“Shine Girl – Gender Equality”

“Shashat Woman Cinema” launched the “Shine Girl! – Gender Equality” project in Qalqilyah Governorate in the north of the West Bank, Palestine, the fifth in its program “What’s Tomorrow” begun in 2016.  The project aims at providing the impetus and opening space for reflecting and imagining horizons of different gender values and relationships for a tomorrow of enhanced awareness of the possibilities gender equality makes possible.  The project is supported by the “Canada Feminist Fund” in Palestine.  

“Shine Girl!-Gender Equality” targets 15 adolescents – eleven girls and four boys, ages of 13-17, their parents and their peers of other adolescent girls and boys.  It also focuses on a crucial group of adults with pivotal roles in the school system, teachers and counsellors, in order to sensitize them to the importance of their responsibility in the protection of the adolescents in their charge from misogyny and stereotyping, harassment and gender violence, and encourage healthy equitable relationships between the sexes. 

“What’s Tomorrow” uses the non-threatening and reflective venue of video training\production and focused screenings and discussions to normalize and legitimize the discussion of ‘horizons of different gender values’ engaging adolescents with each other, with adults who work with them, as well as their communities.

Adolescents of both sexes, ages 13-17, are undergoing dramatic changes biologically and in their self-identity. They are experiencing a volatile internal life, undergoing the physical changes of puberty and experiencing feelings that are new and in some ways scary to them. They are no more children, nor are they adults.  They are separating emotionally from their parents and exploring an identity outside of the mores and values of their parents.  But they find themselves on their own in navigating this in-between journey of self-discovery and questioning on their way to becoming adults. They don’t have access to creative and safe settings where they can explore gender values and imaginings of different gender relationship as their parents seek to re-produce their values in them while the school system fails them daily through neglect of their needs.

The adolescents will engage with other adolescents , 13-17 years old, in peer-to-peer sharing in ten screenings and discussions of their video and other adolescent videos.

The adolescents will screen and discuss their video and other adolescent videos with their parents in one of four moderated workshops, and with their teachers and counsellors in one of five screening discussion workshops.  The other workshops will be moderated by expert members in the community.

“Shashat Woman Cinema” is an independent non-profit women cinema NGO in Palestine, founded in 2005, and formally registered with both the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Culture, whose focus is on women’s cinema and the social and cultural implications of women’s representations. It is implementing the project in collaboration with the “Murabitat Charitable Society” in Qalqilyah and the Al-Quds Open University “College of Social and Family Development – Social Services Department” in their Qalqilyah branch.