Innovation · Format · GRBC
GenderReversedBootcamp.
A week inside a society where gendered roles are reversed. The rules of the simulation are translated from the country’s own survey data, so what participants go through is measured, not imagined.
The first camp · Madagascar · August 2022
A week,roles reversed.
Twenty participants, ten women and ten men, from the youth wing of a Malagasy green party, run with local women’s organisations.
- RulesReverse-engineered from UNICEF’s Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) of 2018: the inequalities in the data became the rules of a society run by women.
- In the campThe men’s group drafted a bill, “L’Androgyne”. The women’s council drafted nearly a hundred laws, then voted unanimously to share power.
- After the campThe party adopted a whistleblower-protection policy, an observatory, and rules against gender-based violence.
- Four years onA follow-up in January 2026 reached a majority of the original cohort.
What it teaches
Fourlessons.
- Fund simulation, not only training.
- Work on informal institutions, not only formal ones.
- Count conflict as a sign of success.
- Decolonise the method.
From “Somatic Politics: Beyond Capacity Building Traps. Lessons from the Gender Reversed Bootcamp in Madagascar”, in Advancing Women’s Political Participation and Empowerment in Africa (ENoP, 2026). The design was first set out in a 2022 working paper.
Commissioned as a package
Your country’sown data.
For foundations, political parties, universities and research consortia.
- DesignA scenario built from the country’s own statistics.
- BootcampThe immersion itself, with local partners.
- EvidenceWhat the reversal made visible, written up, with a follow-up of the cohort.