So what did we do?


"It is striking how many parallels we can draw between gender structures in our cultures. The details differ, but the structures are disturbingly similar."

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"I let go of my cockerel, you tie up your hens" and "It’s better to look for your wife in the barn door than in the church door " - proverbs have a lot to say about gender structures in different societies.

" The mystery of a coco de mer symbolizes the mystery of the Seychellois woman. We are unique, we are endemic. God placed the cocos de mer exclusively in Seychelles. He also placed us exclusively in Seychelles"
The aim of the workshop, which was funded by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Umeå University and the Wallenberg foundation, was to explore gender structures in Sweden and the Seychelles from a cross-cultural perspective. During the workshop, many new insights were made. With speakers from such a range of disciplines and contexts, but with common focus on gender issues, this was hardly surprising. 
Morning sessions - general gender issues 
PictureMahrookh Pardiwalla
Mats Deutschmann opened the workshop by giving a brief account of various collaborative projects between Umeå and Seychelles that date back to the 1990s. Of particular interest here, were of course the current collaborations between Seychelles and Umeå in the C-RAVE project, funded by the Wallenberg foundation, and the current Linnaeus-Palme exchange project, funded by UHR and SIDA.
Power Point (click to download)

After this, Anders Steinvall  and Mats gave a brief outline of the C-RAVE project, funded by the Wallenberg foundation. The aim of the project is to raise awareness of how language stereotyping affects our judgement of people and the target group is teachers in particular. C-RAVE takes a cross-cultural approach to this issue, and Seychelles is one of the contexts being investigated.  
PowerPoint (click to download)


​Ms Mahrookh Pardiwalla works as a consultant on gender issues in the Seychelles, and  has headed several studies into gender structures which have informed  gender policies in the Seychelles. Her paper titled "Seychelles 50-50 - Challenges in achieving gender equality" highlighted the fact that in spite of Seychelles being described as "top of the class" in gender equality in the African context, there is still plenty to be done before real equity is achieved. One of the issues Ms Pardiwalla took up was the differences in expectations on boys and girls, where girls were expected to be responsible, care for their siblings etc., while boys were "free to roam". It was not only girls that were disfavoured, however. Generally, just as in Sweden, the school system seems to favour girls, who greatly outperform boys in every subject. 
PowerPoint (click to download)

 PictureFlorence Sisask
Daniel Andersson from the Department of Language Studies at Umeå University, then presented a paper with the intriguing  titled 
"Courting Is Like Trading Horses, You Have to Keep Your Eyes open". In his research, Daniel has analysed gender-related proverbs that were used in older agrarian cultures in northern Sweden in order to elucidate gender norms related to the relationship between masculinity & femininity prevalent  at the time under investigation. Some interesting structures, including the ideas of chooser and chosen on the marriage market, the very clear division of labour that existed, and the idea of the masculine sex drive, were presented. In subsequent discussions we found many parallels in Seychellois culture, where the proverb "I let go of my cockerel, you tie up your hens" said a lot about male sexuality/irresponsibility and the view that girls have to be watched over and protected, while boys are free to wander.
​PowerPoint (click to download)  

​The morning sessions finished off with Florence Sisask's outsider account of impressions of gender structures in the Seychelles she gained when she was there for a month's exchange this spring. She gave a vivid account of how she was struck by the female dominance in public life. She also attended a 'poetry slam' in a class at the Seychelles Institute of Teacher Education on the International Women's Day. One of the poems drew parallels to the local Coco de Mer and Seychellois women,  claiming both were unique. She concluded that women were "omnipresent and empowered", and that there seemed to be an open climate where gender issues were discussed freely. One striking feature, however, was that there seemed to be such few men working publicly. "Cherchez l’homme!" seemed to be the final conclusion.
PowerPoint (click to download)



"We have more in common than we think. A dominance of women in education and boys underperforming seem to issues we all wrestle with!" 

"Schools play an important role in counteracting gender stereotyping. Thus the pursuit of gender balance among teachers, particularly in the earlier years of schooling, is extremely important"

"Hegemonic masculinity stereotypes do little towards helping boys succeed in school  - It's "gay" to study."







​There is plenty going on between UmU and UniSey!  The C-RAVE project, the Linnaeus-Palme exchange and ongoing research are just some examples.






