(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to PEP Stalks, the podcast of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies. I am Aina Ravasko-Nyana, PEP's Head of Communication. And I'm here today with Joanna Maycock. Welcome. - Thank you, Aina. - Thanks for being here. She's a very well-known feminist activist and organizer in Brussels.
She has occupied leading positions in civil society organizations for decades, including the European Women's Lobby, which is the largest network of women's organizations in Europe. Now she works supporting organizations and individuals in incorporating the practice of feminist leadership that we will talk about in a moment. And she's also one of the authors of these publications that I have here with me, Women's Civil Society Leaders for Systematic Change.
This is a policy study producing collaboration between FEPs, the Friedrich Erwe-Stiftung, the Green European Foundation, and the Hendrik Bol Foundation. So, and this publication is the first ever study of its kind. It takes stock of the progress made in the last decade, the remaining barriers, also the opportunities for women leaders in civil society organizations, and includes as well a few interesting recommendations. And this is the reason why Joanna is here with us today.
This publication, Joanna, is about women occupying leadership positions in civil society organizations, but it's also about feminist leadership. And I would like to first do a first introduction about the difference and why this concept, feminist leadership is so important. - Yeah, thank you so much, Aynara. Yes, so feminist leadership is a kind of transformative leadership, it's a different kind of thinking about leadership and practicing leadership.
For me, you know, I've been active in civil society in Europe for 30 years, and I've occupied a number of leadership roles. And I think we are facing very particular challenges at the moment. We are facing revolutions in the terms of transforming our societies and our workplaces following COVID, but also to address climate change, inequality. So there's huge shifts happening, including a generational shift actually, about what we expect from our workplaces.
And our civil society organizations are at the vanguard, really, of helping us shape what that transformation might look like and how we might build an inclusive and feminist and green future that makes a better world and a better way of life for all of us. And so we need radically different forms of leadership. We need to really rethink leadership and organizational and design for our movements, for our civil society, and why not for other organizations as well.
So feminist leadership draws from feminist organizations in the global South in particular, who looked at how could we rethink leadership models from a feminist perspective for feminist goals. So a vision of a world that's more just, more green, more peaceful without violence and with care at its center. And so it's a form of leadership that is more and more practiced by organizations, by leaders, mainly by women, but it's not only for women, and it's not only about women either.
So in this paradigm shift, we need to recognize that we are looking at structural inequalities, inequalities yes between women and men. So based on gender on sex, but also based on other parts of our identity and other forms of discrimination. So it's also of course intersectional. So it's of course anti-racist. It also incorporates looking at disability, looking at class, looking at language, looking at origin.
And very fundamentally, if you ask, what is feminist leadership about then, it's about rethinking power. It's about really reimagining and shifting power and power relations in our work.
So moving from power that is in the traditional sense, a form of domination, control and coercion, which underpins patriarchy and patriarchal systems, which we have everywhere, including in ourselves, to a form of power, a feminist kind of power, which is about unleashing and supporting the power within ourselves, regardless of who we are and where we come from.
The power with others, the power that we work with others in collaboration and the power to shift toxic systems, to really work together. So power is probably the fundamental element of feminist leadership and shifting power, which is so much needed today in our world today.
Many of the groups that I speak to, facilitate and work with, often talk about feeling powerless, powerless in the face of climate change, powerless in the face of the rise of the far right, powerless in the face of poverty and inequality. But we have power, right? We have power as individuals, but we definitely have power as collectives. And feminist leadership helps us rethink and reimagine that power. - And it's a process, right?
We don't have a manual about how to do feminist leadership, like it's in the making, if I understand correctly. - So that's absolutely right. It's, because it's very different and it demands us to challenge our norms and our ways of doing things and to think differently and act differently. So it has to be a process of experimentation. It has to be a process of learning. And that requires courage. It requires a lot of courage to do things differently.
It requires excellent communication. And really importantly, it requires, I would describe as sisterhood. So it requires working with others, within your organization, but also beyond, to work out how are we doing this and how can we get this right? Because we are human as well. And there is no perfect form of leadership. So we need to adapt and experiment. And that's also what makes it quite exciting, actually. - Absolutely.
