To establish an analytical foundation across the diversity of participant backgrounds, this first module aims to ensure that participants share their understandings of basic economic and gender-equality concepts, how they interact with each other and what happens to basic economic ideas when approached through a gender lens. Among the participants in the Short Course will be economic policy makers, planners and practitioners, with varying degrees of exposure to, and skills in, formal economics training, as well as varying degrees of exposure to, and skills in, gender analysis. The Short Course will also include gender specialists with varying degrees of exposure to, and skills in, working on economic issues from a gender perspective. Finally, the Course may well include participants with little or no exposure to gender or economics.

The module does not aim to ensure that everyone operates at the same level of sophistication of analysis, though a subsidiary aim is to encourage those with more sophisticated understandings of analysis, of either economics or gender issues, to express themselves to others simply and in jargon-free terms, especially when communicating with others less immersed in their knowledge areas. A further subsidiary aim is to encourage all participants to speak and engage with each other.