CA C 1 - Raising Voices

CAC 1
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Part D – Discussing Status (35 min)
CAC 1
1. Ask participants to discuss how it felt to be treated on the basis of a random assignment of status.
2. Discuss how the game can represent real life in our families and the community.
3. Emphasize that as a community we generally tend to assign women a lower status than men (as
demonstrated in the previous exercise using gender lifelines). Ask who in their community holds the
‘high status cards’ and who has ‘low status cards’. Is this based on who they are as individuals or
other things like sex, age, wealth, jobs, etc.? Ask participants: “Who holds the high status cards in
the family?” Discuss the implications of their answers.
4. Emphasize that domestic violence is usually perpetrated by a person of higher status against a
person of lower status, usually man to woman or adult to a child.
5. Discuss how domestic violence is a result of this difference in status.
Tip This discussion is important because many people claim that poverty or alcohol causes domestic
violence. Poverty, alcohol, and many other things often listed as causes may be contributing to
domestic violence, but domestic violence is most often caused by a difference in status between
women and men. Remind participants that domestic violence happens in families that are rich
or poor in which men drink alcohol or don’t. These factors do not cause violence; instead, it is
the lack of value and worth given to women. The idea that women experience domestic
violence because society assigns low value and status to them is fundamental to how domestic
violence will be approached in the community.
6. Explain that the purpose of the Project is to highlight the injustice of women’s low status and begin
changing community attitudes and behaviours that maintain women’s low status. In this way, the
promotion of women’s rights and equity in relationships is a crucial part of the work of preventing
domestic violence.
Activity 1.9 Causes of DV – role plays (2 hrs)
Objective
■ Identify factors that lead to domestic violence.
Women’s lower status in their intimate relationships
is the root cause of domestic violence.
Steps
Part A – Preparation of Role-Plays (45 min)
1. Divide the participants into two groups. Ask each group to create a role-play that shows a situation
where a man is abusing a woman. Ask participants to create the story using their own experiences
or what they have seen in their own community.
2. Ask the first group to create a role-play from a woman’s perspective, addressing the following type
of questions:
■ Who is she?
Mobilising Communities to Prevent Domestic Violence