And why focusing in particular in civil society organizations in this study? - Yeah. I mean, much of what we say in the report probably could, and I know for certain, because I've had a lot of feedback since the report was published, could also resonate with women and with others working in other sectors, that's for sure. We can perhaps speak about that later, but we wanted to focus on civil society. The sort of social economy sector in Europe is actually massive.
It counts for six or 7% of all employment in Europe. It's highly feminized. And it's completely understudied. So we have a lot of studies on, particularly when we look at women and women's leadership of business sector or public sector, even women in politics, but very little looking at women in civil society. And my own background and the background of some of my co-authors is very much rooted in civil society.
And we could see, we could observe the radically different numbers, certainly the rowing numbers of women in leadership roles within civil society over the last decade even. So by leadership, it doesn't only mean those in a hierarchical director role, but we could already see that shifting radically in the last 10 years. - Which is good, no? - It's a great thing. - Yeah, it's a great thing. And we've been fighting for that for many years.
And then we were curious, like what does that actually mean in terms of the shifting cultures of the organization? Because this is not a feminist leadership, it's not just, as I hope I've been clear, just about making more women, more middle-class white women, occupy positions of power in organizations that continue to carry on as before, that are no longer serving our purpose. We know that we need radically different kinds of organizations and movements that are much more inclusive.
So we wanted to look at how women in those leadership roles were fairing, how they were doing, and how they were doing in transforming the culture of their organization. So these are women who are committed to a different kind of leadership, a transformative leadership, a feminist leadership. So civil society is important 'cause it's a big sector, it's a big employer. It's important because we've seen changes in terms of women leading those organizations.
And also we would hope that civil society organizations are at the vanguard of change, of changing workplace cultures.
And we need those organizations and we need to unleash the power of those organizations as inclusive and diverse movements to help us navigate these huge revolutions that are happening around us in a way that is putting equality, the planet, care, so care for ourselves, care for others, care for the planet at the center and creating healthy, positive workplaces built on feminist values, I think is one way to do that. So civil society for us was one sector we really wanted to study.
I think in terms of, and that's what we've done, it's a huge sector and we had a lot of responses and we'll talk perhaps about how many, the findings of this particular research. But certainly I think it would be interesting to look at more deeply at the practice of feminist leadership in the public sector. But I think also a lot of the feedback I've had has come from women in politics as well, right?
So I think looking at how this resonates with political parties, which in a way, you could think of as a kind of civil society, how are they really operating to create inclusive, caring cultures where women and all people and all women in their diversity can really thrive and lead and bring their magic and their power. So I think that's, there could be, we could look at this in other sectors, but civil society remains hugely important in navigating the changes ahead of us.
- And one of the worrying conclusions of this report is like this sector, civil society sector, is burning women at an alarming rate. And in fact, one of the data is that 50% of women leaders in civil society organizations exhibit signs of pre-burnout. Can you please put this data into a bit of context? - Yeah, thank you. So when we set out to do this, it was based on really original research, right? So we did a survey, we did interviews, we did focus groups as well.
And we had over a more, nearly 150 women who participated in the survey from 19 different European countries. So we were really astonished with the extent and the quality of the feedback that we had. And then we supplemented that with interviews. We really looked at questions about the practice of feminist leadership, but also how women are able to practice their leadership at work. So how are they supported? How are they guided in their prioritization of their work?
How are they supported in the big changes that are happening in the world at the moment and their leadership in that? So what we found was a very unhealthy culture of overwork, which stemmed from certainly perhaps a lack of clarity and focus for organizations, trying to change the world with small budgets and small staff, with also with donor funding that is also quite constrained and very demanding actually about delivering lots of activities.
You add into that the fact that women are themselves operating within a patriarchal and sexist society. So they offer many of the women, I think 60% of the women who responded had children at home that they care for. They reported being overwhelmingly responsible for domestic and childcare to a alarming degree, considering this research was done in 2023. Something like 75% of the women said that they were solely or overwhelmingly responsible for domestic work and childcare.
On top of that, very demanding jobs. So 65% of the women responding were CEOs, directors, secretary generals of organizations. So they're operating still within that context. They're also operating within sexist environments in their workplace and in their work in the external world. So they're having to work twice as hard to prove themselves, to have their voice heard.
