SHAPE AT MIDLANDS STATE UNIVERSITY
SHAPE began its HIV work at MSU in late 2004. MSU is the third-largest state university in Zimbabwe and is situated in the Midlands provincial capital, Gweru, 232 kilometers south-west of Harare. About 10,300 students attend MSU, with 52% being women.

MSU is well-known in Zimbabwe for its progressive approach to gender equality and the high level of women in leadership roles, including a female Dean of Students and a female Student Executive Council president. It was because of this strong stance on gender equality that SHAPE chose to pilot its Gender, Masculinities and HIV project at MSU. “We felt that it would be much easier to nurture a group of visible male gender activists here at MSU than it would be in the other universities,” SHAPE’s MSU Program Manager Leo Wamwanduka explains. “The university was already open to the idea of addressing gender equality and was more likely to support our work.”
The project ultimately seeks to reduce female and male students’ vulnerability to HIV infection by challenging existing gender role stereotypes that condone sexual risk-taking among men while reinforcing women’s subordinate status. One of the main ways it does this is by engaging female and male students in meaningful and constructive discussions around gender issues.
In previous mixed-sex workshops, SHAPE had observed that discussions were often polarized along gender lines. The men would take a defensive stance, trivializing women’s concerns and deliberately making sexist remarks to upset their female peers.
The women, meanwhile, would adopt one of two approaches – the very few energetic ones took a militant, radical feminist stance while the majority retreated into injured silence, opting not to engage with the men at all.
SHAPE also noted that while women were constantly targeted for gender training to improve their assertiveness, there was no parallel sensitization process for men. As a result, many young men resisted women’s empowerment because they did not understand gender equality, not because they were unwilling to change or share power.

These experiences led SHAPE to find ways to respond to the needs of both men and women. This included creating separate spaces for the male and female students to safely and freely voice their views without feeling attacked, embarrassed or violated, and involving both men and women in gender training.