QCQ# 10 Alone You are Nobody, Together We Float: The Manuela ...

Gender and Health Workshops for Men
Most men are surprised by the workshop. They
expect more technical training, but encounter
instead a process of looking more critically at
themselves and their culture. One of the initial
exercises is called “The Male Body.” It is a
technique that fosters discovery of the relationship
between the dominant characteristics of
masculinity and the consequences or costs to
the body and health. The group explores the
relationship between the traditional male role
and health problems, for example:
• The relationship between being “the boss,
responsible, a worker (or workaholic), and
strong” and loneliness, tension, stress,
heart disease, gastritis, and alcohol abuse;
• The association between being a “lady’s
man” and having STIs and AIDS; and
• The link between being macho and defensiveness,
alcohol abuse, cirrhosis, and
violence.
Another exercise is called “The Tunnel of
Time.” By way of a directed fantasy, participants
go back in time over their own history,
visualizing the moments, people, and messages
that had the greatest influence over
who they have become. This experience is
expressed artistically, with participants
creating a collage with drawings, cutouts,
and text. These collages are shared with the
Each women’s group then elected an administrative
team and a teaching team that were
trained together with their counterparts from
other communities. The administrative team
learned basic bookkeeping, financial reporting,
general management, and leadership. The
teaching team learned about reproductive tract
infections (RTIs), contraception, or whatever
topic the group identified as its first priority,
along with basic pedagogic techniques such as
participatory learning. Both training programs
lasted about a week. The administrative team
then began to manage the project, while the
newly trained teachers went back and, with assistance
from ReproSalud promoters, taught
their neighbors all they learned. At this point,
the project was up and running.
group. For most of the men, this is the first
time they have systematically thought about
gender dynamics in their own lives and
shared experiences with other men in a
noncompetitive, alcohol-free environment.
From this point of departure, the group is
ready to delve more deeply into the involvement
of men in violence, alcoholism, sexuality,
and fatherhood. Subsequent units focus on
reproductive and sexual anatomy and physiology,
women’s rights, gender roles, contraception,
the particular reproductive health issues
that the women in their community identified
as their priorities in the self-diagnostic workshops
(e.g., RTIs), and the role of men in
familial abuse. In this last topic, which is
difficult for men to contend with, the goal is to
sensitize them in terms of the experiences of
mistreatment or abuse that they themselves
may have suffered or witnessed, and from
there touch on the violence that they inflict on
others. According to Benno de Keijzer:
It is key to touch their own emotionality and
the cultural ideas that serve as a base for
violence toward the family. In the experience
of ReproSalud, we have seen the same thing
that has emerged in other countries: There are
growing contingents of men willing to reflect
and to live in a different way.
During the first two years in the field,
ReproSalud identified 79 mothers’ clubs as partners
and began the subgrantee process. Several
clubs have now completed their first project and
begun a second cycle of activities.
ReproSalud’s plan was based entirely on
working with women. However, early on, the
women questioned this plan, because they wanted
to involve their husbands in the educational workshops.
In some cases, women were attempting to
erode male opposition. But more often, women
were going home excited about what they were
learning and experiencing, and their husbands
wanted to know more about the workshops.
Initially there was concern about shifting
resources away from women’s activities, but
ReproSalud soon modified the project’s design
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