"Moving on from the Cane" and "Cross-Cultural Analyses of Proverbs" just two examples of future project ideas.
Afternoon sessions - gender in education issues 
PictureAnnie Laurette
After lunch, the afternoon sessions were initiated by a presentation of the gender-in-education structures in the Seychelles: "Gender Specificities of Education in a Small Island Developing State". 

​Annie Laurette from the University of Seychelles, who is currently here on a month Linnaeus-Palme exchange, started by giving an account of the "Feminisation of the Education System". Annie's data showed that the earlier call for  "Cherchez l'homme" was well-founded. Annie pointed to the dominance of women in the education sector in the Seychelles, with an almost total absence of men in the primary education sector, something we recognise from Sweden incidentally.
PowerPoint (click to download)

The session was continued by Justin Zelime, who is currently a PhD student at the Department of Language Studies but still affiliated with UniSey. Justin gave an account of gender differences in performance in the current education system, and using statistics from the past four years he was able to illustrate  how girls totally outperform boys. Interestingly, there are very similar trends in Sweden, although the Seychelles results are extreme in comparison.
PowerPoint (click to download

The session came to a close with Mahrookh Pardiwalla's presentation, where she looked more closely at how gender stereotyping affects aspects such as career choices and social behaviour, and where she also saw strong needs for schools to counteract such stereotyping, something which, unfortunately, is largely lacking today.
PowerPoint (click to download)
 PictureKatarina Kärnebro
After the obligatory 'fika', we turned our attention to Sweden. 

Katarina Kärnebro talked about her research of gendered language in vocational programmes in Sweden in her paper "Be a swot or a joker? - Language, gender and schoolwork norms: Identity negotiations in language practices among pupils in the Vehicle programme". Using the model of Community of Practice (Wenger 1998), Katarina has studied language practice among some 60 pupils on the programme. Her anlaysis shows that language norms that were  "confrontational",  "direct" and  "humorous" dominated, and she was able to draw connections to the notions of a stereotypical masculine conversational style. This gender norm in school contexts was recognised by the Seychellois participants. Just as in Sweden, being good at school and paying attention is hardly considered to be masculine, a stereotype that arguably works to boys' disadvantage in the systems.
PowerPoint (click to download)

Before the final closing discussions, Agneta Lundström presented her paper "Exploring gender through conflict-resolution in schools." Agneta talked about the model she had developed for conflict management in school settings, a model greatly inspired by feminist researchers such as Gilligan (1982) and  Noddings (1984). Agneta explained how she uses open-ended questions, active empathic listening, reformulations of the pupils' own words and educational role plays in order to better understand and resolve conflicts in schools. The model was received with great interest, especially by the Seychelles delegates, where discipline issues and conflicts have become increasingly common in secondary schools.
PowerPoint (click to download) 

So what did we learn and where do we go from here?

One of the greatest insights were the number of features in common we recognised in our respective social environments. For example, when Mahrookh pointed to the "glass ceiling" tendencies in the Seychelles, many nodded in recognition. Women hold plenty of responsible positions and more than 40% of the parliament is represented by women, but when you start looking at the absolute top positions, women seem to be underrepresented, in spite of them being over-represented in all lower levels.  

Further, gender structures in schools seemed to be disturbingly similar. Women are greatly over-represented in the primary school sector, girls outperform boys, masculine stereotypes hinder boys from realising their full potential, and  though these issues are acknowledged, there are few concrete actions to change things.

The day was, however, maybe a step in the right direction. There were plenty of brain-storm projects emerging. For example, we saw great potentials for comparative studies of Swedish and Seychellois proverbs, something which the Seychelles Creole Institute could help out with. We also came up with the project idea titled "Moving on from the Cane", which would address contexts such as the Seychelles, where corporal punishment has been forbidden, but where new alternative models for maintaining a good study environment are still to be developed.

There were plenty more seeds sown and what they grow into remains to be seen. We from the C-RAVE team, who organised this, were however more than satisfied and we have been given plenty food for thought for future activities. It was also another example of how our Linnaeus-Palme exchange scheme is enriching our learning environments.

Thank you all!
Note also that the seminar was also attended by Kirk Sullivan, Anki Edlund, Hanna Söderlund and Satish Patel, who all contributed greatly to the discussions.