Feminist Leadership for Social Transformation

FEMINIST
LEADERSHIP FOR SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION: CLEARING THE CONCEPTUAL CLOUD

CREA
commissioned Srilatha Batliwala to write this paper as a resource for a
meeting “Building Feminist Leadership – Looking Back, Looking Forward”,
held from 12-13, November 2008 in Cape Town, South Africa. CREA organized
this meeting to expand discourses on issues of feminist leadership,
especially in the global south. This paper emerged out of a gap in
knowledge base about what sorts of frameworks, methodologies and curricula
have evolved in the field of feminist leadership, and more importantly,
about the effectiveness of current leadership development interventions to
build inclusive, rights-affirming, and gender-just social change
leadership. The purpose of this paper, is not simply to theorize feminist
leadership, but to create a useful framework, or lens, through which to
scrutinize our leadership development programs, strengthen them, and thus
enhance the quality and impact of transformative feminist leadership in the
arenas in which it is practiced. Srilatha Batliwala is an India-based
Scholar Associate with the Association for Women’s Rights in Development
(AWID).