What if leadership wasn’t about leading, but listening—deeply, collectively, and with care for the more-than-human world? As systems unravel and crises stack—climate collapse, racial injustice, toxic politics—traditional leadership frameworks are showing their limits. At Flamingo Collective, we’ve seen how feminist leadership offers something different: not a set of answers, but a way of being-with complexity.
By Joanna Maycock, March 2025
This is a story of five interwoven dimensions—power, care, inclusion, collaboration, courage—and the practices we’re exploring to bring them to life. Not as a perfect framework, but as a living, relational invitation.
At the Flamingo Collective, we hold space for the messy middle—where feminist leadership is re-learned in the company of others, and transformation is always relational.At The Flamingo Collective, we’re not just theorising these principles—we’re living them. Through our retreats, coaching cohorts, and organisational culture labs, we cultivate the soil where feminist leadership can root, sprout, and sometimes get gloriously messy.
In recent years, the concept of feminist leadership has emerged as a powerful framework to address the challenges faced by diverse women leaders in civil society. However, its potential extends far beyond individual leadership; it offers a blueprint for unleashing profound societal transformation. As we confront complex and interlocking crises all rooted in patriarchy : such as climate change, systemic racism, economic inequality, and gender-based violence, traditional leadership models fall short. These pressing issues demand new ways of leading, where the focus shifts from heroic, individualistic approaches to relational and collaborative practices. Feminist leadership, by challenging the status quo, has the potential to contribute to systemic change, promoting more equitable and just systems.
Feminist leadership offers a transformative approach to leadership that is urgently needed in our world today. It is rooted in intersectional feminism and challenges the traditional notions of power and leadership, advocating for a more inclusive, collaborative, and caring approach. By embracing feminist leadership, we can begin to address the complex and interconnected challenges facing our society, from climate change to systemic inequality. This framework not only empowers individual leaders but also has the potential to drive systemic change, creating a more just and equitable world for all. As we continue to experiment, connect, and learn, feminist leadership will undoubtedly play a crucial role in shaping the future of leadership, organising and social change.
The Origins and Evolution of Feminist Leadership
Feminist leadership as a concept has its roots in the Global South, where women’s organisations have been at the forefront of documenting and developing this approach. CREA, a feminist women’s organisation, has been instrumental in shaping feminist leadership, with thought leaders like Srilatha Batliwala playing a crucial role. In a recent conversation I had with Srilatha, she defined feminist leadership as a process of “transforming the culture and practice of power—within individuals, collectives, and organisations. It’s about mirroring feminist visions of social justice in our daily practices, even in messy, conflict-ridden realities.”
What makes Feminist Leadership feminist
Feminist leadership is a radical departure from traditional power and leadership models. It is an experimental and evolving practice that we must build and learn from together. Importantly, feminist leadership is not exclusively for women; it can be practiced by anyone committed to feminism. It is not based on an essentialist notion that women are inherently better leaders, but rather on a commitment to challenging patriarchy, achieving gender equality, and advancing systemic change.
I have developed these five key components that underpin my vision for feminist leadership:
1. Power: Shifting from coercive to transformative power.
Feminist leadership reimagines power as a force for collective good rather than domination. It seeks to build collective power to drive movements and coalitions for change, recognising that power is relational and dynamic.
At the Flamingo Collective, we hold space for power to be re-imagined —particularly in retreats where women leaders pause long enough to feel the cost of performing power alone. Through embodied practices and collective inquiry, we explore how power moves through us and between us—not just as responsibility, but as rhythm. Our leadership coaching and organisational work help teams locate their relational power, not just their positional authority.
2. Care: for self, others, society, and the planet at the center, not the afterthought.
Feminist leadership places care at the centre of leadership, not as an afterthought. This includes care for self, which is often overlooked, especially by women leaders who face the double burden of leadership and care responsibilities.
Radical care is not something we teach about—it’s something we practice, imperfectly and intimately. In Flamingo’s seasonal circles and rest-focused retreats, care is both container and curriculum. We invite leaders to dismantle the heroic posture that says “care comes after the work,” and to instead ask: what kind of world emerges when care is the work?
