New Course! Feminist Business History and Heritage: Learning from our Foremothers

New Course:   

Feminist Business History and Heritage:
Learning from our Foremothers

Feminists have created many successful businesses, businesses that were explicitly feminist.

Few people know that these businesses ever existed, and even fewer remember what they were about, what practices and strategies worked for them, and what led to their closures— or their longevity.

Without knowing feminist businesses’ history, we can’t learn from their mistakes. Worse, we can’t build on their achievements.

Starting in February 2023, we will reconnect with the legacy of feminist business, and draw from their experiences some shared principles and guidance for current and future feminist businesses. 

Initial Schedule (to be revised with participants’ input):

Class Session #1, Tuesday, Feb 7, 4:30-6 pm ET: 
Welcome and Introductions. What’s a Feminist Business and what do we know about them?  
Office hour: Friday Feb 10, 11 am -12 pm ET
Tuesday, Feb 14:  Contribute your Reflection #1 

Class Session #2, Tuesday, Feb 21, 4:30-6 pm ET:  
Feminist Businesses’ customers, products, services, community connections
Office hour: Friday, Feb 24, 11 am -12 pm ET
Tuesday, Feb 28:  Contribute your Reflection #2 

Class Session #3, Tuesday, March 7, 4:30-6 pm ET:
Getting stuff done: organizing themselves, understanding power, authority, and coordination, conflicts and feminist challenges
Office hour: Friday, March 10, 11 am -12 pm ET
Tuesday, March 14: Contribute Reflection #3 

________

Overview

In this class, we will collaborate to create a shared understanding of feminist business history, and to draw lessons and unanswered questions from the stories we gather. We will produce a file/living repository of resources on the businesses we consider. We will create a document that identifies feminist business practices and challenges from history, along with citations, that we can all use as a resource. We will decide together how to share this document with other feminist business folks. 

At the end of this course, we will have created a cohort of feminist business advocates who can teach others about and continue to develop knowledge of our shared feminist business history. This cohorts’ knowledge will support feminist business coaches, mentors, and practitioners who want to build on rather than repeat the lessons of feminist business.

At the end of this course, you will be well-versed in the history of a particular feminist business or sector, able to explain this history to another interested feminist business person. You will have developed some wisdom from the experience of earlier feminists that you can use in designing your future business activities. 

As a facilitator and active participant myself, I expect that our shared work will help me lock in what I’ve learned from my independent reading in feminist business history. Our work together will also help me examine and expand my definitions of feminist business and help me develop better criteria and tools for guiding feminist businesses.   

This class will prototype a collaborative format that we can put to use as we build a learning program for feminist business practitioners, mentors, coaches, and teachers. 

Together, our work will advance feminist business practice.

How We’ll Work Together

We will read stories/ books/ articles/ academic pieces about early feminist businesses (“early” meaning between 1960 and 2000 c.e.). Most of these businesses were US-based, two were based in the UK. Several operated in Canada, but there are no Canadian businesses in the set. Some of the businesses feature a particular identity group (e.g., Black American women, Lesbian Separatist).

Virtually all of the business and industries in our selection have a diverse set of characters. That means, they aren’t “just” businesses of white women. There were women of color, lesbians, disabled women, transpeople, Latinas, white women, Jewish women, wage-earning women, etc. in all of these businesses.

Unfortunately, I could find no books or comprehensive materials about feminist indigenous businesses of the past, please share them with me.

We will: 

• Summarize the arc of their stories

• Discuss what they prioritized 

• Examine how they were ‘political’ (e.g., within their societies’ politics, but even more in their everyday actions)

• Consider the ways they were “feminist”, and what they came up with as feminist business praxis (aka practice informed by theory)

• Identify what issues became chronic problems

• Look for how they connected with — and created— a feminist community

• Analyze what they did that helped them succeed for as long as they succeeded, and

• Consider other questions that emerge.

We will also pursue the questions that come up for you, personally, about what feminist business history can tell you about yourself as a feminist and your approach to business.  

You’ll co-create knowledge in a range of ways, including by: 

• Reading analytically and preparing for conversations

• Participating in conversations

• Reading/reflecting and writing up your personal insights and responses to questions, to share with the group

• Reading/ reflecting and writing in response to insights in the group file

• Bringing in your own research to expand the pool of knowledge

• Building a collective, group document that catalogues examples of different feminist business challenges and practices (using a template from CV)  

Together, we will:

• Review the stories I’ve gathered and ones that you contribute (recognizing that these stories are limited and also that they are what we have) 

• Look for commonalities and differences

• Draw conclusions from their histories 

• Summarize these conclusions in a document/ file we can share with our community

• Share some reflections from our class with our feminist communities (e.g., with a co-written blog post in the Feminist Enterprise Commons)

As the course convenor, I will:

1. Create a syllabus with carefully curated readings

2. Facilitate class conversations and offline work

3. Establish themes and questions for each of our three live class conversations

4. Develop reflection assignments 

5. Develop preparation assignments

6. Manage the back end of the class system

7. Consider that, while I am not an historian by training, I do have a PhD in organizational science and I do know how to analyze historical information about an organization to reveal new learning. I bring over twenty- five years of academic experience in management and organizational change, feminist business theory, and women’s/gender studies.

8. I have read each and every one of the books in our potential set of possibilities. I have not only opinions but also meta-theories and meta-questions about these materials.

9. I will be providing proprietary scholarship (writings) on Defining a Feminist Business and Collective, Inclusive, Transformational Feminism.

10. I will also be providing a reading/ learning guide to help you work through the material in a systematic way, designed to help you and us reveal insights about feminist business practice.

