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Coady Institute
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Antigonish, NS
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This study is part of the Engage: Women’s Empowerment and Active Citizenship project and is funded by Global Affairs Canada.
FEMINISM IN PRACTICE:
CULTIVATING FEMINIST
LEADERSHIP WITH ENGAGE PROGRAM PARTICIPANTS
REPORT OF FINDINGS
ENGAGE COLLECTIVE RESEARCH GROUP
OCTOBER 2025
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
ENGAGE: Women’s Empowerment and Active Citizenship is a 6.5-year initiative co-designed by Coady Institute and five partner organizations in India, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Bangladesh, and Haiti. Coady is a convenor, bringing these partners together in ways that they can share their expertise, learn from each other, and collectively explore new approaches and tools that strengthen their programs.
The project works primarily to support the leadership capacity of informal sector women in addressing key issues they are facing. This includes the future of work faced by women; engaging women in community governance; women’s leadership and feminist approaches; young women as entrepreneurs and agents of community change; and asset-based approaches to reducing urban and rural poverty through economic development. Funded through Global Affairs Canada, the approach ensures that local communities, and in particular women, exercise ownership and control over development initiatives that respond to their realities and priorities.
Integrated into the project is a learning agenda, offering space and support for partners to explore a range of research and learning priorities. This five-country collective study’s objective is to articulate expressions of feminist practice by ENGAGE program participants. The study is framed with a literature review. Key questions and interview tools were co-developed amongst the partners.
Feminist leadership’s complexity is well articulated by program participants. They express the meaning of compassion and gender and social justice in feminist leadership along with the importance of addressing exclusion due to patriarchy or other discrimination. Women and men interviewed also note how men and boys can play a part in promotion of social justice. Women are also clear on how strong individual power can lead to shared power.
Women point to several areas where they demonstrate enhanced leadership and participation. They share that they are better business managers and social entrepreneurs after participating in the programs. In so doing they thrive by leveraging approaches, earnings, skills, and knowledge. Women state that they have taken on community leadership roles and sought to contribute to community well-being. In some cases, women participants have taken up employment with local government offices or organized with others to mobilize and advocate. Seeking equality and claiming of rights is something women see as a critical outcome of their participation in ENGAGE.
INTRODUCTION
ENGAGE: Women’s Empowerment and Active Citizenship is a 6.5-year Global Affairs Canada (GAC)-funded initiative co-designed by the Coady Institute, St. Francis Xavier University, in Canada and five partner organizations: Self Employed Women’s Organization (SEWA), in India; Organization for Women in Self Employment (WISE), in Ethiopia; Tanzania Gender Networking Programme (TGNP); Christian Commission for Development in Bangladesh (CCDB); and Centre Haïtien du Leadership et de l’Excellence (CLE), in Haiti. Partners share a commitment to advance poverty reduction and gender equality by enhancing women’s capacity to participate in the social and economic life of their communities. Key to this approach is a process that supports women to remove the barriers that hold them back from achieving their rights. While each partner works toward achieving these overarching goals through differing program activities that align with their organizational approaches and contexts, they are all exploring and adopting partnership practices, development approaches, and ways of working grounded in feminism and aligned with Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP).
One element of ENGAGE’s feminist approach is integrating a learning agenda that is peer-based and reciprocal, characterised by co-creation and co-learning among program partners on issues related to women’s community leadership development and resilience, women’s political and economic participation, community and organizational understandings of feminism (and how it is practiced through their work), feminist organizing and movement building, and influence on policy and practice. Each partner has contributed to knowledge production in these areas through action research projects and learning innovations specific to their contexts and communities. Partners have also shared learnings from their practice and research through partner knowledge exchanges and educational offerings, such as workshops and courses.
To explore the presence and practice of feminism in the project, partners decided to undertake a collective research study, drawing insights from the experiences of participants in their programs. Through the study, partners sought to explore:
1. the extent to which the program’s feminist framing for social change was reflected in the participants’ learnings and engagement with equality and rights in program activities, and
2. the extent to which feminist leadership qualities are being cultivated and nurtured to support feminist organizing and movement building. This report will outline what partners heard from these women. A description of the partners and main activities is followed by the theoretical framing of feminism and leadership that inform the study, as well as the methodological approach.
