Inhaltsübersicht

• Organizations in transformation
• Workshop segment “Men and women in the workplace”: questioning gender stereotypes
• Workshop segment “reconciling work and family”: an important subject in male-dominated organizations
• Workshop segment “sexual harassment, bullying, discrimination”: men can also be victims
• Frequently rejected: sensitization and reflexion as workshop goals
• After the workshop: changed attitudes
• An increase in competence

 

Organizations in transformation

Male-dominated organizations often only request training courses on gender issues when they open up to women, causing a radical change in the organization. In that sense training courses like “Acting in Partnership” are themselves part of the structural change. Gender research hypothesizes that if the impending changes to the organization are felt to be threatening, then it is to be expected that the workshop participants will have a negative attitude to the gender workshops.

The experiences with the seminars at the Bundeswehr have shown however that such reservations could be broken down when organization-specific issues and particular circumstances could successfully be incorporated into the seminar concepts and the opposition of the seminar participants was adequately addressed. The following shows the reactions which the workshop segments “women and men in the workplace”, “sexual harassment, bullying and discrimination” and “reconciling family, private life and work” caused in the participants and how they evaluated the workshops in retrospect. 

 

Workshop segment “Men and women in the workplace”: questioning gender stereotypes

The job of being a soldier is still considered to be a “man’s job”. This result was obtained in 2001 by a survey of the socio-scientific institute of the Bundeswehr conducted amongst soldiers of the armed forces done in 2001: 43% of the soldiers were of the opinion that women were not suited for highly physically demanding activities; one male soldier in five expressed reservations about women in military leadership positions. On the other hand the explicit starting position of the workshop segment “men and women” was: "Under military-ergonomic considerations men and women are able to perform the same activities, especially when the physical trainability of men and women are taken into account”.

The association exercises on stereotypes and clichés regarding male and female gender roles initiated positive processes and started a confrontation with the gender-specific division of labour and masculinity rituals in the Bundeswehr. Many participants said in the conclusion that the male image of the job of soldier had begun to shift. 

 

Workshop segment “reconciling work and family”: an important subject in male-dominated organizations

Problems with reconciling private life, family and work

Estimated relevance of the modules in different dimensions (preliminary questioning, figures in percent)*

are a structural characteristic of male-dominated organizations and appear there in an acute form because of the particularly high expectations of the men’s willingness to perform. This is especially true of the Bundeswehr, because a high readiness to be available for foreign missions is expected from the male and female soldiers. Case studies from the literature show how stressful this difficulty can be for the affected families.

Accordingly the participants already acknowledged this subject to be highly relevant during the preliminary questioning and after the workshop the majority of the participants said that they would have liked more time for this workshop segment. As experts in training and advice they were particularly interested in getting information on the legal regulations and possible courses of action in order to be able to help those seeking advice. 

 

Workshop segment “sexual harassment, bullying, discrimination”: men can also be victims

In this workshop segment the participants displayed uncertainties regarding the boundaries of definitions of different forms of violence. The fact that the subject of “sexual harassment” was incorporated into the context of general anti-discrimination policies and the creation of a tolerant collaborative work environment has proved to be of value. In addition it has turned out to be helpful to select case studies so that men are also shown to be the victims of sexual harassment, bullying and discrimination. Particularly during training courses in male-dominated organizations this can increase the participants’ willingness to confront these subjects.

 

Frequently rejected: sensitization and reflexion as workshop goals

 
ensitization for the development of conflicts in the workplace

“I have positive expectations regarding…” positioning the participants (preliminary questioning, figures in percent)

and the suggestion for the participants to rethink their own attitudes and behaviours are two important goals of the training course “Acting in Partnership”, which stand on equal terms alongside the provision of background information, teaching methods and advice techniques. In the preliminary questionnaire prior to the workshop the participants were asked about their expectations regarding the workshops. It became evident that the two first-stated goals were given a lower priority than the provision of background information and the learning of new teaching methods and advice techniques.

During the course of the workshops the sensitization exercises were met with rejection more often than other teaching techniques. This problem must be viewed in the context of an encounter of different learning cultures. While the learning culture of the Bundeswehr is based on clearly defined goals and behaviour guidelines, learning goals such as sensitization and reflexion come more from the socio-pedagogic field of civilian life. 

 

After the workshop: changed attitudes

When the question about priorities was asked again after the workshops it became evident that sensitization had gained the most ground as an accepted training goal. At 40% almost twice as many participants gave sensitization top priority after the workshop than did before the workshop. The goal “rethinking personal opinion and behaviour” was also given the highest priority by a greater percentage than before the workshop.

Another factor that changed over the course of the workshops was the attitude to the workshop subjects “women and men in the workplace”, “sexual harassment, bullying and discrimination” as well as “reconciling private life, family and work”. While the participants were sceptical at the beginning of the series of workshops about whether it was right to address such subjects in the workshops, these reservations were removed during the events. The participants stated after the workshops that the sensitivity and significance of the subject matter had become clear to them through the training course and that evidently these subjects were more widespread and more complex than they had previously assumed.

 

An increase in competence

“Acting in Partnership” is a training concept for multipliers that is meant to achieve competencies in three areas:
Offer events, train other teachers and participants in training courses
Conduct advisory talks
React to problematic situations and find solutions for conflicts
Over the course of the project the participants were asked several times to evaluate their own competencies in these areas: prior to the workshop, immediately after the workshop and in the subsequent reflexion workshop. This way the development of self-evaluation over the entire project could be tracked. The multipliers were shown to have an increase in confidence and a drop in uncertainty in all of the task areas.