    ** Please note: Someone asked how much subject matter expertise would be in the room, versus “facilitating”. You should know: there will be a lot of subject matter expertise, but my plan is not to lord it over you or lecture you about it so that you discover how much "I* know. Rather, the plan is to use my expertise to create a situation where you have some joy of discovery and ownership because you have contributed your own choices and interests to what we talk about.

    ** Also, please keep in mind that “process” and “facilitation” also go by the name “teaching”. Teaching is a profession, a skill, an application of expertise, and a whole lot of work. My teaching experience is valuable, and will be part of this class. Items 1-6, 8 and 11 draw on my skills as a teacher.

    Generally, I will act like a professor who is a subject matter expert, who is also using feminist learning practices to create a learning space for motivated folks who have limited time but unlimited curiosity.

You will: 

• Receive a reading list of books, articles, and (where possible) pdfs. Some of these will be histories, some will be academic / theoretical / framework articles. You will also receive guidance on how to “read for purpose” and how to take notes that capture data as well as your reflections on that data.

• When you can, purchase new editions of the works published by the historians whose work we will be using, as a way of supporting them.

• Practice good feminist citation — noting the authors of the work we draw from and citing this particular class as a source for your knowledge & opinions going forward. 

• Commit to learning about one segment of the businesses offered in our reading list and becoming well-versed in their history, by:

• Preparing to prepared to summarize that selection of material (verbally) for the group,

• Expanding our file of resources available to learn about this business segment (by doing your own independent searching)

• Adding specific examples, citations, and questions to our collective document on Feminist Practices from Feminist Business History

Course Management

We will host the conversations on Zoom, where they will be recorded so that folks who miss a session can catch up.

We will host our class information on Google drive. Our shared documents will be stored. Each participant will have access to the course area.

Tuition: The reference tuition price for this class is $200, roughly equivalent to the cost of an online class at the Night School Bar, NC.   

Students who participate in all three sessions and who also complete their contributions to the collective document will receive a $50 rebate on their tuition at the end of the class (making their total tuition $150).  Please recognize that this tuition and rebate are already discounted from my regular teaching fees.

The tuition goes to support my active real time work during the course (approximately 40 hours of new, active time during the course), as well as the decades of learning, research, and teaching experience that provide a foundation for this course.

Class Schedule:

Over the course of six weeks, we will have three “in person” classes, and three read/write/reflecting sessions (that you will contribute to by a specific deadline, that you can react to on your own time once everyone has contributed.) I will also offer open ‘office hours’ when folks can drop in to discuss questions informally.

Classes are (tentatively) scheduled to begin in Feminist February, on Tuesdays from 4:30 - 6:00 Eastern Time (3:30 -5:00 Central, 1:30 -3:00 Pacific). The first date/ time is firm, so that we can meet together to discuss what timing will work best for the group. Other times/ dates are tentative because I expect to adjust the times, days, and weeks we meet based on class needs. 

Class Session #1, Tuesday, Feb 7:  Welcome and Introductions. What’s a Feminist Business? What’s generally known about Feminist Business History?  
By Tuesday, Feb 14:  Contribute your Reflection #3 to the course site, and comment on others’ contributions 
Office hour: Friday Feb, 10, 11 am -12 pm ET

Class Session #2, Tuesday, Feb 21:  How did Feminist Businesses understand their customers?  How did they craft and produce feminist products and services? How did they understand their connections with and responsibilities to their communities?
By Tuesday, Feb 28:  Contribute your Reflection #2 to the class site, and comment on others’ contributions 
Office hour: Friday, Feb 24, 11 am -12 pm ET

Class Session #3, Tuesday, March 7 How did feminist businesses organize themselves? How did they understand power, authority, coordination? How did they get stuff done?  How did they struggle with differences and conflicts amongst themselves?  How did they try to address classic challenges of feminism (e.g., racism, homophobia, profit vs politics)?
By Tuesday, March 14: Contribute your Reflection #3 to the course site 
Office hour: Friday, March 10, 11 am -12 pm ET

Our Feminist Pedagogy

I could organize this class like a regular graduate seminar, where the professor assigns readings which students complete and asks questions which students answer, and where the professor remains the sole expert on the topic.  Instead, I want to shake things up with a different format, a more feminist format that invites you participants to develop your own expertise by becoming co-creators of the class. 

This means that we’ll use a class format that’s often called the “flipped classroom”, where participants read and imbibe information before a class session, and then share, investigate, critique and draw consultations about this information collectively through group conversation during a class session. This structure helps to de-center the professor as the ‘only’ expert and also positions participants as co-creators of shared expertise. I will also follow other principles of feminist pedagogy (see this document on What to Expect in Workshops with Me).

I will coach participants in how to read the materials to find the information we need to lift out, and share some possible strategies for helping you capture your own insights and emotions as you read about these feminist business pioneers. I’ll do this not only by helping you shape your approach to the readings (e.g., where you focus, what you prioritize) but also by offering you some frameworks and templates to help you corral your learnings.

Know in advance that the published record of feminist businesses is not large and does not consistently follow conventional historical formats.  Expect to read materials across a variety of genres, including and not limited to memoirs, academic books, newspaper interviews, business school cases, contemporary non-fiction books (historical but not academic), masters theses, pamphlets, and republished archives.

You will also be encouraged to gather additional information about the businesses you chose to focus on. For example, if you choose to focus on feminist book publishers like Kitchen Table Press, you could search for interviews of employees or authors, find a podcast interview of Barbara Smith, reach out to someone at their spin-off community for Black women writers, Kitchen Table Literary Arts or select a poem that they published to give us a sense of their work.  I want you to look beyond the materials on the syllabus to add new readings, podcasts, visuals, or whatever else you find to enrich your (and our) learning.

