Goethe Institute: Egyptian Gender Manual

It’s not every day that we get projects that are both truly challenging, and that we stand behind 100% politically. For this reason, we are especially proud that we are able to design a gender manual on the topic of women's rights and gender problematics – including possible solutions.

Participation – and through this the strengthening of civic possibilities for participation – comprise a significant field for action within the Goethe Institute's focal point "Dialogue & Change". Here, self-empowerment and self-determination for all young people and women in the Arabic world should be encouraged and broadened.

The manual will be disseminated among specially-prepared trainers, who will use it as a guide for training sessions and workshops in Egypt. Our task was to find a visual structure and corresponding layout for 150 pages of complex teaching content, tips, hand-outs, guidelines for exercises, tabels, and general information texts in six chapters – including an introduction, and training guides. Particular value was placed on the many illustrations, which visualised delicate topics pertaining to Egyptian society, among other things.

The layout of the comprehensive textbook was done completely in Arabic. In the process, we learnt a great deal about the Hindi numeric system and other particularities of typesetting in Arabic, as well as arranging pages while aligning text to the right. For us, it was of particular interest to learn about sociological aspects of Egyptian society, and the sensitive and problematic complexities that the project addressed. For us, this project was highly enriching.