Nipping gender discrimination in the bud

“Women are revered – and rewarded – for their physical attributes and both girls and boys are under pressure to emulate polarised gender stereotypes from a younger and younger age.” Linda Papadopoulos, 2010 Government Sexualisation of Young People Review

Answering the advertisement on Gumtree, one cold, winter evening the volunteers arrived at a house by St Andrew’s Park. “I just invited everyone round to my home,” says Natalie Bennett, founder of Bristol not-for-profit, TIGER.

“I found people really wanted to get involved.” Several cups of tea and weekly meetings later, the wheels were set in motion and a co-operative was born; Teaching Individuals Gender Equality and Respect (TIGER). The group set out to educate primarily secondary school age students to challenge sexism and gender discrimination in society.

Natalie was inspired to start the project while studying for a PhD on young femininity. “I realised that there wasn’t much out there in schools where young people could look at gender, but it was really affecting them with sexist bullying and gender stereotypes,” says Natalie. “I just decided to set this up, putting the ad out on my social network.

 “Gender inequality affects everyone, limiting everyone and I think quite often people don’t have that place to talk about it. There’s a lot of pressure to be a certain way. One of the main things we want to do at TIGER is to encourage young people to think more critically about gender in the media and the images and language that we use. We want to empower them with the skills and knowledge to express their voice and views, developing and nurturing them.”

Volunteers come from a variety of backgrounds; a social worker, ex-secondary school teacher – people with a passion about gender equality. They provide inclusive, student-led, positive workshops at the schools, with each school and student varying different amounts in their experience of sexist bullying and body image issues.

They also provide workshops for teachers, providing them with the tools and support to educate students. The result is that self-esteem is boosted, and in turn students are hopefully able to resist negative messages about their body image and crucially, gain a renewed gender respect.

“We would love for this to be a part of the curriculum, we would like to start a campaign. We want to show that TIGER is a part of this compulsory piece of education. It’s crazy that the most recent guidelines that schools have was written in the year 2000. That’s when section 28 was still around; not to promote homosexuality, the promotion of marriage. I think teachers currently feel a bit lost – it needs to be fresh and relevant.”

TIGER has just received funding from the Police, cosmetics company Lush, and Waitrose. This will help the co-operative offer workshops at a discounted rate – and potentially, the team to be paid. The feedback from the workshops is inspiring, clearly showing that for many, the seed has been planted. Like Natalie herself, who began this path as a drama student, with passionate conversations with a friend about feminism and changing the world, around the kitchen table, so too will the adults of tomorrow have the strength to question and challenge. “It’s a stepping to stone to where and who they’re going to be tomorrow,” says Natalie.

To find out more, visit: www.tigerbristol.co.uk