Businesses and Industries We Can Focus On

With folks who express interest in the class, I will share a list of businesses and industries and related readings that we’ll use to focus our shared inquiry.  The feminist business segments and specific histories we can choose from include and are not limited to:

Bloodroot Restaurant (cooperative)
Kitchen Table Press (book publishing)
Adam’s Rib Magazine (periodical)
The Body Shop (bath & beauty products)
Olivia Records (music) 
Software Consultancies (F International)
Feminist Bookstores
African-American Beauty Parlors 
Feminist Credit Unions/ Feminist Economic Alliance

Participants are encouraged to suggest other organizations and segments if they can come up with enough resources to compose a history. 

Readings and Reading Strategy

If this were a university class and we all were full-time students, our reading list would not only be long but also would be something we were expected to complete. However, where “adult, activist learners” have families, communities and jobs, we have much less time to read and thus more pressure to skim readings superficially (or even skip some altogether). So, while I offer you a full syllabus with a full set of readings, we will not expect every participant to complete every reading. 

Instead we’ll practice “collective enoughness” (a concept from Hildy Gottlieb), where each participant chooses a particular business, a type of organization or a market sector (e.g., The Body Shop, restaurants, publishing). Each participant will complete the reading for that slice of feminist history with the intent of sharing what they learn with the rest of the group. 

I’ve organized the reading into clusters on subtopics, where the clusters will have approximately the same amount of content. Each participant will choose where s/he wants to develop personal expertise by choosing a cluster of readings that s/he’ll read closely.  While I hope that we can cover the range of clusters I’ve identified, if more than one person wants to cover a particular cluster we’ll just have more than one perspective on that material!

You’ll become well-versed in your chosen space of feminist business history and conversant across the other spaces.  I think this strategy will offer you more intellectual nourishment and more potential wisdom than what a more surface level, scattershot tasting menu might provide. And, as we all contribute what we’ve learned about our own area, we’ll create a broader range of shared knowledge.

You will receive the reading list as soon as you sign up, so that you can get a head start on your reading, on purchasing your materials from a feminist bookstore, or getting them from interlibrary Loan, etc.  

_______________________

Note that this class will focus on businesses, broadly defined as organizations that intend to support themselves through the sale of goods and services, whether these organizations are for-profits, not-for-profits, cooperatives, or shareholder-owned.  It will not address the history of feminist organizations oriented towards electoral politics or legal policies (such as NOW, National Coalition of Black Women, Ms. Foundation, etc.) even though these political organizations have a lot to tell us about how feminists work together. 

This class is designed for:

• Feminist Business coaches, mentors, consultants, and teachers who want to build on the wisdom of feminist businesses past and present, as they support feminist businesses of today and tomorrow 

• Feminist thinkers who want to explore how feminists put their ideas into commercial activity and practice 

• Feminist business people who want to connect their own work with the wisdom of a feminist business community

Together, our work will advance feminist business practice.

Creating a Foundation FBMC: Safety Pin Box example

Folks who’d like to see how the Feminist Business Model Canvas works for an actual business can download this fifteen page pdf. It runs through a complete example, for all twelve sections. Let me know what you think!

Safety Pin Box FBMC Foundation Example

New Jersey Women's Conference Talk: Re-Powering Empowerment

I’m excited to be giving a keynote talk at this year’s New Jersey Conference for Women (on October 29th). I’m going a little bit big here, with a presentation that will likely rile a few people up… because it’s challenging to hear a critique of Women’s Empowerment at a conference about… Women’s Empowerment.

But, as I argue in my talk, Women’s Empowerment is broken. After over fifty years of working to get women in business into positions of numerical parity, it’s becoming clear that progress is slow. Too slow. Not because women haven’t been working hard to advance in businesses, non-profits, and institutions, but because women have been taught a diminished, ineffectual kind of empowerment. This empowerment moves some women up the ladder (which can be great) but also leaves a whole lot of women behind (which is a very big problem).

NJWC Participants – Welcome! I hope you’re excited to re-power your own efforts to make change in the workplace, for yourself, for your colleagues, and for your company.

 In my talk I propose three specific steps that you can take to make your change efforts more like the real, transformational empowerment that can really make a difference. Conference Participants, as well as you readers, can download a pdf that recaps these three Re-Power Moves and explains why they work.

Click this link to download the pdf:
“Women’s Empowerment at Work is broken. Here’s how to fix it.”

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One thing I don’t address in this talk is where to start. 

In truth, it doesn’t matter where you start, but rather that you get started.  We change complex situations with actions anywhere in the system… so your efforts to change an unpleasant culture of meetings can start with changing the agenda, the location, the players, the expectations, and even the way you organize coffee and donuts.  Look for what you can change, where you are, with what you have. 

 Even the smallest change (coffee and donuts?) can make a difference and start things moving. Consider what might happen if at every weekly status meeting, folks took turns being the host. What if not just the same person, but a different one each time was responsible for getting everyone their coffee and making sure everyone had their favorite donut to eat? What if we took turns taking care of each other before, during, and after that weekly meeting? What if some folks – regardless of their gender, race, status, job title -- got their first opportunity to take care of others at work? What if those who always seem to find themselves taking care of others had the chance to be taken care of, themselves? 

 Only the very first step of “empowerment” is to “take charge” of your situation and change it to make it work better for you.  Once you have that general inclination to take change and to make a difference, you also need to ask yourself:

What shall I use my power to do?
What contribution can my efforts make, to benefit everyone?

The Problem of Equating Feminine and Feminist, and on “Embracing the Feminine”

Some Notes on the Problem of Equating Feminine and Feminist, and on “Embracing the Feminine”

April 19, 2021

 Here are some notes I wrote in advance of Lauren Elizabeth’s and my open conversation on “Feminine Vs. Feminist”. These were also part of what I shared on Instagram in March of 2021.
I have a full-on hour-long workshop presentation that goes into these issues in more detail, that’s part of my longer workshop: Feminism for Business: Foundational Concepts in Feminism 1 (aka Feminism 101). If you’d like to learn more about the Feminine vs Feminist conversation, please email me and I’d be happy to talk through the ideas together.

Also, look forward to Robin Joy’s podcast conversation with me on this topic, coming up in July.

*********************************

Don’t get caught in the white, western, patriarchal essentialist, misleading and inappropriately popular construction of “feminine” and “masculine”.

Consider that:

•       Most “feminine” models are sexist.

•       They reinforce a false binary

•       They are nearly always essentialist.

•       They force people into categories that are designed to be limiting and partial,
       rather than expansive and whole.

•       They exclude transpeople.

•       They make GNC people “wrong”.

•       Most feminine models are also inherently racist and imperialist

•       They’re build on patriarchal beliefs of White Western culture about what’s appropriate and desirable.

•       They are imposed on people of other cultures against their will and counter to their own indigenous values and organizing systems.

When we exalt Femininity, we are embracing the (false) binary as well as the essentialism that feminists are trying to transcend.

 Embracing “Femininity” blocks us from claiming qualities that are currently coded blue or ‘masculine’.

 We need to separate “female” and “femininity”.

 We need to celebrate what is female and female bodied, and do this without resorting to the rhetoric of femininity.   We can reclaim the power and the status of the female body without relying on the determinism & and the exclusivity of essentialism that “femininity” creates.

 We need to sort out what qualities in “feminine” are the ones related to

·        Female bodies

·        Qualities that are dismissed in patriarchal culture but sorely needed, e.g., Care and nurturing, Nature

·        Qualities that are part of being submissive and obedient (which includes those qualities about being “white” because these are the qualities used to suppress folks)

 We need to keep space for Trans and Femme people, as well as GNC people, to continue to use “femininity” while they figure out collectively how they can be “seen” as women without having to present themselves in stereotypically feminine and thus oppressive ways.

Why do so many well-intentioned people promote these models?

Why do so many purportedly feminist people fall for them?

 I feel like I've been ranting on this topic since forever.

 There are so. many. people. who are trying to do good things for women by promoting the idea that FEMININE THINGS ARE GREAT! It's not that feminine things aren't valuable, and it’s certainly important to 'reclaim' and 'revalue' all things that have been devalued (or falsely 'valorized) as being related to all that is natural, normal, and necessary about "women" (usually meaning 'female-sexed people') (in the old-fashioned, old-timey patriarchal way). There is no reason why nurturing, for example, shouldn't be important, and valued. And there is no reason why nurturing shouldn't be something we expect from and celebrate about people of any sex, any gender, any sexuality.

The problem is that too many people fail to 'unpack' what is really going on when we use concepts like feminine... and by using these concepts invoke the entire conceptual assemblage that generated them and supports them as systems of oppressive power. Yeah, that.

 You can check out a big example of why "feminine-ization" is such a misguided strategy of liberation... scan my blog post about "Transforming to a Feminist Economy", a talk I gave a year ago at the SheEO World Summit. Also, check out the fabulous skirt I'm wearing in the video.

There are more problems we bring in when we misuse "Feminine" as a way to promote the equality and agency of womxn, females, people of all bodes, and people of all presentations. ... Including:

This construction -- the whole categorization system-- reinforces a false binary! We only get two choices-- masculine or feminine -- and as with all binaries, one half is 'better' than the other.

Making it worse: These models are essentialist! You have to have a uterus and/ or a vulva to be 'feminine'. So if you are a trans woman or transman, you are excluded from every really 'being' feminine or masculine. And, if you're GNC-- gender non-conforming, well the name says it, right?                           

This shit's racist! Look at the list of qualities that count as feminine! (see page 35 of my book! Yes, that's a plug!). Those qualities only work to define delicate WHITE LADIES. In WHITE WESTERN CULTURE. If you are an indigenous woman on turtle island, you can't be "feminine" in the "right, White" ways. If you are a descendant of an enslaved African, sorry you can't be feminine in the "right, White" ways either. Because that's how 'femininity' works.

Like so many dominant frameworks, it never carries the 'markers' of the culture or worldview it comes from or supports, yet the Feminine/ Masculine system that most folks accept as ‘human’ is actually an IMPERIALIST framework that tells us to treat it as if it's universal. When it isn't. These imposed White Western categories of masculine and feminine push out whatever descriptions and idealized goals that indigenous cultures might have for their own styles of being.

Which brings me to the impact-oriented section:  

◦                Why do so many people promote "feminine" leadership, "feminine" economies", the "eternal Feminine goddess stuff available only to those who have vulvas", and any other use of feminine???

 ◦                Why are there so many people out there who think they are helping the feminist cause, when all they are doing is reinforcing WITHOUT EXAMINING this system?

 I believe it’s because (preliminary hypotheses):

 §  We have been diminished in society because we have these qualities. We know them to be valuable, and when we reclaim them we are at the same time reclaiming and proclaiming our own value as women and/or as female people.         

§  So many of these qualities are simply lovely to perform and lovely to experience from others. We want that loveliness back in our lives and our businesses… and we want it in the light and not in the shadow. 

§  We want these qualities valued for the work they take, the work they perform, and the value they generate for all of us.

§  We generally don’t have a sophisticated-enough analysis to recognize when this ‘reclaiming of’ and ‘returning to’ femininity becomes reinforcing of larger patriarchal and oppressive patterns.

