Gender ABC in Berlin schools

In September 2018, the two-year EU project "Gender ABC” was launched. Gender ABC is an educational project for schools that focusses on raising awareness amongst teachers and students to gender equality, gender-based violence and harmful practices. Likewise, we believe children should learn more on how to stand up for their own rights and to know how to protect themselves in risky or violent situations.

The implementation of the project will begin in August 2019 in Berlin. In the past weeks TERRE DES FEMMES has contacted more than 35 primary and secondary schools in Berlin. One of the primary schools was in Neukölln, a district in Berlin known for its cultural diversity and where the staff showed great interest in the project.

Teachers consider Gender ABC to be a good addition to the sex education lessons, as some of them shared situations where they observed young children representing and reproducing gender stereotypes.

According to their experience, a lot of children often come from conservative and/or patriarchal structured families. The staff reported that there are cases of girls being affected by early forced marriage at the school. Therefore, they agreed that it is important for the staff as well as the students to be trained on this topic. The target group in Berlin comprises approximately 400 students, most of them being very young or teenagers, half of them are in elementary or secondary schools. The children are introduced to the subjects with the help of trained and experienced teachers and social workers. For the implementation of the project goals, modules are developed especially for the respective age groups of the pupils.