Gender and Technology Training Guidelines
About the training materials......
The training package is a tool designed to increase the skills of field workers involved
in the processes of technology development, working with women and men in local
communities. It aims to improve the capability of men and women field workers to
recognise and work with women’s existing technical skills
Field workers working with small community groups or even larger village groups
should find the training package useful to introduce to these groups an
understanding of their use of technology. For field workers working on technology
development these materials will be a useful reference of methods and tools for
developing more gender sensitive technology interventions.
The materials are intended as a text to accompany a library of Audio/Visual aids.
These include case studies, video and audio cassettes and exhibits. The training is
designed for trainees to add new areas or develop new material appropriate to the
groups they work with.
The materials used in the training are based on `DO IT HERSELF’ case studies. DO
IT HERSELF is a research programme of the Intermediate Technology Development
Group (now Practical Action) that focuses on grassroots technical innovation of
women. The programme was carried out in Asia, Africa and Latin America. It was
based on the assumption that women as technology users have specialised technical
knowledge which they employ daily in the operation of production processes. It
showed that women use their knowledge and skills to develop, modify and adapt
techniques and technical processes, in which they are involved. A major challenge of
the programme was to obtain information about women’s ‘invisible’ technological
innovations.
The `DO IT HERSELF’ programme also explored the ways in which technical
development agencies can work with women in order to ensure that technical
assistance is appropriate to and in the control of the intended users of technology.
These Training Materials are to help in:-
Understanding that flexible and adaptive technical capacity already exists and
that recognising and strengthening this enables people to better tackle the crises
that they face in their day to day struggle to survive.
Understanding Survival, who is responsible for what and recognising women’s
contribution to the survival of their families and communities;
Understanding about the tasks carried out by women and the technical
components of these tasks; the value of their knowledge and skills;
Identifying the knowledge and adaptations to technology that saves lives;
Understanding why women’s technical knowledge is ignored and undervalued;
Beginning to build the self esteem of women with whom the field workers are
working
HOW TO USE THE TRAINING PACKAGE
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