Related Activities
- Picture Tickler [17]
- Text Tickler [20]
Procedure
- Distribute the Battle of the Sexes handout, review it with the participants, and
answer any questions they may have.. - Divide a large group into smaller groups of all women and all men, four to seven
people per group. - Instruct the group members to generate two ideas using these criteria:
- The perfect solution from the perspective of their gender
- The perfect solution from the perspective of the opposite gender
- Distribute to the male groups a variety of male-oriented magazines such as
Esquire, Field & Stream,and Men’s Health. - Give the female groups several women’s magazines such as Redbook, Cosmopolitan,
and Mademoiselle. - Tell the groups to look through the magazines and examine words and pictures
for potential idea stimulation that would be either stereotypically feminine or
masculine. - Have the groups write down on Post-it®Notes, individually, any ideas suggested,
and place them on a flip chart. - Tell the male and female groups to share their best ideas and for the large group to
try to think of any additional ideas. - Tell them to write down any ideas on Post-it®Notes (one idea per note), and place
them on flip charts for evaluation.
Debrief/Discussion
A unique aspect of this activity is that it can create some friendly competition between
groups. You may want to make some mild comments to encourage such competition,
such as asking the participants to predict which sex can produce the greater number of
ideas. After all the ideas have been generated, ask the members to discuss if the gender of
the groups played a significant role in each group’s ability to generate ideas.Variation
- Use mixed-sex groups.
- Give the male groups female-oriented magazines and the female groups male-orient-
ed magazines. Have the members try to adopt the attitudes of the other sex and use
them to generate ideas.
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