The aim of Gender as a missing lens - How to introduce gender into history teaching’ was a series of trainings aiming to raise awareness and increase the capacity of educators across Cyprus - in order to empower them to integrate a gender equality perspective in their teaching practices while making students in Cyprus more aware of gender equality and better equipped to adopt a gender approach.

The trainings were based on the Association for Historical Dialogue & Research AHDR’s latest publication and supplementary educational material titled “How to Introduce a Gender Perspective in History Teaching”. They followed a participatory approach, encouraging participants of all genders to participate in the discussion. The training also offered safe space to participants to transfer their own knowledge on gender within the local context, while providing them with key tools to implement gender awareness to their teaching through capacity building exercises. These instruments and tools were practised during the training by means of realistic cases and sub-group exercises.

Following the training, the activities were piloted in schools, so as to ensure that students are also beneficiaries of the action. After the piloting of the material in classrooms, students were to be asked to submit a questionnaire, which would give all partners to the project the opportunity to evaluate measured shifts in knowledge and critical approaches amongst students.

Due to the innovative nature of the project, it is hoped that the action will leverage Cyprus as an example for future initiatives, in relation to developing supplementary teaching materials and teacher trainings, as a means of facilitating the use of a gender equality perspective in teaching and learning, both within the direct and wider network.

Another training took place in Nicosia, at the ‘Home for Cooperation’ within the UN Buffer Zone, giving the project an inter-communal character encouraging the sharing of experiences across the divide, while two more trainings took place in Famagusta and Limassol respectively, giving the opportunity to educators to receive the training in their respective language, ensuring that the benefits will have an island-wide outreach.

The project lasted for 6-months and was funded by the Anna Lindh Foundation and initiated in Cyprus. The project was implemented by the Association for Historical Dialogue & Research (AHDR), in partnership with the Mediterranean Institute of Gender Studies (MIGS), the NGO Support Centre and the University of Nicosia’s Cyprus Centre for European and International Affairs (CCEIA).