Training

In organisations dedicated to learning, training has the function of keeping the knowledge and skills of staff up to current qualification requirements in order to guarantee the quality of the organisation’s work. This means that the training on offer must be equally attractive and accessible for all staff, which means that it must be planned and carried out with a clear orientation to gender equality. So training is therefore an important building block in the staff development policy field in which GM is being implemented. It is also a matter of communicating gender competence, so that Gender Mainstreaming can be implemented in a way ensuring quality. Training is thus also part of the process of implementing Gender Mainstreaming.

Training geared to gender equality

A contribution to the implementation of GM consists in structuring the form and concept of existing training to provide it with an orientation to gender equality. If an orientation to gender equality is integrated into the planning, implementation and evaluation of training, GM becomes part of quality management. A universal orientation to gender equality means structuring

• the framework conditions (place, time, duration, advertising, organisation of child-care, selection of target group and trainees) and
• the didactic concept (content and methods, such as selection of training topics and exercises, way of working and training management’s pedagogic ideas, e.g. team-teaching)

in such a way that nobody is subject to discrimination and women and men are taken into account in all their diversity. A good starting point for planning training programmes in a way geared to gender equality can be an analysis to determine the needs situation of various target groups among the staff.

Training on Gender Mainstreaming

The goal of the implementation of the strategy GM is that all members of the organisation systematically consider Gender in their policy fields and as a consequence act more efficiently and with a universal orientation to gender equality. For this, staff must possess or be able to acquire the relevant skills. Training programmes make a contribution to the communication of gender competence. Training programmes may

• pursue various aims (sensitization, orientation for action, imparting knowledge)
• address various target groups in their respective responsibility (e.g. middle management such as section or department heads or “mirror” departments such as staff or budget departments)
• work with various different didactic methods (e.g. sensitization exercises, quiz, role playing single-sex groups),

Content of Gender Mainstreaming training programmes should include:

• imparting basic knowledge of Gender and GM as a strategy in gender equality policy, e.g. history and legal bases, European comparison, common features and differences between Gender Mainstreaming and Diversity Management,
• meaning of GM in the specialist work of the staff members, such as structuring reports with an orientation to gender equality, public relations measures or budget procedure measures,
• presentation and trying out of various tools for GM, such as the Working Aids from the Federal Government or checklists,
• consideration of Gender questions as sensitization to gender stereotypes.

Gender Training

Training programmes for the implementation of Gender Mainstreaming are often offered under the heading “Gender Training”. Since the need for training in relation to gender competence has increased sharply as part of the implementation of GM, a new service market has developed over the last few years for training programmes in gender equality orientation. Gender training programmes are thus a specific form of training and, within the context of Gender Mainstreaming, have the importance of a staff development tool.
Gender training is a very new idea in Germany, but the didactic structure of gender training programmes is based on forerunners or models from other countries. Today’s gender training courses are based, for example, on experience gained from

• Gender training programmes in international development cooperation,
• training measures within staff and organisational development,
• offers in gender-related adult education (up to now women’s education and men’s education).

Gender training has been taking place in international development cooperation since the end of the 1980s. The first Gender training programmes developed within the Women in Development Initiative (WiD), which criticised the way the economic role of women in development processes was being ignored. In the 1990s several handbooks were published in the context of development policy, which focused on the aspect of sensitisation to and consideration of gender. Within staff development, the disadvantaging of women in management levels of organisations was taken into account, for example, at the level of training of middle management. In many ways, the gender-related adult education that has been established now for some thirty years and thematises gender relations can be seen as a forerunner of Gender training.
Today’s Gender training, which is offered for the implementation of GM, is also a new form of training. What is new about it is the central importance accorded to training within the process of implementing Gender Mainstreaming, e.g. as inaugural event for the defining of goals in the implementation process or as a supporting measure to secure acceptance. Through the systematic establishing of training offers these become an integral component in the steering of the process. There are now a great many forms subsumed under the overall heading of Gender training: short training programmes or multi-session training courses, training in gender-responsiveness or subject-related training, or train the trainer programmes.
In both areas of application of training – as a policy field and as a building block for implementation – a structuring of training offers that secures quality is vital. This is why the debate about wording quality standards has been heating up over the last few years. A form of training that has also been gaining in importance for GM is e-learning.

• Baer, Susanne / Enders-Dragässer, Uta / Kuhl, Mara / Kreß, Brigitta / Sellach, Brigitte: Wissensnetz Gender Mainstreaming für die Bundesverwaltung, Frankfurt am Main und Berlin, Dezember 2003,
  http://www.gender-mainstreaming.net/RedaktionBMFSFJ/RedaktionGM/Pdf-Anlagen/wissensnetz-komplettfassung,property=pdf,bereich=gm,rwb=true.pdf
  Kapitel IV.2.2. Die Gestaltung von Fortbildung (S 147-150).

Gender Training

• Netzwerk Gender Training (ed.): Geschlechterverhältnisse bewegen – Erfahrungen mit Gender Trainings, Ulrike Helmer Verlag 2004.
• Burbach, Christiane/ Schlottau, Heike (eds.): Abenteuer Fairness – Ein Arbeitsbuch zum Gender Training, Göttingen 2001.

Training geared to gender equality

• Derichs-Kunstmann, Karin/ Auszra, Susanne/ Münthing, Brigitte: Von der Inszenierung des Geschlechterverhältnisses zur geschlechtsgerechten Didaktik – Konstitution and Reproduktion des Geschlechterverhältnisses in der Erwachsenenbildung, Bielefeld 1999.
• Landesinstitut für Schule und Weiterbildung: Mit der Genderperspektive Weiterbildung gestalten, Bönen 2001.
• Baur Esther/ Marti, Madeleine: Kurs auf Gender Kompetenz- Leitfaden für eine geschlechtergerechte Didaktik in der Erwachsenenbildung, Basle-City Gender Equality Office 2000.
• Pravda, Gisela: Die Genderperspektive in der Weiterbildung – Analysen und Instrumente am Beispiel des berufsbildenden Fernunterrichts, Bundesinstitut für Berufsbildung 2003.