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Course Content
CHAPTER 1: Fighting against gender discrimination in the European union and the principles of an equal opportunity policy for men and women
💡 Guiding Questions: What does the term gender mean? What are gender stereotypes and why should they be avoided? How does stereotypical thinking influence unequal treatment of women and gender discrimination? What different forms can discrimination take?
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📖 Part 1: Unequal treatment and grounds for gender discrimination
📖 Part 2: 3 stages of change
📖 Part 3: Unfreezing change – data on the situation of women in Europe
🤔 TASK FOR YOU
💡 Inspiration for you
📚 Resources
CHAPTER 2: Advocacy as a tool for bringing about systemic change in gender equality policies
💡 Guiding Questions: ● What is advocacy? ● What is important for effective advocacy? ● What steps do you need to take to organise an advocacy campaign for the change you want to bring about?
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📖 Part 1: Understanding advocacy
📖 Part 2: Engaging stakeholders and decision-makers
📖 Part 3: Getting allies for your cause
📖 Part 4: Main Advocacy Tools
📖 Part 5: Evaluation
🤔 TASK FOR YOU
💡 Inspiration for you
📚 Resources
CHAPTER 3: Freezing social change and the role of leadership in this process
💡 Guiding Questions: ● How do people react to change? ● How to deal with the resistance you are likely to encounter when advocating for gender equality?
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📖 Part 1: Challenges of changing beliefs about women and men and implementing gender
📖 Part 2: The role of women leaders in implementing change for gender equality
🤔 TASK FOR YOU
💡 Inspiration for you
📚 Resources
QUIZ
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QUIZ
Women in local activism. Building local influence and social advocacy.

Question for reflection:

  • What are the main advocacy tools and what are their advantages and limitations?

Advocacy activities are any activities undertaken by you or your allies to achieve an advocacy goal – e.g., convincing an HR manager to provide training on gender stereotypes or a mayor to build a nursery to increase women’s opportunities to return to work. These also include activities aimed at building support. For example, to convince the HR manager to organise training on gender stereotypes, employees can start writing a series of individual emails on the subject (scale effect), or to convince the mayor to build a nursery to increase women’s opportunities to return to work, mothers can come with their children to the town hall on a set day at the same time. Advocacy activities also include activities aimed at building support, e.g. organising a picnic where leaflets with an advocacy appeal will be distributed and the appeal will be delivered from the stage.

Here are the key advocacy tools:

  • Face-to-face meetings

Individual conversations with decision-makers, officials, or opinion leaders allow you to build relationships and better explain the problem. Their strength is that they are quite effective, and their limitation is that they are difficult to organise.

 

  • Letters, emails, petitions

Written forms of contact – with authorities, the public, or other people in the institution. They show that the issue has broad support.They are easy to organise, e.g. using the internet, but their impact is limited – it depends on the scale of involvement and the social position of those involved.

 

  • Traditional media (press, radio, TV)

Publishing articles and participating in broadcasts increases the visibility of the issue and reaches a wide audience. These are quite expensive methods, requiring ‘friendly’ journalists, as not every topic is interesting to the media. In the case of activities at the municipal level, they also require the existence of local media that are independent of the local government.

 

  • Social media

Posts on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter help mobilise people and run online campaigns. Storytelling – stories of real people – increase empathy and understanding. They are easy to use and reach many people. They have little impact on decision-makers. They are more of a tool for building alliances.

 

  • Information/advocacy campaigns

Organised activities using various tools to achieve a single goal. They are characterised by consistency of message and regularity. They are time-consuming and costly.

 

  • Participation in consultations and decision-making processes

Attending sessions, meetings, or consultations allows you to influence decisions and policies. Participation in these events has a real impact. However, they require good substantive preparation.

 

  • Partnerships and coalitions

Cooperation with organisations and groups strengthens your voice, increasing credibility and the reach of your activities. If you act individually, make sure to build partnerships! Thanks to this, you will gain:

  • a stronger voice – joint appeals are more powerful,
  • greater credibility – the diversity of partners confirms the importance of the issue,
  • better resources – knowledge, contacts, tools,
  • broader reach – access to different groups.

 

Remember – effective advocacy is based on combining tools tailored to the goal and audience, and consistent action.

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