What is feminist leadership?

Our primary understanding and models of leadership come from traditional patriarchal forms of authority. Feminist leadership is a transformative approach that comes from rethinking the spaces and structures we inhabit and how we share power – allowing us to create more effective, creative and collaborative leadership models.

There is no one definition of feminist leadership, but most models rely on some common principles which are central to feminist values and practice. For example: accountability, collaboration, empathy, transparency, dismantling bias, sharing power.

But don’t take our word for it. Here are some reflections on feminist leadership from amazing thinkers and practitioners.

Defining feminist leadership

“I define feminist leadership as a process of transforming ourselves, our communities, and the larger world, to embrace a feminist vision of social justice. It’s the process of working to make the feminist vision of a non-violent, non-discriminatory world, a reality (…) It’s about mobilising others around this vision of change.”

Srilatha Batliwala, feminist activist, researcher and scholar

“Patriarchy, reflected through all the structures and institutions of our world, is a system that glorifies domination, control, violence, competitiveness and greed. It dehumanises men as much as it denies women their humanity. So we need leadership that will explore and expose these links and challenge patriarchy. The only leadership that does this is feminist leadership. Transformational leadership is leadership concerned with causing social change; feminist transformational leadership is concerned with achieving gender justice.”

Peggy Antrobus, feminist activist, author and scholar

“Leadership is not about titles, status and power over people. Leaders are people who hold themselves accountable for recognising the potential in people and ideas, and developing that potential.”

Brené Brown, research professor, lecturer, author of Dare To Lead

A feminist leadership reading list

• It is crunch time for humanity. We need everyone to start leading like a woman

  Arwa Mahdawi, The Guardian (Nov 2021)

  Every crisis the world faces is a crisis of leadership. The skills we need to lean into now are those considered ‘unmanly’ – empathy, collaboration and altruism. All the ‘feminine’ traits that women have been told are weaknesses in the workforce are, in fact, strengths.

• As Long as We Associate Leadership with Masculinity, Women Will Be Overlooked

  Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Harvard Business Review (2019)

   So long as we continue to associate leadership with masculine features, we can expect female leaders to be evaluated more negatively even when their performance is higher than that of their male counterparts, and even when those who evaluate them are women.

• Why Gender Bias Still Occurs And What We Can Do About It

  Connson Locke, Forbes (Jul 2019)

  The leader prototype shares characteristics with the male stereotype: self-reliant, assertive, dominant and competitive. This means women in leadership positions must behave counter-stereotypically. Yet people who behave counter to gender stereotypes are deemed less likeable and therefore less hireable. We cannot expect individual women to solve a problem that is a societal issue.

• What does feminist leadership look like in a pandemic?

  Leila Billing (Mar 2020)

   What if leaders of all stripes, from diverse sectors, started to follow the kinds of feminist leadership approaches that have been championed by activists from all over the world for decades. How might this type of leadership help us to navigate our way through these splintered, uncertain times?

This reading list is part of a longer feminist leadership resource list collated for the Coaching Circle for Leading Women. The next cohort will be open from September. If you would like more information about this intimate bespoke coaching opportunity led by Shivonne Graham and Brita Fernandez Schmidt, contact hello@britafs.com