An awareness meeting on gender-based violence at the Female Graduates Association

Within the activities and events of the civic-education body at Pal-Think, a group of the body's members carried out an awareness meeting at the Graduates Association titled “Gender-based violence in the Palestinian reality”, on Wednesday, 17 February 2021.

This comes within the frame of the project “Preparing a Civic Educator”, implemented by Pal-Think for Strategic Studies with funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which aims to train a group of male and female university students in topics related to democracy, human rights, gender-based violence, accountability and transparency, and the system of government in Palestine, and to empower them to become more able to express their opinions and aspirations.

The meeting was led by the student Hadeel Ahel and the student Asia al-Batrikhi, who spoke during the meeting on the concept of gender and sex and the difference between them within the theoretical frame, and talk also on awareness and ignorance of gender, putting forward the Palestinian reality and the most important cultural and legal impediments that contribute to the stagnation toward the turn to justice — with the presentation of a short explanatory video on the gender concepts. There was likewise talk on gender and the social roles related to it, and the setting out of the latest studies related to the rise of the rates of violence in the Gaza Strip.

The meeting was interspersed with a brainstorming activity that enabled the participants to know the errors of stereotyping both the woman's and the man's role, in addition to giving the participants the space to speak of some gender-related problems facing them in society; then the door of enquiry and discussion was opened.