Male privilege and power

Inspired and adapted from the activity ‘ What are your privileges’. The Gender Ed Educational Program-Teachers Guide: Combating Stereotypes in Education and Career Guidance.

Duration of activity: 45-60 min

Learning objectives:

Understand the reality of the male privileges in our societies and how this brings social, economic, political, cultural, and physical benefits to men.
Explore how male privilege brings about unequal power relations between the genders i.e. the power of being “included” instead of “excluded” when it comes to opportunities, benefits, access to resources, achievement·
Identify the link between privilege and gender inequality

Materials needed:

List of statements to be read out
Small pieces of paper with roles, cut and rolled up.
One third of the roles would read ‘You are 15-year-old heterosexual boy from the dominant culture in your country, of average built and height. You live with your siblings and parents. You like hip-hop’
One third of the roles would read: ‘You are a 15-year-old heterosexual girl from the dominant culture in your country, of average built and height. You live with your siblings and parents. You like hip-hop’
One third of the roles would read: ‘You are a 15-year-old young person from the dominant culture in your country, who identifies as nonbinary or as trans. You are of average built and height. You live with your siblings and parents. You like hip-hop’
A hat where the young people can choose their role from
A couple of boxes of ‘Quality Street’ miniature chocolates or other wrapped up candy

Recommended prior reading

Section 5.5: Using inclusive language and why it is important

Section 5.6: Teaching about sensitive and controversial issues

Section 7.4: Tips for engaging participants online (if applicable)

Step by step process of the activity: 20 min

Explain to young people that they will play a small ‘role’ game whereby they will pretend to be someone else for short while. Everyone will take a slip of paper with their new identity. They should read it silently and not let anyone know who they are
Hand out the small pieces of paper in a random manner, so that some of young people can also get the role of a different gender than the one they identify with.
To encourage the participants to get into their role, ask them a few questions such as ‘What name would you give to your new identity?’, ‘How do you look like?’, ‘How tall are you?’ ‘Where do you live?’ ‘What is your favourite hobby’ ‘Are you in love’?
Ask the participants to sit beside each other, in a big circle, remaining silent while they do so. If you have a big group of students (more than 20) you can split the group into two smaller groups and they can create two circles.
When they have formed the circle(s), explain that you are going to read out a statement. If they think that the statement is true for their new character, then they can take a piece of chocolate from the box/pile in the centre of the circle. They should only take a chocolate if the statement truly applies to their new identity. This is not a competition and they should not take a chocolate just for the sake of it, or in order to have more chocolates than the others. Explain that in the end you will all share the chocolates and they will have their fair share.
Prompt them to make a decision about the person they are pretending to be using their imagination and their experiences or according to what they have observed other similar people doing. A lot of the things they will not know for sure, as they are not explicitly written in their role, but they can make assumptions based on what they know.
Read out the statements one at a time. Pause between each statement to allow young people time to think and decide if they should take a chocolate.
At the end of the activity, ask young people to count their chocolates and say the number out loud. It should be evident that some would have many more chocolates than others. The maximum number of chocolates a person could have is 19 (as many as the statements asked)
Before beginning the debriefing questions, make a clear ending to the role-play. Ask young people to ‘brush off’ their character from their body, close their eyes and become themselves again. Explain that you will count to three and then they should each shout out their own name.
Start by asking the first person to describe their role. Then ask who has the same role
Ask for another person to disclose their role and by show of hands, we can see how many other people shared this role too and so on.

Facilitation questions for reflection and debriefing: 25-40 min (depending on whether statistics will be shown)

How was the activity?
How did you feel in your specific role?
How did you make the decisions about the person you were pretending to be? Where did your ‘information’ come from? Did stereotypes play any role at all in your decision whether to take a sweet?
Which persons were the ones who picked up the most chocolates? And which ones were let behind?
Even though some of you had exactly the same role, why did you have a different number of chocolates in the end? (an opportunity to discuss internalized oppression)
What do you think the chocolates represent? What did this activity try to show?
This activity aimed to show privilege and in particular male privilege. What do you understand by that?
Have you heard the term patriarchy? What do we mean by that?
Does the activity reflect real life you think? In what way?
What privileges are enjoyed by girls/women? And what privileges are enjoyed by men/boys? And what privileges are enjoyed by persons who do not identify as boy/girl, man/woman?
What type of social and cultural privileges do men enjoy more than women and other groups?
And what type of economic and political privileges do men enjoy more?
What impact does male privilege and patriarchal structures have in our society? Can you provide a few examples?
How does patriarchy affect women? What gender inequalities against women are created because of patriarchy?
And how does patriarchy affect other groups? How does it affect gay men for instance? Or men who do not conform to strict male gender roles? How are trans people or people who identify as nonbinary affected by patriarchy?
How do you feel about these privileges?
How can we challenge patriarchy you think?

Take home messages and activity wrap up:

Power, men’s privileges, and men’s dominance have been “normalized” in the public and private sphere for years. Societies have been structured on a patriarchal model that has promoted this male dominance.  As members of the sovereign group, men have traditionally enjoyed significant benefits, such as more freedom and independence, higher salaries, professional advancement, positions with more power and decision-making and, in general, more prestige, authority, dominance and control. This has left many groups at a disadvantage and experiencing significant barriers of access and control of opportunities and resources.

