The Collective Feminist Practice Principles provide a robust foundation for advancing gender equity and justice in all spheres of life. They emphasize the importance of building supportive networks, practicing solidarity, and empower women to claim authority in shaping feminist futures. They explicitly recognize that discrimination based on gender can interact and intersect with other discriminations, such as race, disability and others.
The Collective Feminist Practice Principles
The future is collaborative, feminist and inclusive
What are they?
Why are they needed?
The Collective Leadership Institute (CLI) works towards creating a world that works for 100% of humanity and the planet. We recognize that this aspiration is hampered by traditional power structures and patriarchal systems that have historically marginalized and disempowered women, perpetuating gender-based inequalities across various spheres of life.
What is their purpose?
These Principles can support and guide women to co-create a space that can reduce typical power pathologies in cultures shaped by patriarchy, such as toxic competition and harmful hierarchies. They serve as a call to action for consciously cultivating inclusive and transformative practices that acknowledge and uplift women’s voices, experiences, and perspectives – for the benefit of all of humanity.
How to use them
Each group of women in any given context should decide for themselves if, how much and how exactly they can and would like to use them, and how to adapt them to their context. Among respecting the diversity of women’s experiences and choices, this is to recognize that explicit actions on feminism often depend on different types of privilege, including personal safety considerations for every woman that need to be respected.
A first step in using the Principles is to reflect how they can best be tailored to each given local context, including – if desired – a focus on a specific feminist issue e.g. care work, the gender pay gap, domestic abuse etc.
The Principles can be used
- Individually: To reflect on feminist practice among and with other women in general
- In teams: To develop a learning, support and action network on feminism
- In organizations and multi-stakeholder settings: To realize gender mainstreaming in a collective and needs-based approach.
What they are not – important disclaimers
- They do not make a claim for universal applicability but provide a guidance for reflection and adaptation within each culture, community and context more generally.
- They do not advocate for a particular type of feminism beyond the general understanding of recognizing marginalization of women (see below).
- They go beyond self-care and have a dedicated perspective to bring feminist perspectives and action into collective sustainability work.
- They do not ask for perfection in practice, but serve as a reflection, learning and un-learning guidance.
- They recognize the difference between female and feminist leadership.
The thinking behind them
The Principles are intended as a practice for and by circles of women. This stems from the recognition that as those most negatively affected by patriarchal power structures, women should also lead the thinking and action behind transforming them. The Principles provide guidance which elements needed to be taken into consideration, in order to truly support that cause without re-producing power structures The Principles are designed to respect, reflect and be adapted to different cultural understandings and recognitions of ‘woman’, based on what each circle of women in any given place and time decides for themselves (see the ‘build feminist collective intelligence’ below).
Access the full CFPPs to guide your practice
Six mutually supportive principles for implementing a more feminist leadership practice.
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As with any good dialogue, a shared understanding on the meaning of key concepts on the topic is vital for all involved. As feminism is often plagues by different understandings of concepts, here is a short glossary of our understanding of feminisim and other key concepts often used in conversations about it: