March’s Honouring Women Month coincides with a greater awareness of gender harassment issues globally. The debate, fueled by celebrity pronouncements, is gaining momentum with calls for substantive action through the #MeToo, #AskMoreofHim and #AskHerMore campaigns.

Well-known gender equality, speaker, trainer and author, Dr. Jackson Katz PhD returns to Grand Cayman, in early March, to build on the conversation that began locally at last year’s International Women’s Day Celebration. This year, he is holding a series of workshops on how professionals in leadership roles can become influencers in improving gender equality and prevent sexual harassment in the workplace and elsewhere.

The Boston-area based campaigner is co-facilitating four Gender Violence Prevention Leadership sessions with La Shonda Coleman, Associate Dean of Student Affairs and Title IX at Pepperdine University. The workshops will be held at the Marriott Hotel on Thursday, 1 and Friday, 2 March 2018.

The free sessions, in honour of International Women’s Day (Thursday, 8 March), are for influencers, including civil servant leaders, human resource professionals, social welfare workers, and sports coaches, who are interested in becoming proactive rather than passive bystanders when gender violence/harassment is raised. Gender violence and harassment is not exclusively physical and can include verbal or visual exchanges.

In stating that most cases of gender violence are committed by men, the educatoradvises that gender inequality can no longer be brushed off as a “women’s issue.”

“Men also need to step up, as influencers, when it comes to addressing sexual harassment,” he said. “No one is suggesting that you physically take on an abuser. But it’s no longer enough to say I’m a good person, this has nothing to do with me. Men and women have to meet such behaviours head on and stop enabling by their silence. Our training gives men and women the latest tools to comfortably but uncompromisingly counter sexism among friends, team mates, colleagues and co-workers, as well as to help them develop tools to provide stronger leadership on these critical issues.”

Dr. Katz will reveal the appreciable buy-ins gained by becoming an influencer and how reframing men’s responsibility to stand up against gender harassment can work in building better professional and personal relationships.

The interactive three-hour workshops will include breakout sessions, role play and other exercises designed specifically to make attendees think through what it means to be a leader.

Dr. Katz is currently working on an Oscar awards campaign with the San Francisco-based Representation Project. #AskMoreofHim is calling on television journalists and interviewees covering the 4^th March event to ask men in Hollywood what they plan to do to support women in the #MeToo movement, and while urging them to use their platform to address men about the need for them to speak out about sexist abuse.

To register for the 9 a.m. – 12.00 p.m. or the 2 p.m. to 5p.m. sessions, please call the Family Resource Centre on 949-0006.

IMAGE: (GIS)