ENGAGE PARTNERS
For the ENGAGE program, Coady Institute partnered with five organizations that support women’s socio-economic participation in their communities. The project supports the creation of programs focused on consolidating skills, knowledge and access to opportunities that lead to thriving and fulfilling lives. The partners in the ENGAGE program share this vision and work toward achieving it through various project activities that build on their existing work.
The
Christian
Commission for Development in Bangladesh
(CCDB) works at community level to support the formation and strengthening of local women’s organizations in southern Bangladesh to develop communitybased climate change adaptation plans and alternative livelihoods – including the diversification of income sources – as women navigate climate-affected coastline life in the country. Through training and research, CCDB examines the vulnerabilities of women in the context of climate change, and supports them to engage in advocacy and campaigns, and interact with local government.
As part of their ENGAGE activities, women in the project communities join groups and receive training on such topics as entrepreneurship and asset-based community development (ABCD). They use the knowledge gained to identify challenges in their communities and work continuously to address these. They are also working on leadership development, guiding each other toward resolving issues by communicating with different local government offices.
Centre Haïtien du Leadership et de l’Excellence (CLE) leads Fanm
Angaje (FA), a women’s leadership program in social entrepreneurship, designed for young social change Haitian women leaders (ages 18-35). CLE work with cohorts of young women who seek to establish social enterprises in the North, West, South and Central regions of Haiti. CLE staff are enhancing skill sets in leadership and business.
In addition, the program facilitates networking opportunities and fosters connection among participants, enabling them to exchange ideas, share experiences, and support each other’s efforts. This sense of solidarity and collaboration enables participants to meet challenges and seize opportunities for growth and progress.
Organization for Women in Self-Employment (WISE)
is dedicated to enhancing women’s empowerment and promoting active citizenship among girls and women through the promotion of women’s leadership roles in households, busnesses, communities, and cooperatives. WISE facilitates group action for creating access to financial services, collective voice, and sustainable development. It offers training for women leaders with a focus on women’s empowerment, assetbased approaches, and enterprise development.
Women and girls are invited to participate in savings and credit cooperatives (SACCOs). WISE provides comprehensive training to equip SACCO members and leaders with practical knowledge and skills. Each SACCO recruits its members, determines loan size, and leaders decide who is eligible to take a loan. WISE also supports the development of women’s enterprise groups. The organization aims to mitigate gender-based violence and encourage the adoption of equitable, community-driven policies and practices.
Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA):
With over 3.2 million members, SEWA is a union of low-income and self-employed women workers of the informal sector. The SEWA Manager Ni School (SMS) has leadership and management programs for its grassroots members. SEWA provides communitybased training of women leaders focused on the “future of work” in the informal sector. The SMS has trained a cadre of grassroots leaders as master trainers who work in ENGAGE.
Across the diverse states of Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra of India, the ENGAGE program has served as a catalyst for women’s empowerment and increased participation in local leadership roles. Master trainers equip grassroots women with essential skills and knowledge to actively participate in their communities. From spearheading entrepreneurial ventures to advocating for infrastructure development, these women have emerged as influential voices and are driving positive change and inclusivity in their communities. Staff support women to strengthen their ability to become financially independent through identified income earning opportunities offered by SEWA or other market actors.
Tanzania Gender Networking Program (TGNP
) supports women’s empowerment to lead gender equitable change in their communities through Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB), providing tools and methods to engage with budgets and identify priorities for their local community. TGNP also promotes GRB-related advocacy directly with governments and agencies that hold authority over – or can influence – decision making on local and national budgets.
TGNP is implementing activities in two regions, Dar es Salaam and Shinyanga. Project staff have sought to strengthen women’s and girls’ voices, power, and influence in their local communities by focusing on three areas. Firstly, they support the development of effective leaders by strengthening the leadership of women and men for gender-equitable community-driven change processes in their communities. Secondly, they enhance the performance of civil society organizations (particularly women’s rights organizations) in supporting women’s leadership in the regions. Finally, they improve the reach and influence of gender-equitable, community-driven policies and practices within and beyond the target areas.
