GETNET's Approach

home | training|working with men | research| materials development | networking & partnerships

Materials and Resource Development

The main activities of this function are materials development and acquisition.


Materials development, like research, is linked to training. GETNET has identified two areas of resource requirements for the gender training and consultancy programmes:


Production of Relevant Materials for use by Trainers and Trainees

GETNET has produced an enormous amount of materials in the form of reports from training programmes and seminars.

While making good use of material produced elsewhere, it is necessary to produce materials that will respond to the specificity of the South African situation with its socio-cultural variants, because gender oppression is, among other things, country and culture specific. To this end, GETNET has already started to write up the framework of the social construction of gender developed by a member of the Panel.

GETNET will also be exploring the production of the materials in different forms of media including videos.

GETNET organises regular meetings, seminars and for gender trainers to exchange and gather ideas and materials.

Click here to view and download GETNET publications

Acquisition of Materials

GETNET acquires theoretically-based readings and training material from within and outside of South Africa in order to build indigenous frameworks for training. These include materials on gender equality and gender equity issues including 'race' and other forms of exclusion.

GETNET established a small resource centre of reading materials gender and related areas relevant to our Project. This includes books, journals, magazines and articles produced in South Africa and other countries. The main users of this resource centre are trainers and trainees but it is open in a limited way for use by other training organisations. Through the programmes that we have been running, we have collected useful articles and publications that are the beginnings of this resource unit.

Materials have also been developed in partnership with other initiatives such as the Gender Manual Consortium and as stated with the Women’s Budget Initiative. The resource and training material materials produced by the Gender Manual Consortium, of which GETNET was a member, was finalised and launched in August 1999. As a result of this process, which started in 1998, there are gender sensitive South African materials for training in human rights. The testing of the materials has been commissioned to an organisation working against gender-based violence, Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre. Our Men’s Gender Programme has produced a booklet on Men and Organisational Change.

The extent and nature of our materials development function is shaped by the demands of our training and network activities.