§  We haven’t learned how to reclaim these features because they’ve been female-ized and women-sized while at the same time embracing them as irrelevant to female-ness and woman-ness. … we don’t know how to detach them and value them outside the gender binary and outside the gender hierarchy.

Feminist Business Values: A Quick Introduction

When we talk about putting “feminist values” into practice in our businesses, which specific values are we actually talking about?

There’s also no definitive list of feminist values and feminist principles, and no ‘Feminist Authority’ to establish a common set that we all might use. Feminism is an expansive and complex view of how the world ought to be, an open-ended view with room for many different perspectives, so this lack of an authoritative core definition is not a mistake but instead an important feature of feminism. 

And yet in order to write about feminist businesses and build tools that help us practice feminism at work, we need a simple, direct definition of the feminist principles that guide how we work together in organizations.  So, I set out to make one for us.

In a much longer piece of writing, I describe the scholarly, abductive methods I used to create a working set of feminist principles and qualities that I ultimately proposed we use in feminist entrepreneurship. Shown here in this diagram, the five values of Equality, Agency, Whole Humanness, InterIndependence, and Generativity work together to help us create business systems that support flourishing. (I describe these values and how they work a bit more in Chapter 3 of my book, Feminism: A Key Idea for Business.)

If you’d like to download an image of these Values for Flourishing Feminist Business, along with a brief definition of each, please click here.

Six Ways to Declare Your Business's Connection to the Feminist Community

How do we recognize that a business is working to be accountable to the feminist community?  If “connection to the feminist community” is one of seven dimensions that defines a feminist business, what can we look for to see this connection?

In my recent PathMinding workshop on Feminist Business Accountability, I identified six declarations that every feminist business needs to make to extend itself into its feminist community.  Through these declarations, feminist businesses show themselves to other feminist businesses and feminist communities, by showing their audiences that the business is taking responsibility for its feminist practice. And, these declarations help others (e.g., non-feminists) develop a better understanding of what it means to be a feminist/ business. 

Six Ways to Declare Your Connection to the Feminist Community

1. Defining The Feminism We Practice 

2. Unfolding Our Feminist Legacy & Naming Our Current Community

3. Displaying Our Social Justice Commitments

4. Clarifying Our Organizational Values and Principles 

5. Territory Acknowledgments

6. Using Inclusive language

1. Defining the Feminism We Practice 

Feminist businesses don’t take it for granted that everyone knows what they mean when they call themselves “feminist”.  Instead, they become very deliberate and forthcoming about where and how they position themselves in the feminist spectrum.

There are many different ways to define feminism, and many different experiences and praxitional* legacies that feminisms can foreground.  For example, your company can foreground Indigenous Feminisms, anti-racist feminisms, Black feminisms, Liberal feminisms, and so on.  Companies and individuals choose their feminist positions based on their contexts, their industries, their own identities, and even current events and trends. 

When a business presents itself as feminist in a way that resonates with our own understandings and definitions of feminism/s, we know they are part of “our” community and we can look to create a relationship with them.  And, if their feminism doesn’t ring true to our definitions of what it means to practice feminism, then we know what to expect of them if we interact with them and what we can avoid if we do not engage with them.  

These are many legitimate feminist perspectives, and a few perspectives that call themselves feminist that are absolutely not feminist (e.g., libertarian ‘feminism’, trans-exclusionary ‘feminism’, White ‘feminism’).   (Some faux feminist positions are irredeemable — it’s impossible to imagine how they’d ever learn their way into an actually feminist position. However, sometimes organizations and people with these faux feminist positions are not fixed here but will soon be moving away from these positions as they learn more about actual feminisms. We can always hope.)

Regardless of the particular feminism(s) your business foregrounds, you should declare what feminism(s) you are using. This way we can recognize your efforts and determine whether and how we can connect (support, offer criticism, etc) with you. 

 2. Unfolding Our Feminist Legacies & Communities 

Noting our feminist legacies and current communities is the feminist business’s way of acknowledging, crediting, and thanking their teachers and their influences.  Noting legacies also helps create a richer, more complex context within which we can understand who they are. This context can be really important, since the simpler descriptions we offer in our definitions may not be enough. For example, stating that your business practices “intersectional feminism” doesn’t always tell folks what they need to know and what you fully mean. Moreover, everyday business communications are usually succinct (almost terse) and so these won’t always convey a lot of information about a business’s positions.

And, while many of our feminist sources, experiences, and influences might not be easy to convey in a short statement or even in longer text (e.g., 150 words), these influences do show actually do show up in our practices, our feelings, and our visions.  We want to give people a way to recognize these influences when they show up, if we can.

In scholarship, it’s common to add a (Name, Date) citation when you first mention a construct or conversation that was originated and developed by a specific person or community. Because scholars work in ecosystems/ conversations/ communities, usually all the other folks in the conversation “get” the reference. They recognize and bring in the insights and critiques that are related to the construct and the conversation. They understand the concept’s provenance.

You’ll sometimes see feminist business writers like myself, or Kelly Diels, or Helena Liu use this (Harquail, 2016) form of citation since we’re often talking across the academic/practitioner divide and we know that academics will recognize this citation strategy. But, in everyday business communication, be that through Zoom, blogging, social media posting, or workshopping, it can feel weird to add a formal citation when you introduce terms, language, and arguments developed by others or that you’re deliberately drawing from. In these situations, if you’ve already shared your legacies and your current communities, you’ve shown others where your ideas are grounded, giving them a deeper sense of the context behind your statements.

