On January 9th, CV Harquail will present her Feminist Business Model Canvas at the monthly meeting of the Strongly Sustainable Business Model Group in partnership with OCAD U and sLab. Learn more. Hosted by Antony Upward, this group meets on
Join journalist Kimberly Seals Allers, author of The Big Letdown: How Medicine, Big Business, and Feminism Undermine BreastFeeding, and Lex Schroeder, Co-Founder of Feminists at Work, for a frank discussion on pushing feminism forward — exploring race, class, sexual orientation,
Women’s ideas and leadership have been systematically erased for centuries. We know this. So it’s good to make sure this doesn’t happen as a rule. It’s not about helping women get ahead (although that’s important). It’s not even about money (although sometimes it totally is and women need to get paid for their work). It’s about showing another human being and their intellectual work respect.
Businesses can be effective, profitable, and feminist all at the same time. It’s true! But the great majority of our business development tools (as they exist now) reinforce patriarchal models of thinking and operating by design. Given the way women’s and feminists’ ideas have been left out of history (and business and management thinking), particularly those ideas from women of color, how could our current tools possibly help lead us to the future of work? New tools for feminist business practice like the FBMC design these considerations back into your business. They work on social and expressive solutions right alongside functional product/service solutions. They center foundational strengths, collective values, and social/political/economic impact right alongside revenue streams. They value care for relationships, justice, and social equity. They ask questions of entrepreneurs about how to meet customer, community, and stakeholder social needs while contributing to community wellness.
When it is clear that everyone has something to contribute to the women’s leadership field (or any field, for that matter), historically marginalized groups aren’t just “included” in existing, dominant systems and previous ways of doing things; their knowledge is understood to be essential to the health of the whole. Young people’s contributions are also more valued. The contributions of people who work 10 or 25 hours per week are valued as much as people who work 80 hours per week. Why? Information and knowledge are what count.
These ideas were first shared by @CVHarquail at a panel discussion on Everyday Leadership at In Good Company, a women’s co-working space and entrepreneurship community, in June of 2015. This list was updated by CV and Lex in 2016. Please help
We know that gender bias takes a personal and economic toll on individuals. But gender bias has collective negative effects which mostly get ignored. Too many good ideas with the potential to move communities, organizations, entire fields forward get lost simply because they happen to come from women. Too many good ideas only get heard when they are picked up by men (who don’t always give women colleagues credit) and much gets lost in translation. All of this is compounded by race and class.
If we know this happens, one outcome is that we struggle to follow a woman’s lead when it comes to doing things differently. We struggle to move from knowledge to practice and to women-led practice.
Last week, a small but mighty group of us met at Idealist’s offices in NYC for our second Feminists At Work salon on “Building Healthier Nonprofits.” (Read the original invitation here). It was a lively conversation with many threads, some notes
On October 21st, 25 or 30 folks gathered at Idealist’s offices in NYC to talk “feminism in practice.” During this first Feminists at Work salon, several of us spoke about the unique challenges women face in the nonprofit sector. In addition to
Lex writing here, eager to share what emerged from our first #FeministsAtWork salon! Last night, 25 of us met up at Idealist (thank you Idealist for hosting us!) and ended up having a wide ranging conversation on everything from Kimberlé