3. Inclusion: Beyond Metrics to Relational Integrity
This refers to actively working to dismantle barriers, uproot bias and discrimination and celebrate diversity to build truly inclusive cultures. Feminist leadership is intersectional and deeply concerned with equality, and justice for all. It demands accountability and promotes systems that ensure zero tolerance for harassment or discrimination.
Inclusion in Flamingo is not a checklist or branding exercise—it’s a commitment to ongoing relational repair. In our work with organisations, we invite deep dives into how systemic inequity lives in the culture, not just the policies. We support leaders to sit with discomfort, metabolise harm, and experiment with more just and liberatory ways of relating. Our training programmes centre intersectional wisdom and invite accountable experimentation—not perfection.
4. Collaboration: Composting Competition
Moving away from competitive to deeply collaborative working models. Feminist leadership challenges the competitive nature of traditional leadership and organisational models, advocating for more collaborative practices both within and across organisations.
Collaboration is often romanticised, but we’ve found that true co-creation requires unlearning—especially the scarcity patterns and defensiveness that many of us internalise from traditional workplaces. At Flamingo, we hold facilitated dialogues and constellation practices that help teams practice interdependence with integrity—where conflict is welcomed as signal, not failure. And in our retreats, we model collaboration not just in content, but in structure and facilitation.
5. Courage: Stretching into the unknown
Feminist leadership requires the courage to challenge and shift toxic, outdated systems in our organisations and society. The bravery to confront and transform entrenched power structures, advocating for systemic change at every level.
Courage doesn’t always look like protest or podiums. Often, it looks like trembling honesty. Like staying in a hard conversation. Like making space for grief when a team is burnt out. Flamingo’s leadership practice groups and political education labs support leaders to cultivate the kind of courage that doesn’t dominate—but disrupts and regenerates. The kind of courage that listens to the land, the body, and the tension in the room.
Figure 1: The Five Dimensions of Feminist Leadership Joanna Maycock
These five elements emerged over years of practice, witnessing, and shared experiments —with women leaders in retreat circles, exhausted organisers in staff trainings, and the vibrant kinship of the Flamingo Collective. Each dimension continues to evolve through these shared spaces.
The Practice and Potential of Feminist Leadership
The practice of feminist leadership is not a fixed or linear process; it is an ongoing journey of learning and unlearning. It is crucial to recognise that implementing feminist leadership requires significant cultural and structural changes within organisations. While many women leaders and organisations have made strides in introducing more participatory and less hierarchical decision-making models, these efforts often lack the necessary support and resources to be fully effective.
Over the past decade, many organisations dedicated to social and environmental transformation have been inspired by feminist leadership principles and have begun incorporating them into their practices. One of the pioneering global organisations in this regard is ActionAid International. In 2018, ActionAid introduced its “Feminist Leadership Principles,” which focus on shifting the leadership paradigm from coercive power to transformative power. According to ActionAid, patriarchal leadership reinforces power dynamics of dominance and subordination, making power a zero-sum game. In contrast, feminist leadership seeks to transform this dynamic, advocating for “power with others” rather than “power over others.”
Incorporating feminist leadership into traditional spaces of political power is also important, and there are promising developments in this area, particularly within new municipalist movements like Barcelona En Comú and initiatives such as Fearless Cities and Feminise Politics Now! These movements offer valuable insights into how feminist leadership can be applied in political contexts to create more just and equitable systems.
Why Flamingo?
The flamingo walks in water and sky. It stands in tension, in beauty, in vulnerability. It lives in community, and moves with grace even in murky terrain.
That’s the metaphor that holds us.
Our work encompasses support to individuals and organisations to navigate the practice of feminist leadership through developing organisational culture statements to anchor transformation of leadership; through bringing feminist leadership practices into management training; through developing and supporting women’s networks and through staff retreats and workshops.
If these threads resonate, come walk with us. Flamingo’s next retreat, training, or circle might be where your next stretch begins. Get in touch!