Legacies are the individuals, communities, experiences, and works (books, articles, talks) that have influenced your growth and that are part of your past. For me, my feminist legacies are the individual professors I worked with in graduate school, the businesses I worked for, the communities and movements I was part of. They all still influence me actively, but the direct contact was in the past (hence, ‘legacy’).  Legacies can also be connected to each other and be understood as a lineage.  When I cite Taylor Cox and Stella Nkomo, you can expect that Stacy Blake-Beard is also part of that conversation, since all of these scholars influenced each other.   

We also have legacies that occur in real time, in the connections that exist (that we create) between our work and the people and entities whose work influences ours right now. I think of these as more like live hyperlinks. I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting bell hooks, yet I connect with her work in real time when I go to my bookshelf and read a passage from her latest work.  Similarly, I feel like I have an ongoing debt, like an open bar tab, when it comes to Barb Orser’s work. Although we don’t work together directly on shared projects, and although I’ve never taken a class from Barb, my work always refers to and depends on hers in real time. 

And, I think of my actual ideas— my articulations of concepts, explanations of relationships, the tools I make, the workshops I hold, as connected with the ideas that Petra Kassun-Mutch and Kelly Diels promote. Their ideas and mine are always interacting with each other, and they circulate within and among our related work. So too does the flow of ongoing learning/practice / insight from within the Feminist Enterprise Commons and The Gathering, feminist business communities stewarded by Petra Kassun-Mutch and Kelly Diels, respectively. Between my work and theirs, between my work and these communities, I feel a close, ongoing connection. 

Listing your business’s legacies, links, and communities tells us a bit more about the provenance of your position. It gives us a sense of the analysis behind and underneath the words you use.  Your current community tells us who you are working with, learning with, and advocating with now. Knowing both your feminist past and your feminist present gives us a sense not only of where you and your positions come from but also tells us who your business feels closely responsible to, and thus to whom you hold your business accountable. For example, if you mention the Feminist Enterprise Commons as part of your community, we might expect you to respond to a criticism from them of your business’s positions. In contrast, if the Boy Scouts of the USA criticized your business, we might pay less attention because you have already shared they are not part of your community and not an enterprise to which you feel accountable. 

For an introduction to some of the conversations that are foundational to my work, check out this list of resources from my post on Transforming to a Feminist Economy.

3. Displaying Our Social Justice Commitments

Feminist Businesses also make public statements about their social justice commitments. These can include simple statements, longer blog posts, recaps of donations, videos and timelines of allied actions, and more. 

We saw a lot of feminist businesses post about their anti-Black racism efforts in the summer of 2020.  More recently, we’ve seen them state their commitments to the Asian American community, or proclaiming that “sex work is work”. It’s important to note that not all of these displays of commitment are new. Many of these represent long term, ongoing commitments to particular allied movements. Other statements may be more superficial or time-bound, if the movement or issue isn’t part of the business’s “advocacy portfolio” (Harquail, 2021). While feminist businesses can’t work on every important anti-oppression effort, every feminist business must have some active anti-oppression work beyond its own main focus.  Often this will be anti-oppression work that doesn’t “seem like” it’s gender related (e.g., Fight for Fifteen) even though it obviously helps women, females, and all people. 

These social justice commitments help businesses make explicit that the feminisms a business advocates includes acting to end all oppressions, not just those that (seem like) they are for ‘women and girls only’. These statements of commitments also help others (e.g., non-feminists) develop a better understanding of what it means to be a feminist business. 

4. Clarifying Our Organizational Values and Principles 

Listing organizational values and principles is a classic business move. You’ll see it at Unilever, McKinsey, and ExxonMobile, not just at a feminist business. Conventional businesses list their values as a matter of course, to help establish themselves as good (or better) companies, and as part of making their vision- missions public.  

That said, when you look at the values and principles of feminist businesses, you’ll notice two things. First, you’ll see that the values themselves are often different from those of the status quo corporations. Feminist businesses use values like “justice”, “equity” “anti-oppression”and “democratic”. Second, feminist businesses will also often go beyond corporate-speak boilerplate to use language that’s specific to certain social justice movements, such as “permaculture” or “regenerative” or “body autonomy”. They may even add more information that shows us how they are demonstrating these principles. (Aisle offers great examples of this practice).

Some feminist businesses will also be clear about who their work is for and not for. They’ll mention explicitly that they aren’t interested in working with companies that build weapons, steal personal data, or promote diet culture. So, if that fat-shaming nutraceuticals startup wasn’t already clear that they don’t share your worldview, the ‘who we don’t work with’ statement will send them somewhere else to find their marketing, their packaging, or their office space.

5. Territory Acknowledgments

Feminist businesses acknowledge the traditional stewards of the territories where they and their employees are located. Territory acknowledgements can be brief or in-depth. They can format a recommended basic format (e.g., We acknowledge that we live and work on the unceeded, ancestral homelands of <these indigenous nations>…). Or they can be more freestyle, reflecting the journey of the business into the acknowledgement and reconciliation process. These territory acknowledgements also often include information on what a territory acknowledgement is, where to learn more about them, and how to begin an acknowledgement process for the reader’s own businesses. 

On my own website I have a short, broad territory acknowledgment. Then, at the start of each meeting or workshop I offer an expanded territory acknowledgment that shares what I’ve most recently learned and done regarding reconciliation.

Territory acknowledgements are important because, as Kelly Diels always notes at the start of her workshops, “None of us is born into a world that’s free of oppression”. A territory acknowledgement literally and figuratively grounds a business in its recognition that nearly everywhere we are participating in and benefiting from some kind of privilege, and that we have to be deliberate about dismantling privilege right where we are. 

