#Super_Banaweet (super girls) is a new campaign and under abigger project with Cordaid. It is also a sequel to Super Nsaween (super women) campaign. The campaign’s meaningful stories focuses on some of the most popular gender harmful norms that face young girls and boys between the ages 14-17. Some of the most dangerous false stereotypes encountered by the targeted group takes place during school.
These stereotypes are embodied in different examples and common situations across many Libyan schools which increases the gender gap on the long run putting females at a lower rank. Typically, there is more focus on girls to control their actions, thoughts, dreams and shaping their future into stereotypical roles. Subsequently, this causes a formation of ideas on a subconscious level, that the existence and role of women is less important that of men.
Those stereotypes had also implicated principals such as responsibilities and actions consequences, where girls are always held responsible and blamed for some of the boys’ behaviors, such as catcalling or verbal harassment. This can take place whether the school is co-ed or for girls only (because males usually gather in front of all-girl schools especially by the end of the school day). Also, one of our stories focuses on the stereotypes encountering young boys. For example, it is socially unacceptable for boys to cry or show any form of sensitive emotions which puts them under so much pressure from such a young age, and suppression of feelings and thoughts. Crying is always promoted as something only allowed for girls because men and boys shouldn’t cry as its devaluing the idea of manhood.
The purpose of this campaign is to raise awareness concerning these matters that are absent from the public sphere. Also, to create a space for debate and discussion, as a start to acknowledging these issues. This campaign includes 5 stories, and each story highlights an example of harmful stereotype through visualized comics. This was a 3-phases project during the period from March to June 2019:
Phase 1: contained capacity-building workshops about research, story writing and collection, for the youngest members (4 girls) within the targeted age group, as a means to reflect critical matters on the ground. These girls appeared as the main characters of the project, where each member was responsible for a specific story.
Phase 2: was for story collection. The 5 chosen stories were built on true stories that were collected from the girls’ schools. Some of the stories were personally experienced by the girls in the team and some by their classmates in school. The team members are enrolled in different schools around and outside of Tripoli; some of them were part of schools from other cities, including Benghazi.
Phase 3: After collecting the stories and choosing the situations that reflect important issues the most, the phase of transforming these stories to visual ones commenced. The visual stories were used throughout the campaign on our organization’s social media platforms.
The campaign starred 5 girls (Soad, Sajeda, Maissa, Reem and Maram), four of the illustrated girls are inspired from the first real girls, whereas Maram is a fictional character who first appeared in Super Nsaween campaign, which targeted different age groups. Maram was the youngest among Super Nsaween characters, and so she was included in the Super Bnaweet campaign as well.
The name of the campaign is meant to describe the main characters who challenge the stereotypes. So, it serves as an empowering and inspiring title for girls between the ages of 14-17 years old, who speak up about the stereotypes that face both genders. It is inclusive, but uses a gender-sensitive perspective as these stories convey the stereotypes facing girls directly and more intensively to underestimate the value of girls and women in particular.