And also also including with their own colleagues to assert their leadership and to do that in a way that reflects their feminist values, not aping kind of patriarchal leadership models. So there's a risk there of being more challenged. So yeah, we found, and then perhaps one other thing to mention, we know that men in our NGO sector and CSO sectors also experience a lot of stress, but there was so there's this being a woman, being a woman of colour, being a woman with
disabilities just added to that stress. It was even multiplied. One example is the burden of care that I mentioned. Another is that we asked women to report also on whether their health was impacting on their work. And here we received an astonishing amount of testimony about the impact of menopause, the impact of menstrual cycles, the impact of fertility treatments, the impact of pregnancy, miscarriage, and on their workplace and how that is not,
that's still hugely taboo. Most of the women reported that nobody had ever asked that question in a workplace context. So they're not receiving
the support that they need. And one other thing, which personally I found hugely shocking actually for me, because most of the findings were not that shocking to me, but the one that was, and I think it says a lot, is that most women in the more, certainly more than half, I think 60% of the women reported that they had no objective setting or appraisal
system in the last 12 to 18 months. To me that shows that nobody's really helping take care of those women in leadership, both supporting them in evaluating their work, which also means seeing how they're doing and checking in with their wellbeing, also seeing what support they need in terms of training, capacity building. But also that suggests to me that there's a
lack of priority setting. And when you're working to end climate change or end poverty or advance or achieve gender equality, these are vast subjects and they're intersecting subjects. So you need help from your board, from your management team, from your general assembly depending on your, to help you identify what is the stuff that you really need to focus on, to make, have an impact. And I think that was missing. And this is probably why you've got so many answers in such a short time,
right? Because nobody's asking them how do they feel and what are the issues they're facing and so on. So I guess they found that space finally. So no clear objective, so priority setting, unrealistic expectations, a lot of caring responsibilities, both inside and outside the organizations. Thank you for pointing to all these points, among many others that you have been
mentioning. I would like to conclude also mentioning some of the recommendations, because as I was saying at the beginning, this is about the barriers on the way, about the opportunities, but also there's a very practical part in the report with some recommendations. So if we could get, we could give the audience a few
concrete examples. Yeah, absolutely. And we're also, I should say, really in the process, and this is not, this is a report, but it's also a process of conversation with organizations, with women in leadership, with others in leadership, about, so what does this mean for our sector and what needs to change. But clearly, really radically rethinking power and leadership and what it means within organizations is a recommendation we give to leaders and to boards.
If we're trying to do radically different things in the world, then we really need to look at ourselves as well. Really importantly, I think, centering care, care is a profoundly feminist concept, care for self, care for others, care for the society, care for the planet, not as an afterthought that we'll come to that when we've done the work, but as the way of doing things, as the thing that we're trying to achieve in the world, it's core to feminist economics and
eco-feminism as well. And that means in the workplace, rethinking what work we value and making visible that work, which is very often undervalued, very often performed by women, very often also performed by women who might be migrant or minority women, looking at, so making that kind of office work and care work in the office more visible and more in job profiles, even for example, or in appraisals, really valuing that work,
whether it's remembering birthdays or making sure the office space is nice or caring for colleagues who are struggling, that often falls on women, it's often not
very visible. And we think also in terms of the recommendations, a lot of the challenges also stem from the funding, actually the funding models, which are often a kind of cycle of scarcity, a cycle of scarcity and over-delivery of activities and not enough money that's really invested in the structure of the organization, the leadership, the organizational culture and development. So we are speaking of our training, for example?
Yeah, exactly right. So even things like training, capacity building, many of the women in our interviews had had no investment in their training or leadership or capacity building in the last year or 18 months, which when you consider the complexity they're navigating, it's absolutely shocking. And they often felt they didn't deserve any training because that money should go to their junior colleagues or other people or the organization that they serve. And so they were not even being
exposed to and being given the tools. And I think that's just one example where donors could make a big difference. One, moving to much more core funding models, so much less activity-based and secondly, really investing in organizational development, culture and leadership and training, for example. Yes. I think, perhaps the other thing, there's a lot of buzz, isn't there, about diversity and inclusion and justice equity, diversity,
inclusion, safety, different ways of talking about it. And very often it's just like, let's have a D&I training and then we'll all be, we'll all know about unconscious bias and then we can forget about the whole thing. But this is a much more conscious, much more conscious thing that organizations really need to look at as part of a longer-term process.
