by JOSE ADAN SILVA
Silva participated with other adolescents at his school in the educational campaign “Ser machista es balurde,” using the Nicaraguan youth slang word “balurde,” meaning that attitudes of male superiority are “not cool.”
The programme is geared towards children and adolescents ages 10 to 15, promoted since 2007 by the Masculinity Network for Gender Equality (REDMAS).
More than 25,000 Nicaraguans have attended various gender equality programmes in the last three years and, like Silva, have started down the difficult road of transforming “machista” behaviours — theirs and others’ — in a society that is based on “traditional” gender roles.
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