TGNP delivers sessions and training to women and men in the target areas covering topics on economic rights, grassroots women and men’s engagement with media, and planning events with local government on issues that affect women’s participation.
STUDY CONTEXT AND CONCEPTUAL GROUNDING
Feminist Framing in
ENGAGE
ENGAGE explicitly employs a feminist approach to community development and women’s empowerment practice. The Oxfam Canada (2021) definition below frames feminism, at its core, as the pursuit of equality and the upholding of rights for all people:
Feminism is a diverse, dynamic and multi-faceted approach to addressing the discrimination, injustice and violations of rights suffered by women and gender-nonconforming people. At its most basic, feminism seeks to ensure that women, men and 2SLGBTQ+ people are equal in law and in practice. A feminist approach offers an inclusive way to help understand how diverse systems of hierarchy, power and subordination interact across social contexts. Its objective is to create positive futures that uphold the dignity and rights of all. (p. 17)
This valuing of rights and dignity of all people, in all their diversity, is reflected in the ENGAGE partner organizations’ commitment to strengthen gender analysis and intersectionality in the design and implementation of projects, as well as within their own organizational structures and monitoring processes. The gender-based analysis plus (GBA+) approach1 provides a useful steppingstone to challenge assumptions of women’s homogeneity and address intersections between gender, race, class, ability, sexuality, and ethnicity (Government of Canada, 2024). Similarly, it compels change makers to consider the ways in which external context and circumstance impact upon women’s agency and inform their strategic choices.
Additionally, ENGAGE’s feminist approach recognizes that, while individual action and leadership is an important starting point for active citizen engagement, there is also a direct link to notions of ‘organization’ by which women and their allies come together to challenge and transform inequitable institutions and policies. In this vein, Kabeer (2017) critiques narrowly focused economic support programs, noting that programs such as microfinance activities were more successful when “focused instead on promoting active citizenship among their members, building their organizational capacity, promoting knowledge of their rights and supporting their collective efforts to act on this knowledge” (p. 661). ENGAGE partners’ activities intentionally support capacity building that goes beyond satisfying basic needs through building women’s leadership, raising awareness around participants’ rights, and unpacking the root causes of inequality to change these systems.
1 Gender-based analysis plus (GBA+) is an analytical framework developed by the Government of Canada to assess how various identity factors—such as gender, race, ethnicity, age, ability, and income—intersect and influence individuals’ experiences with policies, programs, and initiatives. The “Plus” acknowledges that gender is not the only factor shaping lived experiences and aims to promote inclusive, equitable decision-making.
Given that education, advocacy and influencing practices are a significant part of the ENGAGE partners’ activities, a feminist approach to education is also foundational to the project. Feminism has had a deep influence in adult education philosophy and methods (Brookfield, 2010) and was built on the foundations of the power of collective learning and action through shared experiences and the notion that addressing discrimination effectively requires understanding its root causes. Gender analysis considers the myriad factors undermining equality, such as pervasive power imbalances, gender-based violence (GBV), and cultural norms and attitudes that discriminate against women and influence laws and the workings of institutions. This framework – adapted from Rao and Kelleher (2005) – maps out four distinct domains that define the nature of gender inequalities and identifies spaces for engagement within and across sectors, ranging from household and community levels to economic, legal, and policy contexts.
Feminist Leadership and Movement Building
Over the past few decades, there has been an evolution of development funding focused on women. Research over this time has cautioned the development sector to be particularly attentive to power dynamics that, if unrecognized, may undermine progress, and even exacerbate gender-based inequalities. Awareness of the dangers identified in the literature can help inform projects to ensure efforts are made to avoid unintended consequences. Sustaining feminist leadership and movement building is a key priority for ensuring robust analyses and responses are maintained at the local level.
Chant (2016) notes, “One of the concerns raised in feminist circles relates to the instrumentalization of women to alleviate poverty, despite ostensible gestures towards ‘empowering them in the process’” (p. 59). Investments in promoting women’s economic participation without addressing barriers to economic, social, and political autonomy has resulted in situations whereby women face increased responsibility for ensuring the financial security of their families, while, at the same time, face genderbased backlashes and stereotypes that contribute to unrest and violence (Chant, 2016). Wakefield and Zimmerman (2020) also note the stress and trauma women face in situations of “poverty, conflict and disasters” (p. 159). They express hope in feminist development as a means “to catalyse and sustain powerful forms of resistance, ensure collective survival, and cultivate transitions from oppressive organization, movement, and societal cultures to world communities where all can thrive” (p. 157).