Because certain groups (and especially cisgender, heterosexual, white, non-disabled men) have more privileges than other groups, they use that power to unfairly deny access to or limit someone’s ability to obtain resources because of that person’s identity. When this happens at a personal level (i.e. a boss denying employment to a woman, an individual that belongs to an ethnic minority, an LGBTIQ+ person, a sex worker etc. because of their identity) it is called discrimination. When discrimination takes place at an institutional or societal level, it is called oppression. An example of oppression are laws/policies/practices that condone exclusion of certain groups of individuals or laws which do not sufficiently protect certain groups from violence/abuse. Growing up in a society with oppression may result in a person internalizing the oppression themselves; the stereotypical perceptions become a self-fulfilling prophecy. A girl who doesn’t try at sports (because she “knows” she can’t do well) ends up being bad at sports, so all the boys see this and think, “See! Girls really are bad at sports.”

The most ultimate form of discrimination and oppression, as a significant impact of patriarchy, is sexual and gender-based violence and violence against women.

To indicate the impact of patriarchy you can present recent statistics on gender inequalities in your country, such as : the gender educational segregation, the uneven allocation of time in care activities (taking care of the home and the children), the  pay gap, the gap between women and men in decision-making positions, statistics on intimate partner violence and domestic violence, statistics on femicide and trans-femicide, incidence of homophobic/transphobic bullying and violence, statistics on violence/discrimination against LGBTIQ+ persons etc.

End the activity by exploring ways in which patriarchy can be challenged such as:
Constantly challenging conventional gender norms.
Young people need to become aware of their human and sexual rights and be encouraged to embrace the full spectrum of their individuality
Display a respectful and accepting attitude of other people’s gender and sexual diversity
Empower young people to follow their dreams and be what they want to be
Educate young people on how to build healthy, safe and equal relationships with others. Empower them to understand that any negative/hurtful/abusive behaviour is unacceptable and that they need to find ways to stop it.
Empower young people to take ownership of their own sexuality and understand the powerful meaning of conscious and informed consent.
Challenge traditional models of families where the father is presented as the head of the household and they key decision maker. These models often create a destructive power binary in which one person holds authority while others are submissive. Young people have the right to make decisions for themselves, especially when it comes to their gender and sexual identity. There are various alternative family models that are not patriarchal and which encourage us to think of gender in new, unconventional ways, beyond the power binary.
Challenge the role of the media in glorifying masculine power while degrading women in many different ways. Movies, music and television hugely profit off the sexualization and objectification of the female body.
Engage in activism by being part of organizations in your community that can help you  take meaningful actions towards equality

Tips for facilitators:

The statements can be modified according to your group’s needs or situation. If a statement doesn’t apply to your local context, you can either delete it or replace it with a statement that is true for your community. You can add any statements you find appropriate for your country.

Young people may find it difficult to accept that one gender is more privileged that the other and may argue that if a person has personal strength and is assertive, they cannot be discriminated against. It is important to help them realize the structural inequalities that exist and that these have to do with social power and not individual strength of character. Even though personal empowerment is fundamental in a person claiming and asserting their rights, the inequalities of power between the genders is a very strong and deeply engrained cause (and outcome) of the social, cultural, economic and political inequalities that exist.

Lastly, please bear in mind that this is not a stand-alone exercise. It should only be conducted after other activities related to gender stereotypes or discussions on sexism and power that will allow the group to process the feelings, thoughts, and issues which will arise from participating in this exercise.

Tips for adapting the activity and follow up:

This activity can also follow the ‘take a step forward’ methodology (described in activity 8.7) where instead of taking a chocolate/sweet young people can take a step forward. Alternatively, you can provide the statements in the form of a worksheet and ask young people to complete which group(s) they think have this privilege.

This activity blends very well with the next activity ‘Image theatre’. If you have the time, for instance if you have 80-90 minutes available, you can combine the two activities and run ‘image theatre’ right after the ‘Male privilege and power’, using image theatre as a means for young people to consolidate the knowledge they gained from the discussion on social inequalities, privilege and oppression. If you will combine the two exercises, it is best you run the discussion on how patriarchy and oppression can be challenged in the end of the ‘Image theatre’exercise.

Adapting the activity for online implementation:

● You can adapt this activity very similarly to activity 8.7 ‘Take a step forward’.

● Start with distributing the different roles to participants through a private chat message so others can’t see them.

● You can replicate the accumulation of privileges in different ways

● Option 1: you can ask participants to have their own tokens (if no candy is available, they can use paper clips for instance) which they can keep collecting every time they answer ‘yes’ to a statement.

● Option 2: You can read out the statements and ask participants to raise their hand or a coloured piece of paper every time a statement applied to them. Ask participants to keep a tally of the statements they answer ‘yes’ to, so, at the end of the activity, all participants can see which ones enjoyed most of the privileges

● Option 3: You can put up the statements on an online quiz and ask participants to log in with their ‘pseudonym’ (the name they have given to their character. At the end of the game you can see who scored the most points by answering ‘yes’.

● Follow up with the facilitation questions and the wrap up as outlined in the activity. However, since there is quite a number of facilitation questions, it may get tiring if you run a lengthy debriefing in plenary. You can discuss some of these questions in smaller groups/breakout rooms in order to better maintain participants’ engagement.

● You can wrap up the activity with the key messages and the presentation of statistics on gender-based violence.