Sports & Gender Workshop 2011

Engaging Coaches to Enhance

Gender Equity: Learning from

Parivartan

Background

• Sport can be an important tool for social empowerment

• Many program trying to address the issue • integrating women and girls into the athletic

sphere remains a challenge in India as well as globally – deeply-rooted expectations about women’s place in

society and – challenges and barriers she faces in the sports arena

Why Men? Why Coaches?

• Sports

• Coaches

• Adolescent boys

Attitude Towards Girls & Women

• Girls and women don’t loose their temper like boys and men

• Girls need little support to perform well in their life than boys

• Girls are more disciplined

• Girls are simple and shy

THEN? •Girls always feel

ashamed to perform

specially in front of boys

•Boys have force, power

and speed

•Girls don’t have skills and

techniques

•Girls hesitate to share

their feeling

Coaching Girls & Boys be together?

• Most of them disagreed and the reason: – If girls are there in the coaching, my boys will loose concentration

on the game.

– Girls are ashamed to do anything in front of the boys.

– This age is very crucial for boys and girls as the change in body takes place which is a problem for us.

– If boy plays well, girl’s starts loving him. This becomes a problem as it will become a place where there will be more of all these and less of cricket coaching.

– It’s difficult to bring the girls where the senior boys are there.

– There are some problems from the society. If boys and girls are together, people take it in a wrong way, even if they are siblings.

What is Parivartan?

• The Hindi word for ‘change’

• Program model using influential power of coaches to be mentors and role models for young men and boys

• Promotes gender equity, respect for women and girls and reduce gender-based violence

Selection of Coaches and Mentors

• We recruited 46 coaches & 33 mentors in Mumbai – Card Series

– Coaches Handbook

– Diary

– Banners

– Posters, pamphlets, flyers

Changes in Masculine norms

69

46

62

85

23

4239

69

Men & women will

never be equal

There are times

when men needs

to beat his wife

Men needs more

sex than women

To be men one

needs to be tough

Baseline Followup

Moving in the Right Direction

4 4

2323 23

46

High gender

equitable attitude

Disapproves

controling women

Condone violence

against women &

girls

Baseline Follow-up

Moving in the Right Direction

• Majority of coaches and mentors reported that: – Majority of the coaches stated “girls should be given

an equal opportunity in sports” – All the coaches are confident in their ability to tell their

boys to stop teasing and making derogatory comments towards girls and women.

– coaches said they will talk to boys about stopping violence against girls and women.

My responsibility is to help boys to become gender sensitive. All these years I

was hesitant to coach girls in my school but now I have the confidence to do so

and I know I have an important role in this entire process (Coach, 26 years)

The Exceptional

A trained coach, 60 years of age described the benefit of gender equitable society by bringing both of them at the same platform:

– that boys and girls would be able to stay as one (equal). – we would be able to see girls gain excellence in sport. – co-operation: they will be able to lend a hand with each other.

This is the most important aspect.

• I feel we should always encourage them to play together

if we try to separate boy and girl it will be a wrong step. We have to discuss a lot with them about these things. (A coach and science-Maths teacher, 31 years age)

Change Score: High Gender Equitable Attitude

12

22

12

8

2627

25

7

School CSA School Comparison Community CSA Community

Comparison

Baseline Follow-up

Change Score: Intention to Intervene

5.01

5.56

5.08

4.87

5.355.4 5.41

4.87

School CSA School Comparison Community CSA Community

Comparison

Baseline Follow-up

Conclusion

• Sports is an effective platforms to engage adolescent boys on issues of gender and violence

• The positive deviant coaches as role model shows promising effort to change the attitude around norms and enhance safer space for girls and women

• Card series sessions was effective in bringing positive shift in attitude, knowledge and self-efficacy towards gender, sexuality and violence

• These attitude and self-efficacy are precursors for bringing gender equity and more space for girls and women in our society.

The goal

• Organizational Deployment – Leverage sports organizations and hold sensitization

workshops – Inclusion of Parivartan training in the coaches’ curriculum – Inclusion of physical education teachers – Bringing women and girls component into it

• Scaling Up

– Creating a Parivartan component in national sports programs