The concept doing gender says that people in daily life are actively performing as men and women, which means that feminine or masculine behaviour is nothing natural but learnt to be socially seen and accepted as man or woman.

There are many feminist theories so it is difficult to define feminism. But one can say that feminism is a social movement and approach that fights for the equal rights of women.

When we talk about gender, we are referring to gender as something that is socially constructed. It means that men and women are not acting a certain way because they are male or female but because society is constructing roles, behaviours, activities and attributes which they think are appropriate for men and women.

If we agree that gender is constructed, we also have the ability to deconstruct gender and change the picture of „the woman‟ and „the man‟.

From the beginning on we learn about how we have to behave as a man or woman. We are socialised with different gender roles. Gender-exercises are a great chance to reflect gender roles, gender stereotypes and our socialisation.

Gender-based violence is a kind of violence that is directed on a person because of his_her gender. It is committed in order to preserve the existing hierarchy of unequal gender relations and benefiting from them.

It includes sexual violence, sexual exploitation, forced prostitution, domestic violence, trafficking, forced/child marriage, harmful traditional practices such as female genital mutilation, honor killing, widow inheritance and others.

There are many gender stereotypes; most of us can name a few. Gender stereotypes can be offending, limiting and are reproducing gender roles of men and women. Exercises like these can help to take a look at own gender stereotypes and to ask oneself where we got them from. Also one can broach the issue about which gender stereotypes referring to oneself are offending.

Heterosexism is the discrimination of people who have another sexual orientation then heterosexual. In many areas of your private and public life, heterosexism seems to be the norm because it is assumed that men always have to love women. This is discriminating against people who are not heterosexual.

Intersectionality is a term that is used to talk about the interference of forms of discrimination. One can be affected by different kinds of discrimination, for example one can suffer from sexism and racism at the same time. It is important that each discrimination has its right to be criticized and to be talked about. Still it is okay to sometimes focus on one form of discrimination.

Gender is shaping our identity. For the development of our idenity it can be very limiting if we have to act on certain gender-streotypes or gender-roles. For example it our gender-identity can have an big impact on our career choice.

People who are having male and female sexual characteristics (visible and invisible) call themselves intersexual.

LGBT stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual. This acronym associates a collective that have in common that they are not heterosexual. LGBT not only means the sexual orientation but also has something to do with the gender identity.

People who are transgender, transsexual, intersexual, gay or lesbian are using queer as a political self-identification. Queer can also be a political attitude – queer means being against norms (for example of heterosexualitity).

Sex can be understood as the biological characteristics that define a man or a woman. Some people agree that like gender, sex is a constructed category – while others believe that sex is biological determined.

Sexism is a form of discrimination because of your gender. Discrimination can take place in public or private. It is a structural discrimination, meaning one can feel it culturally sexist music or schoolbooks which show girls who can only work in the household), individually (a family member assumes that you can´t become a doctor because you are a girl or somebody is using violence against you because you are a woman) or institutional (a kindergarden which has different toys for girls and for boys or the job market that is paying women less money).

Transsexual people change their bodies (taking hormons or an operation) because they don’t identify with the gender that was given to them via birth.

That means to identify gender stereotypes and established gender roles and to do something to deconstruct them.