Charity launches anti-misogyny classes in schools

Mandy Geraghty, from Peterborough Women's Aid, said the charity wants to show young people what a "healthy relationship looks like"
- Published
A charity said it has begun giving anti-misogyny talks in schools to help teach students how to recognise toxic behaviours in relationships.
Peterborough Women's Aid, which works with victims of domestic violence, said it has been invited into schools in Cambridgeshire to help counter misogynistic posts on social media.
It comes as the government said it was committed to do more to tackle negative attitudes and halve violence, external towards women and girls within a decade.
Mandy Geraghty, the charity's chief executive officer, said: "If we can show what a healthy relationship looks like, we won't have so many problems in the future."

Hinchingbrooke School in Huntingdon ran a session for students aged 15 and 16
"[The schools] were very concerned about the influence of social media on young people's beliefs about the roles of men and women and boys and girls," Ms Geraghty said.
"We were really keen to do this prevention work because this is where it's starting.
"It's about talking to children [and] young people about what their issues are, but making sure they know how to challenge and also they know where to find support," she added.
The charity said it hoped to continue to do more sessions in schools over the next two years after receiving a donation from a local organisation.

Carla Sheldon said the school had tried to tackle negative behaviours in relationships "quickly"
Hinchingbrooke School in Huntingdon ran a session for students aged 15 and 16 to encourage conversations about behaviours in relationships.
Carla Sheldon, the school's head of Year 11, said: "Our concern is that as they get older if we don't bring this education in now that we could experience some kind of difficult relationships.
"The workshops have been so valuable, I think as a school we've really tried to tackle this quickly and make sure that our students feel that they have all the information but also have the support in place, so that if they need help they now know exactly where they can get it."

Student, Kamalesh,15, said he felt that sometimes young men felt pressure to present themselves "a certain way"
Kamalesh, 15, said sometimes young men felt pressure "to present themselves a certain way".
"What's expected of them they need to live up to," he said.
"They might like feel they have to do things, but they don't. I think communication and an open relationship is important," he added.
One of the students at the session, Alex, 15, said there was a lot of misogyny everywhere.
"It's not spoken about enough," he said. "It can be really affecting, especially with things like Adolescence [the Netflix series], because the extreme cases can be really affecting."

Athena and Liv are both 15 and said the sessions were really useful
Liv, 15, said: "There are lots of men online that spread the wrong messages towards women, such as Andrew Tate and his friends, and people sort of idolise that because it spread so widely, it's everywhere and it's normalised as such."
Athena, 15, said the sessions were really useful.
"It helps [us] understand what type of toxic behaviours are in abusive relationships and also we talked about where you can go for help," she added.

Femi Solano said the school wanted to broaden out its support for all staff and students
Femi Solano, the school's associate principal, said it had plans to bring in a new project around toxic behaviours in relationships to broaden out support for all staff and students.
"It can go to really dangerous lengths," she said.
"I think that's why we have highlighted it and think it should be a whole school initiative as supposed to just a selection of students.
"It's about educating our staff and students about misogyny, the impact of misogyny in our community and allowing our school culture to move forward respectfully."
Get in touch
Do you have a story suggestion for Peterborough?
Follow Peterborough news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, external, Instagram, external and X, external.
Related topics
- Published18 October 2024
- Published18 August 2024