Another activity from UVA

Have the group come up with tasks, careers, and adjectives that they associated with either males or females. This leads into a discussion of how the group does or does not fit those characterizations and whether or not stereotypical gender characterization affected the way the group operated on a day-to day basis. The UVa group that did this found that many of the words used to describe females were more negative than males. They noted that having the group come up with a list of charcterizations on their own was really helpful because trends emerged in the lists that were not evident or intentional as we were making up the activity, then the group had to react to and reconcile with there stated opinions of gender issues. This activity could easily be applied to racial, religious or ethnic groups as well as people with different sexual orientations.

A Game from UVA

Rhonda forwarded this along from our pals at UVA:

"Priya and I used an activity called "Culture Cards" this week which we found in the Stage 2 section of the Moderator Manual. Basically, we split the group in several groups of 4 and gave them a few cards with different aspects of culture on them...food, language, clothing, customs and traditions, social hierarchy, familial relations/generational differences, religion, etc... We gave each small group one of these and asked them to discuss it for a few minutes, talking about their own experiences with the cultural element they had and how they differed from others in the group. After about 4 of these we came back together as a group and talked about what they had been struck by in the conversations, what had interested them, what had surprised them.

The group really enjoyed the activity and I think it was a good way to get frank conversations going as the group is still getting used to dialogue and getting to know one another. I would suggest limiting the number of culture cards you make though. We made too many and the all groups talked about different aspects of culture so the conversation when we came back together was difficult. The final conversation would have been much better had everyone discussed the same things in the small groups."