Gender and Language Awareness weeks

Online in the week of 28 September - 2 October 2020

As a public higher education institution, the North-West University (NWU) has a responsibility to create inclusive conversations about current affairs with a diverse group of stakeholders. As part of this mission, the mandate of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Teaching and Learning at the NWU includes the facilitation of cross-curricular events that affirm the values espoused by the university, as well as create opportunities to host and facilitate critical and courageous conversations about the important social issues of race, gender and language. To execute this mandate, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Teaching and Learning has initiated annual celebration weeks. The aim of the awareness weeks is to provide fora and platforms where NWU students, staff, members of the broader South African and global community can explore issues concerning race, gender and language.

Due to the Covid-19 situation, the University Management Committee approved that the planned celebrations in semester 2 for Gender and Language Awareness weeks (GAW and LAW) in 2020 can be combined into an online event that takes place from 28 September to 2 October 2020. During this week, the NWU wants to facilitate critical conversations about the current affairs related to Gender-Based Violence and to expand its conversations about the use of South African languages in domains such as education and the media. The over-arching approach for GAW and LAW in 2020 is to "trouble our past" and "re-imagine our future" with respect to gender and language experiences in South Africa. We invited NWU, local and global experts to provide input to these conversations. The format of the event will be the presentation of pre-recorded video input by the experts, and an opportunity for audience members to raise comments and questions following on the experts' input with the host of the sessions. There will also be parallel platforms where examples of best practices related to gender and language would be showcased.