Wakefield and Zimmerman (2020) describe how feminists work to promote alternatives to “a dominant worldview that asserts profit and power are more important than humanity” (p. 157). A central tenet of feminist analysis in development practice is the assertion that sustainable change to overcome such a dominant worldview and the resulting discrimination requires fundamental shifts in power and the very ways organizations are structured and make decisions – shifts that require women’s full participation, voice, and control in these processes. Conceptions of leadership also require shifts. Batliwala (2022) shares principles of transformative feminist leadership, including: living and modelling feminist practice and in so doing modelling it to others; equality and equal treatment of all; and shared power. Batliwala’s (2010) earlier work, points to skills needed for this type of leadership—in particular the use of compassion, empathy, consultation, reflection, visioning for social justice, the ability to challenge
patriarchy and exclusionary systems, and self-confidence and power to build those of others. Batliwala (2010) also highlights the importance of exposure to new ideas, knowledge, and ways of thinking for systems change:
Expanding the repertoire of possibility and intellectual horizons, exposing participants to new analytical frameworks, information and knowledge to which they may not have had access, is thus an essential component of building more transformative politics and purpose through leadership development. These tools and frameworks can also become touchstones for strategic decision-making when they face dilemmas and crises. (p. 27)
Similarly, Zennou et al. (2022) refer to a key factor shared by the women’s savings groups in their study: “They foster solidarity and collective action by providing women with the networks, confidence, and capacity to create and implement their own solutions for themselves, their families, and communities at large” (p. 131). Describing the groups as “incubators of women’s leadership” (p. 133), the savings groups goals go beyond financial results to the development of leadership skills for collective action.
This shift to move beyond individual leadership development to organizing leadership for collective action is central to feminist movement building. According to Scheepers and Lakhani (2020), “mobilizing and organizing, at local and global levels, has been at the root of all major feminist struggles” (p. 118). Activists and practitioners are fully aware of the stalling of progress, backlashes, and increasingly active threats to their safety and security in these times of misogynist resurgence (Scheepers & Lakhani, 2020). In response, feminist organizing and movement building can identify spaces and opportunities for structural changes that can finally shift the status quo that has curtailed efforts to address power imbalances. Through its exploration of the experiences of women in the ENGAGE program, this study concretizes these challenges to the status quo through examples of feminism in practice.
METHODS
To undertake this qualitative study, partners collectively developed and tested a semi-structured interview tool (Appendix) at a project gathering in Ethiopia in September 2022 and prioritized areas for this collective research. Through these conversations, partners determined that it would be inappropriate or possibly ineffective to use the term feminism directly with study participants through the interview questions, as, in the participants’ contexts, feminism sometimes has negative connotations, or, at the very least is understood quite differently than how it is framed above. We were also collectively interested in exploring if, and how, values and practices related to feminism were reflected in women’s experience of programming related to ENGAGE, without explicitly labelling them as such. To avoid creating potential barriers between the interviewer and the respondent, or needing to engage in definitions, explanations, and possibly debates around the term feminism, the partners decided to frame their questions around 1) women’s perceptions of themselves and each other (which led to insights around feminist leadership principles and practices present among the women), and 2) their experiences and perceptions of equality and rights (which are core to the framing of feminism explored above).
After questions were developed and tested among the partners, each team undertook data collection in their program areas. Participants of the study were adult women who took part in partner activities— approximately 10 respondents from each organization were selected for an interview, (59 participants overall, some organizations had extra participants). As the purpose of the collective research was to explore, in general, how women’s experiences in the project activities cultivated or nurtured feminist leadership, organizing, and movement building, the data were not analysed by each individual organization, but, rather, a thematic analysis was conducted on all 59 interviews as one data set to identify common experiences or highlight differences across contexts.
