Cooperative of SEKEM Employees | Our Values | Empowering Women & Gender Strategy | Diversity & Equality
Film as a Means for Awareness
The joined experience of watching a film together is very useful to awake interest in and create a dialogue about a certain issue. Therefore, we started to show short films from the media campaign ANA HUNNA to our employees in NatureTex and ISIS Organic as well as to university students. The films of the campaign were produced in Jordan, Tunisia, Marocco and Egypt and aim to instigate a dialogue within the audience of film screenings about the situation of women working in different fields. All film screenings were followed by a discussion about the value of work in a woman’s life and thereby made people aware of the challenges working women face but as well of their wishes and needs.
Create a Dialogue in the Companies
In the companies the discussions revealed the still existing deep resentments against working women in rural areas on one hand as well as the relative openness from many employees on the other hand. A lot of families seek for support in organizing work and family life and are under economic pressure, but not refusing the idea of working women as such. Most important seemed the fact that our female employees were able to express the important role of work in their life which might help others and especially their male co-workers to rethink their regular assumptions about working women.
Raise Awareness Among Students
In the university two film screenings were organized in the forum, once on the occasion of International Women’s Day and another time in the frame of the visit of a team of female NatureTex employees working in the project on the farm. Each time students as well as staff members attending the screening involved themselves in an inspired discussion about women and work. In the university and in the companies alike, these film screenings brought the issue to the surface and set the cornerstone for further activities to support women and girls.
