From “girls are not good in maths” and “men are so insensitive” to “he is getting a bit senile with age” or “some people struggle at university”, there’s no shortage of common stereotypes about social groups. Chances are we have heard most of these examples at some point. In fact, stereotypes are a bit like air: invisible but always present.With the girls tonight we tried to clear the air bit , about this hugely important issue, merely by being aware of the damaging effects that stereotypes can have.
At the end of our session we played a game..a small piece of paper with the name of a country was placed in ones girls forehead, while the others should share stereotypes about people and culture of this country and the aim was for the girl with the paper in her forehead to guess ,according to these stereotypes, the country the rest of the girls were talking about.The girls acknowledge the inaccuracy of these stereotypes by simply not recognising them in their friends behavior, in the house and school.We may not be able to avoid stereotypes completely and immediately, but we can try to clear the air of them.