Partners met at an in-person gathering in Tanzania in November 2023, during which the group participated in collective sensemaking of the preliminary findings through a session facilitated by Coady staff. Notes from these discussions were then integrated into the data analysis and a draft report was shared at the ENGAGE learning forum in Bangladesh in March 2024. Partners then reviewed these findings through a facilitated session, and input from both sensemaking sessions was incorporated throughout this report.
The data collected by partners was organized into the following topics, based on the responses:
y Unpacking feminism through equality and rights
y Practicing feminist leadership
y Increasing women’s participation in their communities
The findings articulate how partners embed feminist principles and practices into the work done in communities and how they inform feminist organizing and movement building for social change.
FINDINGS
Unpacking Feminism through Equality and Rights
As previously discussed, central to ENGAGE’s framing of feminism is the pursuit of equality and the upholding of the dignity and rights of all people. Yet, how equality is conceptualized and experienced in practice, and how women’s rights are understood by women participants in ENGAGE program activities needs to be unpacked further. To better inform project design and other supports for the women in their target communities, the partners were interested in better understanding the women’s perspectives around equality and their rights.
The Experience of Equality and Rights
Through the interviews, participants identified the types of actions they would be able to take that served as indications of being treated equally, including being able to share information, opinions, and ideas, and taking part in decision making. This is illustrated by one WISE participant, who notes, “There are equal rights fought for in our society. When there is a chance of raising questions in an equal manner, when husband and wife discuss equally, it ensures that there is equality in daily life.” This shift in household decision making was also expressed by a CCDB participant: “Family members have been given the right to make decisions in reproductive health, like family planning, contraception, etc.” It was reinforced by a TGNP participant, who explained that “equality implies that a woman has rights like men on issues around resources and decision making.”
The idea of equality as being shared responsibility among household members was voiced by several participants, who noted that they were able to ask their husbands to do certain tasks at home that were typically delegated to women. One WISE participant explained how “after the training, I worked with my husband, saying ‘this is your task, and this is mine’”. A TGNP participant echoed this sentiment, stating, “There has to be distribution of work. As a woman, you don’t do everything as a man can do his share.” Similarly, a CCDB participant explained how she started doing work alongside her husband after participating in ENGAGE programming: “Earlier, only my husband did crab farming, but after Engage, I felt like I should work with my husband equally, so I help my husband with the crab farming.”
Participants also explained that being respected and valued by others would be an indication that they were considered equals. As one TGNP participant shared, “The way people are respecting me regardless of my sex, race, background is an indication that my ideas are respected, and my views are considered”. More specifically, within their groups, they also demonstrated the importance of seeing each other as equal. As one participant from CCDB stated, “Though I am group leader, we are all members of the group. We work together, no one is less, no one is more. Everyone should be treated equally, no matter their status.”
Consideration of the responsibility that comes with rights was also noted:
Respecting rights means knowing your limits, knowing just where you can reach in such a situation. I don’t like to talk about rights without duties, I know my rights, but I have a duty to the person, that is to know what I must do while respecting the rights of others. (CLE participant).
Additionally, for many participants, equality was directly related to access – access to the same opportunities as others around them; access to education, health, employment; and access to resources. According to one CLE participant, equality means “Sharing the same rights and duties. Nobody is better than another. We have the same chance, same opportunities. No one has privileges.” One TGNP participant noted that one result of training was increased confidence to assert her right for equality in ownership, which connects to access to the same opportunities as others: “Equality came through in ownership after the ABCD training. A woman has a right to have her name on land titles and other assets due to her contributions.” Land access and property ownership was also raised by a SEWA participant, who noted that women’s names were not normally added to property deeds, but that she is seeing changes: “When my father-in-law died, the names of all his children – his sons and daughters –were added to the property.”
