Educate and train new women activists
Sharing stories creates safe spaces for women. Educate on barriers to participation. Dismantle patriarchy, recognise leadership, end inequality.
Feminist leadership actively challenges traditional power structures and aims to create a more equitable and inclusive environment by prioritizing collaboration, shared decision-making, and a focus on the needs of marginalized groups. Fundamentally the ideology believes that leadership should be accessible to all genders and identities, not just men; it involves self-reflection on power dynamics and actively working to dismantle systemic inequalities.
Key aspects of feminist leadership
Challenging traditional leadership models: Moving away from hierarchical structures and embracing more collaborative and participatory decision-making processes.
Intersectionality: Recognizing that gender is not the only factor impacting power dynamics and considering other identities like race, class, sexual orientation, and ability.
Empowerment: Fostering a sense of agency and capability within individuals and teams, enabling them to contribute meaningfully.
Collective action: Prioritizing the needs of the group over individual advancement and working towards shared goals.
Self-reflection: Engaging in critical analysis of personal biases and power dynamics to identify and address areas for improvement.
Women's collective leadership emphasizes shared responsibility, collaborative decision-making, and empowering women to lead together, recognizing the strengths of diverse perspectives and experiences to achieve common goals.
Collective leadership, particularly in a feminist context, acknowledges that no one person has all the answers and emphasizes shared accountability for outcomes. It values the contributions of all women, recognizing that diverse backgrounds and experiences enrich the leadership process.
Feminist collective leadership can lead to better decisions, greater care, and more comprehensive and integral approaches to addressing challenges, all the while striving for a society free from oppression, violence, and discrimination.
Collective leadership distributes decision-making power across a group, empowering individuals with relevant expertise to contribute, while traditional leadership concentrates power in a single leader who makes decisions primarily based on their authority, with less input from the team. Essentially, collective leadership is a collaborative approach where everyone can lead, whereas traditional leadership is more hierarchical and top-down.
Resource links
Women in leadership: Grow, Lead, Change
WRDA’s leadership programmes provide a gendered perspective of leadership by looking at how women contribute to leadership and raising awareness of structural inequalities affecting women's participation in leadership.
Women’s Resource and Development Agency
Established in 1983, WRDA’s vision is of a fair and equal society where women are empowered and are a visible force for change and influence in all areas of life.
The Glencree Women’s programme
Redeveloped in 2018 as ‘Women’s Leadership’ with a fresh, more diverse, all-island vision, this programme promotes reconciliation through dialogue, education and actively addressing legacies of conflict.
Women’s Empowerment Principles
Established by UN Women and UN Global Compact, WEPs are a set of Principles offering guidance to business on how to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment in the workplace, marketplace and community.