore the difference between respecting culture and changing culture.
• Learning from the Experience of Others - allows participants to share experiences and gives them a chance to do some critical thinking about how others have promoted change.
• Linking SBC and GED - helps participants identify explicit ways that SBC can contribute to GED.
• Head, Heart, Hands and Feet - provides opportunities for participants to reflect on personal learnings, insights, and feelings, and to plan personal action going forward after a workshop or event.
• Fly Over - allows participants to reflect on and plan personal action going forward from the workshop.

The manual draws on the work of CARE USA and the Technical and Operational Performance Support (TOPS) Program. Led by Save the Children and involving a consortium of partners, the TOPS Program is the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)/Food for Peace-funded learning mechanism that seeks to generate, capture, disseminate, and apply information, knowledge, and promising practices in development food assistance programming, to ensure that more communities and households benefit from the U.S. Government’s investment in fighting global hunger.