Yes, about rethinking power and who has it, rethinking pay structures, rethinking culture and really understanding what are the barriers to everybody's full inclusion in the workplace and really addressing those. And I think that organizations have a lot of work to do and we'd love to see more work at the sector level. So we'd love to organizations to collaborate on this. We see many organizations who are women leaders, particularly struggling in their own corner,
around how do we do, how do we decolonize our work? How do we have anti-racist workplaces? How do we have disability inclusion? And wouldn't it be great if, as a sector, we could start looking at that and investing in processes, investing in systems to support that work so that we're not alone in doing that, but we're, because it's, we need to experiment and we need to deliver on this stuff. So I think that's something which we'd love to see donors and organizations investing in
as a sector. This makes me think of women networks. Very important, right? Yeah, absolutely. I would say if you're listening to this conversation and you're thinking what could I do personally, if you're a woman in a civil society organization or any organization, the first thing I would say is join a women's network or join a network of others who think, who are, who will support you in thinking through different ways of doing things. If there isn't one, make one.
And it might just be two of you. I created, co-created about 14 years ago a network here in Brussels of women leading civil society organizations. There were six of us who went for lunch and we said, there's so few of us leading organizations at this time. Let's try and support each other and let's try and support each other to lead differently, right? Now we've got leadership roles. We don't want to lead
like the old boys did. We want to lead differently. And now that network, it has more than 140 women in it supporting each other in the practice of feminist leadership. And so, make networks, create brave and save spaces to challenge one another and to learn together. The other thing I would say is insist on training. Insist that your organization, your employer invests in you. And if you have access to budgets, make sure you're
investing in yourself but in others around you as well. Training matters. So whether it's coaching, it maybe could be another thing you could consider, coaching through your leadership. Get support. Don't do this alone. I myself and my co-authors are involved in different kinds of training that we do on looking at disrupting toxic power dynamics. So we have something called the Inclusion Revolution that I do here in Brussels.
Angela Philp and myself run feminist leadership retreats, two-day retreats near Brussels as well on a regular basis where it's which is just full of beautiful magic and transformative thinking for women leaders. Joanna to finish because we could be speaking for hours about this topic. But so we have mentioned a few, there are many more barriers on the way. I recommend everyone to read this report. There were some, as we were saying before, a few alarming conclusions
but also opportunities on the way. Are you optimistic with all these challenges that we have ahead of us? Of course. When I first came across the concept of feminist leadership, probably yeah, 10 or 12 years ago, it was very unusual to hear it discussed at all. And I feel like now there's not only a body of practice, of experimentation, there's more feminists in organizations that are experimenting and leading and who are connected.
I think we're also at a moment where everybody or anybody who's seeing what's going on in the world recognizes we need to do things differently, right? So we can't just carry on in the same way. And so looking at different kinds of inclusive and transformative leadership
definitely is in the ether. But I think feminist leadership offers a very particular opportunity to not only deliver on more women or more diverse and more caring workplaces but also to deliver more impact in terms of reimagining the world actually that we want to live in.
And I think that we're in the right moment for that. I see certainly with new generations joining movements and all our organizations, they have a different set of expectations of our organizations as transformative political organizations and they expect their workplace to reflect that as well. So that doesn't mean that will be an easy process. It will definitely be a challenging one. But I'm very optimistic because I think taking action collectively is what gives us hope.
And when we have hope, we take more action and we need that right now as we head into these European elections reminding ourselves that we are powerful, that we have a voice and that all citizens who can vote have a voice in that as well. So I think we need to be the beacons of hope and we need to be the beacons of action and that action shouldn't be excluding people, ordinary, every citizen, but should be bringing those voices in and listening to them. So I'm feeling very optimistic.
Fantastic, it's great to hear. This is something that I often say to someone who is not familiar with the concept of feminist leadership. Whatever we have been doing clearly is not working, not for us, not for the planet. So let's try something new, something different. So I think that's a good argument to convince everyone that we should try, at least try, applying feminist leadership. Thank you, Joana, for your time and for bringing
some of the insights of this interesting report. As I said, we could be talking about this topic for hours. If people who are listening to us want to know more, I absolutely recommend to read this mass, read this report, Women, Civil Society Leaders for Systematic Change, and as we were saying, this can be applied not just to civil society sector, but to politics, private sector and so on. Many thanks, it has been a real pleasure. Thank you, Aynara. Bye-bye.