“Now most colles will have a Violet Stand in their parties or own protocols”

22/10/2018

On the 2017-2018 academic year, the Observatori per a la Igualtat department along with the collaboration of Dinamització Comunitària provided UAB associations with an action guide to tackle sexist situations and gender violence within the association. Every society had to adapt and approve their own guide after making it suitable for their needs.
 
Many societies participated in the first edition of this guide for UAB associations and the first to present their guide was the Ganàpies society.
 
We talked to Marta Alcaraz, anthropology student, and Anna Viñes, biology student, two members of the Gender Committee from Ganàpies to know more about the Colla Castellera’s Guide Against Sexism and Gender Violence.

1. What was the process that led your society to start working on the creation of the Colla Castellera’s Guide Against Sexism and Gender Violence?

Anna: It all started two years ago with the idea of creating an internal protocol. This proposal came up at a party where some colleagues were sharing experiences they had and didn’t like and how they wanted to avoid them in the future. After this, we agreed that it would be nice to have an action plan to know how to deal with sexist behavior and aggressions. This conversation was what started the creation process of the protocol that lasted about two years.
 
Marta: It was something very internal that we never got to apply because it was still in progress.
 
A: Later on we contacted you to make an autodiagnosis, which was very useful because that made us decide we should create a more rigorous action guide. We were aware that there were sexist attitudes within the colla but when we shared it with other girls from the society and saw that they went through similar experiences we were even more sure about the need to create this guide so that everyone in Ganàpies would feel comfortable.

2. How did you live the autodiagnosis process?

M: When I read the autodiagnosis I saw very clearly that it was describing Ganàpies perfectly. It was like putting words to what you are living or the situations that take place but you don’t know how to explain.
 
A: As far as we know, the part of the society that criticized the guide more were the veterans or ganapiots (those who used to be ganàpies but now only come to diadas sometimes or random rehearsals).

3. Do you appreciate the help you received from Observatori per a la Igualtat and Dinamització Comunitària?

A: I believe so, especially all the resources you gave us and your availability to solve all doubts we had during the process.
 
M: While creating the guide, we had you very present in our minds when we had any doubts.
 
A: We also were provided with the Protocol de la UAB against sexual harassment as reference. That helped us a lot because creating a guide from scratch is very complicated. Having a model was very useful to know exactly what we needed to include in our guide.

4. How did the Ganàpies members take the guide after October 4^th?

A: On September 12^th we presented the guide and approved unanimously and last October 4^th we organized a training to explain it in-depth in case there were any doubts.
 
M: The colla reacted very well and many people attended the training.
 
A: Attendance was very positive and even more considering the fact that many people had lectures in the evening. For this reason we decided to organize more trainings for those who couldn’t come.
 
M: We wanted to prepare a more dynamic training. The first part consisted in an explanation of the guide, what it is and how it works. In the second part we split into two non-mixed groups to talk a bit about how we felt in the colla. Some girls ran out of time to explain everything and even agreed to meet some other day to continue chatting. The boys’ group focused on analyzing their privileges and power roles.

5. Have you started applying the guide ever since its approval?

A: The guide has a retrospective nature and thus it includes aggressions that may have happened in the past. For this reason we have already started to act before past cases. By putting it in practice we realized that there are action models in the guide that don’t work and we should change.
 
M: The guide’s theory is really good but you don’t know what your society really needs until you don’t put it into practice. We realized there are things that we could improve and how we could speed some processes up. They are details related with particular cases that you don’t get to realize until you don’t put them into practice.

6. In your guide, you differentiate three sections within gender perspective: cultural, procedural and political. Which one do you believe is more urgent in the short term?

M: We have just started, so we want to give it some time to work on these fields specifically, especially on internal organization. At the moment we are more focused in the action section. Later on, when this part is well defined, we will focus on other aspects of the guide.
 

7. How is gender perspective being worked in universities’ casteller world at the moment?

A: There are more female caps de colla and presidents de colla, which are the positions with more public visibility. This way, women are seen more as a referent to colles. There is also more equity in technical teams and within the Board.
 
M: Now most colles will have a Violet Stand in their parties or own protocols.