Much of this access to opportunity connects to the women’s ability to participate actively in their communities, which necessitates freedom of mobility. The interviews identified the ability to move outside of the house as an important measure of change, especially in strong patriarchal societies. Women who can meet other women in their communities are able to seek dialogue and support from others. This enables them to build social capital. Freedom of movement was discussed as inherent to several CCDB participants’ feelings of their rights being respected. Before participating in the program, many of these women expressed not working beyond the home, but a large part of their experience was a realization of their right to freedom of movement, which they explained as being supported by their families. This mobility has also facilitated the ability to advocate for services:
Previously, life is almost confined to the household, but now women are going outside and talking with others, and many of them applied to the administration and union council for different facilities like potable water and sewing machines. (CCDB participant)
Mobility has also supported additional income-generating activities, as women are able to participate “in spaces like markets. As one SEWA participant explained: “Earlier, to sell our agricultural produce, men used to go alone to the market, but now they take me with them. Sometimes, if they’re busy, I even go alone.”
Finally, the women identified the elimination of discrimination, prejudice, violence, and oppression from society as being fundamental to equality and the respect of rights. This was seen as the ideal of equality for which many participants have been advocating, and they expressed that their efforts have seen some reduction in discrimination and violence. According to one CCDB participant, “Discrimination and violence have reduced from the community due to protest against it and all members are treated equally with respect and honor from the community.” A participant from WISE described what equality would look like at the household level:
For me, equality means that the woman is not oppressed by her husband at home. To ensure that equality is respected, freedom from oppression, respect, equal participation in decisionmaking, and no sexual harassment needs to be guaranteed.
In this section, women articulated the meaning of feminism as pertains to equality and rights.
Collective Action for Equality and Rights
Throughout the conversations with participants, it became apparent that, although they recognized the persistence of inequalities in their lives and communities, identifying and understanding the root causes of these inequalities equipped the women with knowledge to advocate for change. Many of the partners’ program activities nurture this type of inquiry, confidence building, and active participation through their design, opening spaces for women to explore inequities and work together to address them.
In the cooperative, I help women to be aware of their rights. I explain that women can assert their rights. We discussed the movement of respect for rights by organizing a coffee drink program in the village. (WISE participant)
Building solidarity among these women builds social safety nets and connections within communities. When women are part of a collective, they feel enfranchised and able to make informed decisions and demand services. For example, one CCDB participant described the awareness raising work that was initiated through learnings from ENGAGE, and how she is sharing her knowledge: “I learned a lot from the ENGAGE project – information about my rights. Before, I didn’t work with rights, but now I work with the women’s groups on rights.” Another CCDB participant recounted how her group advocates for services from their local government: “We go to duty bearers’ offices with our demands and submit applications on road and embankment repair and construction.”
There is cause to celebrate the successes of these women, and the confidence and power they have gained in supporting each other to advocate for change. However, several participants from WISE described how, despite efforts to increase awareness and respect of rights in the SACCOs, there is still a long way to go in terms of cultural shifts to respect women’s rights in wider society. One participant explains further:
Women’s rights are not respected equally. There are many rights that women do not understand. Respect for rights is always verbal or on paper. Not much is done in practice. I don’t think my rights are respected. In general, there is no change. It is because of a lack of awareness. (WISE participant)
Women are able to identify violations of rights and when women are not realizing their full potential. Although some women know their rights, others are still not respecting their rights because they have not changed their customs. For example, some women move freely when there is no husband at home. However, if there is a husband at home, the wife’s voice is silent. (WISE participant)
The experiences of women in these spaces are complex and varied. While there is still a lot of work to be done, the programs have shown the value in creating space for engagement with ideas of equality, raising awareness around rights, and relationship building and networking. As one WISE participant reports, “I have successfully participated in decision making. I organize women, prevent and expose sexual violence, I work to prevent and expose violence against youth, women, and children, whether in school or outside.” However, the concerns raised by the WISE participants above indicate the continued need to raise awareness more broadly in society, pointing to the importance of movement building. To that end, the next section will dive deeper into the aspects of feminist leadership introduced in this discussion that can support broader knowledge sharing and collective action for equality and rights.
Practicing Feminist Leadership
An emerging theme from the interviews shows how collectivity has been the gateway to positive change in the lives of participants. This collectivity was anchored in strong leadership qualities, including sharing information within their groups and more broadly, organizing and mobilizing to advocate for the betterment of their communities, and providing support, advice, and mentorship to other women. Participants identified how much stronger they were in pushing for change when they worked together.
