Feministisation of Politics Podcast

Thinking about feminization as a way of sharing power. Understanding how this concept influences other broader concepts such as democracy, leadership, or the care we find in our organizations and collectives. “This is not just a question of gender and class, but of multidimensional privilege and understanding power as something to compete for,” says Laura Roth, a municipal activist and researcher from Minim.

In this podcast of the first module of the MOOC on Feministisation of Politics we also hear the experience of Natalija Simovic, from the municipalist political movement Ne(da)vimo Beograd (Serbia) and how FoP project has influenced her political organisation. Also, we will learn more about the current municipalist situation in Belgrade: “Although we have grown up under the influence of feministisation principles we are far from perfection and we have to invest a lot of efforts in observing our behaviors and practices in order to be faithful to the principles”.

“What’s the gap between theory and the practice?”. This was one of the questions asked by the gender group within the political organization Barcelona En Comú to establish a diagnosis on the feministisation of the organisation. An important issue to develop a gender diagnosis is to have resources and budget to be able to do it properly.

Helena García is an activist and takes part in this group. She explains in this podcast some tips about the power associated with masculinity, the tasks of care, leadership and, in short, the way to build a feminist organisation and persevere in these ideals taking into account issues such as the number of women and men but also on the dynamics of participation like the tone with which you share your opinions or how you use your speaking time. “The main leader of our organisation was a woman, and it was positively valued”.

Can care be a strong political tool? “We all depend on other people. We are all vulnerable”. Felipe González Gil, from ZEMOS 98 Collective, remember it in this podcast. Care should be implemented in a public level, follows Felipe, because “we live a precarious life”. He talks about the Indignados Movement from Spain and how this historical fact changed the form of doing and thinking. And the importance not only of taking action and fight but there are also spaces for healing our injures, physical or mental health: “Care is political, and It’s not just a fancy concept.”

She talks about the socialisation of Care, a socialist feminist perspective with a particular definition of Care that considers social class, power distribution, race, or hierarchical structures: “Care is needed in order to achieve individual and collective emancipation/ When we talk about the feminisation of politics, it would involve broader participation and better representation of women and women’s particular problems in politics”.

“Nowadays, there is a lot of theorizing about the concept of care”, said Manuela Zechner, and many ways of approaching it. She understands it at different levels that explains in this podcast. “Maybe we are so busy with the tasks, schedules, aims and ignore this dimension of needs and put interdependency on the first place. What feminism has done in organizations is bring caring as a fundamental aspect of organizational culture”.

Manuela Zechner has also written a book: Commoning care and collective power. Forthcoming with Transversal Texts in September 2021 (in print and as free Pdf)

Let’s try to define the concept of care. Care as something simple as respect for others. And so difficult to find, sometimes, within the traditional patriarchal structures of public institutions. Sharing power is not easy in these environments, said Ana Méndez de Andés (urban commons researcher and municipalist activist in Madrid). Care is one of the values of the feministisation of politics, argued Antonija Komazlić (Zagreb je naš). In this podcast, both explain their own experiences with the concept of care in two different cases in which municipal initiatives take political power.

Ginelle Skerritt featured in ‘The banker ladies’, a documentary that provides insights into the crucial role that savings groups and credit associations can play in women’s lives as they provide for their families and themselves. Filmed in Toronto, the documentary introduces us to three ‘banker ladies,’ Mabinty Bangura, Asha Mohamed and Ginelle Skerritt. She is a Senior Leader, International public speaker, moderator, facilitator, trainer and coach; a broad range of experiences including administration, social enterprise development, fundraising, youth development, anti-racism, diversity and inclusion training, organizational development, communications, economic inclusion. Published author and leader on the topic of traditional savings and credit associations, ROSCAs and collective economic development solutions.

We interviewed Michela Cicculli to know more about spaces as resources. Michela is councillor in the government of the VIII district of the city of Rome and an activist in the space Lucha y Siesta, reappropriated from the bottom-up as a temporary housing place for people who survived to violence. Lucha y Siesta is also managed as a commons hosting social, political and cultural initiatives.

Chiara and Anna Lisa are activists in the Italian Rete Nazionale dei Beni Comuni Emergenti e a Uso Civico (National Network of Emerging and Civic Use Commons), a network joining together experiences of reappropriated and self-managed spaces all around Italy. The Network is a platform of exchange of knowledge and tools and a way to organise shared advocacy to recognise commons. With the Network, we discussed what impact was generated in terms of awareness and reflection by putting feminisation of politics on the agenda in national meetings.

Mónica Tapia is co-founder of Aúna, a platform that promotes new political representations with women’s leadership to achieve more remarkable results in welfare, justice and environmental protection: “It’s not just women, but It’s women with an agenda of political transformations”. In this podcast, she talks about the need to include the feminist perspective into government, elections and campaigns, a particular leadership style about collaboration and the current situation after the last elections in Mexico.

Hilary Wainwright is a historical socialist feminist. She’s been acting on the women’s movement since 1970 when the movement first begin in the UK.

In this podcast, Hilary remembers the heritage and the lessons of the women’s movement and explains that the presence of women in politics is a necessary condition but not a sufficient condition. It means an entirely different approach to power, which is a crucial issue: “Feminism share leadership and share power and that is a principle that many young socialist today are taking it seriously.”

In this podcast, Luisa Broto remembers the victory of the municipalist political movement Zaragoza en Común in 2015, where she was in charge of Social Rights within the Mayor’s Office. She talks about the challenges involved in taking power, about everything that was achieved and everything that was not. Finally, she talks about the renunciations they made of feminist policies and practices because they were not compatible with how the institutions are designed: “Politics is made for men, single, in their 40s and without family or much of a social life”.