6. Using Inclusive Language

Feminist businesses make a point of using inclusive language. They want both to be inclusive and also to make including language the norm and not the exception.  For example, a business may be very explicit about serving “women, marginalized men, and all people”, or “women and people who menstruate” or “feminists of all genders”. With these constructions, businesses deliberately try to avoid the trap of inclusive language that is actually exclusive, the way that the term “women and people of color” excludes women of color from the term “women”. They’ll use language like “cisgender” or “neurodivergent” or whatever language feels updated and maximally inclusive. The point with this language, again, is not only to be specific but also to show others how they might be both specific and inclusive.

To be sure, there is some disagreement about which words are the most liberatory.  Some businesses decide to use the terms that (they believe) best reflect what the people who these worlds refer to might choose for themselves (e.g., Apsaalooke and not “Crow”, queer and not homosexual).  Some businesses choose the terms that are the most accepted in their location, while acknowledging these terms can still be “problematic”. In the US, for example, it’s mostly fine to use the term BIPOC, while in Canada that’s less popular. Similarly, in the US folks often refer to Native People, while in Canada the term “Native” is out, and the more specific appellation “Indigenous, First Nation, and Metis People” is up to date ).

Feminist businesses will also add the pronouns that their members use, when they list out members names on their About Us or Our Team pages. At the very least, noting members’ pronouns shows that the business is attending to the ways that individual people want to be seen, which is a key element of feminist values like agency and equality.  Feminist businesses may use the pronoun “they” all the time, whether singular or plural, when they are referring to a woman, a man, or a gender-non-conforming/ gender-expressive person.

Similarly to how feminist businesses define the term feminist, we also see them being specific about who they include in the category “women” and even how they spell the word women (wimmyn, womxn). Historically, these non-traditional misspellings have been used to eliminate the word “men” from the category label for folks who aren’t men. These spelling have also historically been used to “queer” or problematize the word “women” to challenge the very notion of that some other authority beyond the people/ women/mxn/myn themselves gets to construct the category they are put into. (Category construction is a power move, so naming and defining your own categories can be liberating.)  In my Introduction to Feminisms keynote at the 2017 EFF, folks were very excited when I discussed the concept of women as a political category and offered my own definition of who I was referring to when I used the term “women”. It unlocks a lot of agency for us when we realize that we are free to establish and define our own terms and our own inclusive categorizations. 

In many cases, territory acknowledgements and inclusive language can look like superficial “virtue signaling”, intended to show that the business is up to speed on the latest diversity trend. While it’s true that some of these practices are relatively new (land acknowledgments around for a decade, pronouns for about five years), they reflect a new and recent understanding of what it means to be against oppression and pro feminist. Both practices are things we are learning how to do — we are learning how to make them part of our normal ways of doing business. So, while they may seem trendy or sticky right now, consider that in the 1980’s it was weird to talk about a company’s vision and mission statement but now it’s a move that is not only normal but also expected. 

Examples in the Wild

I’ve seen examples of these six types of declaration all around the interwebs, with some of the very best examples being from people who’ve taken classes in Feminist Marketing from Kelly Diels. Kelly teaches several of these declarations as basic feminist branding because they not only tell others who we are, but also they are part and parcel of feminist “culture making” in the online world.  They are important examples of feminist practices for declaring and connecting who we are, what we care about, and how we are trying to be more feminist as businesses. 

I know I should add links and images to this post to give you examples of businesses doing this well… and I will at some point. For now, I’m 2,700 words into this and ready to pause. For now. Please keep in mind that these online declarations of feminism are one of the several steps that feminist businesses need to take to connect themselves to the feminist community and make themselves accountable to feminism as a collective practice.  I’ve talked about this at length in my workshops on Feminist Accountability Practices, and I’ll be unfolding these ideas in future posts.  

*praxitional is a word I made up to refer to ‘things related to praxis”. Praxis is the activity of blending action/ practice and theory to figure out how to transform the world around you. It is the product of critical feminist consciousness. Also, my spell checker didn’t recognize the word “unceeded”. Hmm.

See Also:

What defines a feminist business?

Need a Quick Introduction to Feminist Beliefs?

Another excerpt from the introduction to Feminism: A Key Idea for Business.

This looks like a ‘light’ list of ideas— but they are actually pretty significant. Folks often expect at the start of a workshop or presentation that I can explain feminism with just a slide or two… alas, not so easy. But with a little reading and thinking you can begin to grok just how transformational, and promising, feminist thinking can be.

Here’s the link to download A Brief Introduction to Feminist Beliefs.

How do Feminist Views and Conventional Views of Business differ from each other? PDF

For insight about how feminist businesses and business people differ from conventional ones, it helps to clarify how conventional business view the world, and then compare this to how feminist businesses view the world. I’ve put together a five-page pdf that shares this comparison — an excerpt from my book, Feminism: A Key Idea for Business.

Here’s the pdf: Comparing Conventional and Feminist Views of Business

F.A.Q. about Feminism, Business, and Entrepreneurship

I put together this six-page F.A.Q. to help folks who come to my workshops and talks with a lot of questions which, if answered swiftly, would let them dive deeper into my presentations themselves.

This FAQ answers questions like:

Q1:  What are Feminist Businesses?

Q2:  What do Feminist Businesses do that’s different from what other socially progressive businesses do?

Q3.  How does Feminist Business fit into this larger conversation of progressive organizational movements?

Q4:  What are Feminist Business Practices?

Q5.  What is Entrepreneurial Feminism?

Q6:  What is a Feminist Business Model?

Q7:  What is the Feminist Business Model Canvas?

Download the pdf here.

Feminist Workshop Practices: What you can expect from me

As an advocate of feminism and as a teacher, I hold myself responsible to teach not in a conventional way but rather in a way that demonstrates feminist values.