Creating Space for Relationship Building
According to Batliwala (2010), “for feminist leaders, good leadership is about relationship-building” (p. 35). Throughout the ENGAGE program, creating space and time to cultivate and strengthen relationships was embedded in program activities. Overall, these programs have strengthened both personal and professional relationships in participants’ lives and have helped them build support networks. Several participants also note how they have created spaces for further relationship building and networking, beyond the ENGAGE program activities.
Participating in the FA program was the third big feat in my life. This program helped me a lot to expand my network and connect with multiple women in the country. (CLE participant)
“These group members are my community, we trust each other, I consider them as my family members.” (CCDB participant)
“Women in the community have been transformed, they are ready to train others and have a spirit of learning.” (TGNP participant)
Descriptions of collaboration and cooperation among the women demonstrate the strength in the relationships built through participation in the program, as they described how they did not want to advance in their status alone, but that they wanted to cooperate so they could all succeed:
I do have active leadership participation, and it enabled me to establish a successful relationship with the Woreda leadership. This supports our plan to embrace more than 400 women as members. I also have a better relationship with WISE, which has enabled us to do our work successfully. (WISE participant)
I slowly became a grassroot leader and started supporting more and more women like me. It gave me a sense of giving back. (SEWA participant)
The increased confidence, leadership, and mentorship has benefitted not only the women participating in programs, but their wider communities. Accordingly, encouraging knowledge sharing and creating opportunities for such exchanges and mentorship to be cultivated should be a central part of leadership development programs. Relationship building takes time, but the experiences these women share demonstrates the importance of investing time and creating space in programming to build and nurture these relationships and networks.
Feminist Leadership Qualities
In addition to seeing the importance of cultivating space for relationship building, the ENGAGE participants embody many of the qualities of feminist leadership as outlined by Batliwala (2010). One of the most striking outcomes of participation in the ENGAGE partners’ programs was the women’s increased confidence. Through their collective action, participants gained confidence in their leadership skills and their own abilities. Several women expressed that they had previously felt shy about sharing their thoughts or going beyond their homes, but after participating in the programs and training, and building trust and relationship with others in their communities, these feelings have shifted. Yet, this confidence build did not solely benefit the individuals in the programs – the women used their increased confidence to advocate for the betterment of their communities and mentor and train others, reflecting Batliwala’s (2010) assertion that feminist leadership includes self-confidence and the power to build the confidence of others, as well as compassion. Many of the women expressed how they both provided support and felt supported by others, within their groups, their families, and their wider communities:
The women that I work with at SEWA are compassionate and try to understand each other’s problems. By talking to each other, we find solutions to problems. Each one cooperates with the others. (SEWA participant)
Members of the women’s group all distribute blankets for extremely poor people bought from reserved money of the group. (CCDB participant)
I am putting in place a plan of action to start my support center for young teenage mothers. (CLE participant)
The compassion participants experienced and extended to each other sparked motivation for advocacy, as the women listened to each other’s experiences and identified the inequities they faced. Women recounted how they are challenging the social norms of their communities’ patriarchal systems by entering spaces where they were not expected to be:
I got new customers in the workshop and most of them are female. This increased involvement of women in our carpentry workshop. (TGNP participant)
When I joined SEWA, access to drinking water was a big challenge faced by members in our district. Women had to walk several kilometers to fetch drinking water. Therefore, with SEWA’s support, I underwent training in handpump repair and became a handpump repair technician. I also trained 250 more sisters like me … and we formed a handpump repair cooperative and even got a contract from local government to repair over 400 handpumps in my district. Initially when we went to repair the handpumps, we were ridiculed and made fun of... because handpump repairing is traditionally categorized as a man’s job. But through our hard work and perseverance, we not only broke the gender stereotype but also helped solve the drinking water challenge in our district and generated dignified livelihood opportunities for us women. (SEWA participant)
Other challenges to exclusionary systems is outlined below, where women’s increased participation in their communities has begun shifting power relationships. This includes becoming business owners, entering marketplaces, taking on leadership roles, and running for public office.
