By the end of their first semester, all first-year general engineering students will have given awareness of gender-based and sexual violence. A major challenge for the school and for students seeking information and advice on this subject. The first part of this awareness-raising campaign took the form of a forum theater: a time for interactive discussions and group thinking.
Forum theater: what is it?
This interactive theater that originated during the dictatorship in Brazil was created and developed by Augusto Boal to enable vulnerable population groups to better understand the mechanisms of oppression to which they were subjected. After training at the Théâtre de l'Opprimé in Paris, Jeanne Toulouse, a teacher at ENSTA Bretagne, developed this course in cooperation with Cécile Plaud, n associate professor, and the Appogiature theater company from Brest
Interactive scenarios
Based on real-life, anonymized situations, the actors and actress portrayed a character in difficulty, with a view to getting students to discuss and find solutions leading to a positive outcome. On completion of this group thinking time, several students took their places among the actors to re-enact the scene and test the solutions they had identified. The discussion was then passed back to the audience in order to analyze the impact of the chosen solution.
I found that by insisting on giving your colleague a say, you gave the impression that she was too weak to assert herself on her own
pointed out a student during the discussion.
Three scenarios were created to highlight various subjects: sexism in the workplace, sexual harassment and sexual assault. As well as enabling students to be proactive, this course also gave them the opportunity to speak out and to analyze these situations as a group. On-the-spot feedback from students was very positive. A second survey will be carried out to gather the opinions of all participants.
This session was supplemented by a second session given over to sociological, legal and judicial aspects. The aim is to give all first-year students a common, in-depth understanding of the subject of gender-based and sexual violence, and the keys to dealing with it.
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