From 2013 to 2015, Gender at Work benefited from a Dutch government grant focused on Funding Leadership and Opportunities for Women (FLOW). The South African Gender at Work team used this grant in two different contexts to experiment with ways to foster conditions that support the emergence of democratic feminist leadership and practice. In both processes, participants represented diverse lived experience and identities (including around gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, ethnicity, and race).
This paper reflects on Gender at Work’s South African experience in two different contexts to concretely illustrate in praxis, core principles of transformational feminist leadership. We explore what such leadership means and looks like and what conditions and practice help it to emerge. We are not working specifically in women’s rights or feminist organisations. Rather, we are working with trade unions and in mixed gender contexts, i.e., communities with women, men, and gender-nonconforming persons. These are contexts that can be hostile to feminists and feminism. Our challenge is how to foster feminist visions, values and practices in such settings in a way that minimises backlash, while beginning to create more equal social norms and less violent gendered relationships.