What is HIV and AIDS?

Time Activity
Activity 6.2: Balance of Power
Section 6: HIV and Gender
Activity Outline
Objective: At the end of this activity, participants should be able to:
(i) Understand what gives men and women power and what takes power
away from them.
(ii) Look at how imbalances of power affect all our lives.
. (iii) Find ways to make power between men and women more equal.
Duration/Timing: 70 minutes
Materials/Resources: post-it notes, pens, sticks or 2 long pieces of string.
10 minutes 1. Ask everyone to think of a time when they felt powerful because of their
gender and share this with their neighbour. Ask for three or four
examples.
5 minutes 2. Ask everyone to complete the sentence “To me power means…”
20 minutes 3. Divide the group in two smaller mixed groups. Explain that we are going
to look at the things that make men and women feel powerful and
powerless in their sexual and reproductive lives.
4. Give each group a stick/piece of string to make a line like a see-saw and
some pieces of paper.
5. On one end of the see-saw put a drawing of a woman and on the other a
man.
6. Ask the women to work at the women’s end of the see-saw and the men
at the men’s end.
7. Ask the women to write all the ways that women gain power in their lives
including their sexual and reproductive life on pieces of paper and all the
ways that they lose power.
8. Place the ways women gain power under the stick and all the ways that
women lose power pushing them down. Ask men to do the same at their
end.
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