The vision for our work for in 2018 (partly continued in 2019) was to make our societies a little bit more fair and equal. When we first started the process we expected to work more broadly for equality, but our team soon agreed to concentrate on gender mainstreaming.

 

The main activity of Guardians of Equality was held 2-8 July in Inari.  In our work for equality we have also had other both international and local activities, such as meetings, presentations and workshops.

 

Our core group is as always young people, but in this project we have also put emphasis on cooperation between educators of various kind (youth workers, teachers, etc), to together reaching further regarding fostering equality. Therefore the project has several perspectives.

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From the young peoples´ perspective the the objectives are to:

1. explore about each other´s home societies and the young people´s lifestyles there,

2. become aware of unfair gender related issues in the society, and

3. plan and carry out local actions for increased gender equality.

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From youth educators´ point of view the objectives are to:

1. share NGO and school sectors´ best practices of fostering (gender) inclusion,

2. try out educational methods from both the NGO and school sector and apply them at culturally diverse seminar for youth living in the Nordic and Baltic countries,

- together with the young people develop tools for (gender) inclusion and apply them in NGO and school contexts, and

- evaluate the outcomes of the previous activities and create dissemination material.

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Here follows some texts written by participants at our youth exchange:

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Is Turkey gender equal?

I went to Lapland last week and we talked about equality in the participating countries. Then it got me thinking; how is it actually with equality in my own country; Turkey. My question is; is it really equal?

When we talk about sexuality which is about our sexual feelings and attractions, we can’t say that there is gender equality in Turkey. Cause it is illegal for homosexuals to marry in Turkey. Also, if you are a homo person that lives in Turkey you have to hide it from society, if you don’t hide it then you have a lot of problems to deal with. For example, let’s think that you are a homosexual male that lives in Turkey. When you go out; most of the people that look at you probably think that you are strange or unnormal. Also, if you want to find a job, it is probably harder to find a job because you are homosexual and if someone knows that there is a gay guy in a company this could be bad for the company, because people could think that “omg there is a homosexual working for that company and it’s illegal”.

By Onur Demir

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Sex and gender and their difference

There’s probably not a person who doesn’t know what being gay or a lesbian (a word which I personally hate) means. But what many people don’t acknowledge is the other queer people that belong to the now huge LGBTQA+ community. Sexuality isn’t what I’m here to talk about, though. I want to talk about the obliviousness of people when it comes to the concept of gender.

First, we need to understand the difference between sex and gender. Since yes, indeed there’s a great difference between the two terms. Sex is the biological term that indicates whether your last chromosome pair in your DNA is XY or XX, making you a male or a female. Gender is the identity you identify yourself as. Your gender can be male or female, no matter your sex, but your gender doesn’t have to be either. Other genders include agender, demigender, genderfluid, androgyne and many more. Your gender identity is just as real as your sex, even if you don’t have any physical proof of it. The concept of the two terms is pretty complex, so it is okay not to understand it completely. The most important part for you to get is to understand that a person can be other than female or male, no matter the sex.

By Julia Karttune

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