Read: Management & leadership 8: Feminist leadership

Some people claim that feminist leadership and good leadership are synonym. In a sense it is, as long as the beholder also claims that feminism, considered as a set of values is THE good set of values.

Others think that feminist leadership is a kind of contradiction in terms, feminism being contrary to power and feminist equality contrary to leadership itself.

On behalf of the subject we renounce both positions, and define feminist leadership as leadership congruent with feminist principles.

Leadership is commonly characterised by traits, skills or competences like passion and vision, the talent to relate and to commit, originality and courage, credibility, trust and empowerment.

Leaders are considered to be people who have an independent personality, a passion for the world and the society and for what has to be changed, and who are skilled to act accordingly.

Reading the recent literature on leadership these three components are frequently mentioned:

skills:

• Learning ability, dealing positively with criticism, curiosity, receptiveness or susceptibility
• Empowerment, recruiting competent people, making use of diversity, creating conditions for empowerment, delegating
• Cooperating, networking, oriented at stakeholders, connecting and attuning, not being defensive, oriented at internal cooperation

norms and values

• Guiding vision, a forceful own vison, being inspiring, capacity to conceptualise, transforming ideas into action
• Open engagement, visible emotional involvement, passion and compassion, commitment with people, societal involvement
• Being a moral authority, actively putting on morality, being recognised as a moral authority, applying moral standards

personal characteristics

• Locus of control, internal locus of control, self-knowledge, self consciousness, autonomy
• Credibility, congruity, being trustworthy, authenticity
• Emotional intelligence, able to handle own emotions, introspection, optimism, empathy

A lot of the recent literature describes these elements as desirable for leaders, but several empiric studies show that of these three categories only the middle one, the norms and values really discriminate between leaders and managers.

In other words: in many aspects good leaders are like good managers: in terms of their personality traits and in terms of skills. But leaders, in comparison with managers, seem to be exceptionally gifted with an own value system, that impregnates everything they think, feel and do.

In these terms feminist leaders are like good managers if they have some of the above mentioned personality traits or skills, but they are really leaders if they have a strong and well developed set of (amongst others feminist) values, which colours their thought and actions.

Probably some discussion will exist on the question which these feminist values exactly are.

Just to start such a discussion we sum up some options:

Feminist leadership should be oriented to a different arrangement of the human order: re-distribution of power and re-distribution of responsibilities. Fighting societal inequalities. Changing economic and social structures, beginning with transformation of psychic structures. Bridging personal freedom with collective freedom. Aiming at cooperation instead of competition. 

In feminist leadership equality, mutuality and absence of sex role behaviour should be visible. Feminist leadership should promote (or even rehabilitate) emotionality and the values of relationships. Feminist leadership renounces external paraphernalia of power and their influence (read: management and leadership 7: power).