Here’s a light list of a few ways that I practice feminist pedagogy in the workshops that I hold. This list should give you a sense of what you can expect when you join us.

Topics:  I choose topics based on the needs and interests I hear from my community of feminist entrepreneurs and business people, as well as from the questions that are haunting me about how to practice feminism in business and at work.

Design: I make sure that I have more than enough material to offer participants, at the same time that I promise to start and end on time even if we “don’t cover everything”. 

Disclosure: I try to be clear, explicit, and direct about the expectations I have for what we’ll cover and how we’ll learn, so that you have a good sense of what I’m promising and so that you are ready to step into the learning experience.  I make clear in advance if I’m intending to record and share the session, and with whom. I get participants explicit consent and also offer you a process for redacting anything that ends up being uncomfortable to share.

Prework: I usually offer some kind of pre-reading or pre-work to help you step gently into the topic, and also to help you start thinking about what you want to learn and what questions you have.

Flexibility: As we move through the material and experiences I’ve designed, I’m ready, willing, and able to adjust the focus, pace, and depth based on real-time feedback from participants about what you need and where your interests are moving.

Co-creating the Space: I always start the workshops with activities through which we co-create our space. This includes making introductions, sharing pronouns, sharing land acknowledgements, and sharing a bit about ourselves. This also, importantly, includes crafting and agreeing to principles for how we will interact with each other.

Experience : I want participants to feel welcome, comfortable, curious, encouraged, and brave in the space we create together. I check with the group at regular intervals during the workshop to make sure the climate feels constructive for everyone. 

Presence:  Although I like to have every participant show their face when we introduce ourselves, from then on participants are able to manage the intensity of their presence (e.g., with or without video, taking personal breaks, signing off early) as long as you do it in a way that’s kind to other participants. I make zoom recordings and or transcripts available to folks who have to miss parts of a workshop.

Learning from ‘authority’ — me, plus you:  As an experienced scholar, teacher, and person in the world I have some expertise that (conventionally) grants me some authority as a someone who knows what she’s talking about. I usually do. I also do my best to stay in a learning posture myself, to be open to new ideas and perspectives, and to recognize when my knowledge is limited or not so relevant. I also expect that each participant comes with their own authority, based on their lived experience, their professional expertise, and their worldview. Our workshops are places where we share insights and engage with each other, not where I drop knowledge down on you. 

Voice: I aim to facilitate a space and a dynamic where each participant can exercise some choices, some agency, and especially to voice your own experiences, concerns, and questions.

Community:  I am to create a feeling of community during our workshops together. I also invite participants to connect with each other and to join our ongoing feminist community, since we learn better through our relationships with others. 

Reflection together/ Reflexivity: Reflecting on information and experience is a critical practice for developing wisdom. Throughout a workshop, we have invitations to reflect in real time on what we are learning. We recognize and examine our own and each others’ assumptions, biases, and positionally. 

Group Accountability: Towards the end of each workshop, participants and I reflect in real time on how well we met our own expectations and followed our own norms, and what we might do better the next time.

Reflections after the workshop:  To develop your own wisdom from a workshop and also to make time to connect the workshop to your ongoing practices, after each workshop I offer participants a set of reflection questions. These often ask not only for you to make personal connections, but also for you to consider how you experienced power dynamics and emotions, how you recognized oppression and feminist values, and how the workshop brought up issues that matter to you.

Taking your learning forward, and Feminist Citation Practices: I hope that “what you learn, leaves with you”, and that the ideas you pick up in our work together moves forward to influence how you think about and practice feminism and business. I hope that you share publicly what you learn with me / what we learn together, as you navigate through social media, your own writing and teaching, and your own practice.

It would mean a lot to me if you would share ideas from my workshops with a citation back to me — either a link to my website, to my twitter/IG/LinkedIn accounts, to my book page on Amazon, and so on. I love it when folks share things like “I learned about/ I was first exposed to / I found myself challenging … Kyriarchy, and its relationship to intersectionality, in a workshop by @cvharquail”.

One weird thing about teaching is that ‘the better you teach, the less likely folks feel like they learned anything from you’. Folks will think they learned it themselves. Another challenge is that when material is synthesized well and unfolded thoughtfully, it’s often hard to tell that someone (in this case, me) had to add a lot of expertise and work to make it smooth and straightforward. Ideas look patently obvious, there for the taking, when in fact they were excavated through hard (often invisible) scholarly labor. So, an important part of challenging the kyriarchy is making feminist learnings and legacies clear. We honor the work that goes into putting ideas together, and we mention where we learned things, so our pathways might offer other people examples to follow.

Citing each other also shows that feminists develop ideas, share ideas, and influence the world. Change doesn’t just happen, just as ideas don’t just happen. They come from us working, together.

Bringing wisdom back to the community: I invite and expect participants to share their feedback — not only about the workshop process but also about the workshop content — so that wisdom can get cycled back into the community. And also, so that I can improve the workshop for the next time and keep learning myself. 

Filling out a survey form to offer some anonymous feedback is actually a feminist business practice and an important contribution to our ongoing work.

Honoring our Feminist Legacy: I aim to cite my sisters and siblings in my workshop materials and in my presentations. In most cases, I try to share specific resources from authors/ activists whose work informs mine and whose work might support participants’ next steps. When it’s hard to list all the references (especially after 40 years of reading and learning feminist & business stuff!), I’ll offer a few resources to indicate key folks I’ve learned from and where you can go for more learning.

When I can do better at any of these goals, please know that I’m open to your feedback and suggestions.

This is a list-in-progress, so if you think I should add something, let me know.