Increasing Women’s Participation in their Communities
A major outcome of the ENGAGE program activities has been women’s increased participation in various spheres in their communities. All the aspects discussed in this report thus far – from increased confidence and increased mobility to the feminist leadership qualities of mentorship and power sharing – have supported women in engaging more actively in several spaces. This section will outline the activities in some of these spaces into which more women are venturing and highlight the outcomes for the participants.
Community Engagement and Leadership
Through their experiences with ENGAGE partner programs, participants noted their increased involvement in their communities. Their participation includes activities such as attending meetings and events, sharing opinions and participating in decision making processes, creating supports for others in their communities, taking part in elections, sitting on or leading committees, joining associations, and as discussed above, participating in advocacy efforts. Below are some examples of the types of change that have occurred with participants from each of the partners:
The accompaniment that I received helped me to structure and manage my business in a better way. It also helped me engage more in my community. (CLE participant)
I am a block leader. Women practice leadership at home with their families. There is also a revival of women’s leadership. Women are now active and, if something goes wrong, they realize that a woman is the first victim. Just like men, women work in social life to prevent crimes. (WISE participant)
People in the community request that I participate in meetings, events and different festivals, and give space for me to speak. The Chairman, UNO2, duty bearers, elite people, and stakeholders respect and honor me and call me to their meetings. (CCDB participant)
Other women are courageous, strong, and managed to take fertilizer to the ministry of agriculture, and council gave us 3 acres of land to process the fertilizer. (TGNP participant)
People in the village consider me one of their own. Both men and women trust me. I’m able to impart agricultural knowledge, and I serve as the Minister of the Village Health Committee. (SEWA participant)
In addition to their engagement in their communities, several women shared examples of how the new skills they have developed, and knowledge gained around topics like their rights have motivated them to pursue formal and public leadership roles. Specifically, CCDB participants provided several examples of engagement in formal public leadership roles. One woman explained how, since participating in ENGAGE programming, she has become both the only female lead farmer of her local union, as well as
2 UNO refers to Upazila Nirbahi Office. Upazila Nirbahi Officer is the chief executive officer of an upazila (sub-district) and a midlevel officer of the Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS).
the only female member of her temple committee. Another CCDB participant described her foray into local government, becoming an elected member in the Union Parishad. Similarly, a participant from SEWA explained how many women are now joining committees:
Previously, women were excluded, but now they’re included in various committees like the School Committee, Health Committee, etc. Now, women actively participate in all activities, including drafting resolutions and assigning tasks.
Economic Opportunities and Impact
In addition to leadership development, ENGAGE program activities provided skills training and engagement with asset-based tools and approaches to strengthen women’s participation in economic activities. The study identified that income enhancing activities, when coupled with the relationship building and leadership development described above, lead to other improvements in lives of women including establishing safety nets, addressing financial needs of other family members, developing and sharing new skills and knowledge, and contributing to their communities through social entrepreneurship.
Participants noted the importance of establishing safety nets through home-based production, savings, and investment, as well as improving business management:
ABCD [asset-based community development] is an eye opener to us; there should be many trainings to reach many people in the community for the purpose of economic improvement through the use of available resources to increase savings and investment. (TGNP participant)
After taking the training, our understanding has improved. Now, I help women to be aware of the purpose of the SACCO. Due to this, many women are joining the SACCO. The active participation of the leadership is bringing women to the associations based on their initiative. (WISE participant)
Participation in earning activities enables women to address financial needs of the family and improve social status. This also leads to self-sufficiency. For example, participants from CCDB discussed how having their income-generating activities allowed them to support their families in different ways, such as paying for their children’s school tuition:
After receiving training, I cleaned my homestead land – it was barren – and started cultivating vegetables and implementing climate adaptive technologies, like hanging gardens, and started earning from that. I sold vegetables and earned 3000 taka selling chili and brinjal. I am very happy that I am now able to cover the education expenses for my kids.
I have two daughters and one son. My husband cannot do anything due to old age. My son and I maintain our family. My son works in an agricultural field, and I rear ducks, hens, cows, goats etc. By income coming from those, I maintain my family with my son.
Similarly, a SEWA participant recounted how when she first joined SEWA 30 years ago, women did not leave their homes or earn income, despite high levels of poverty. She had traditional embroidery skills, so
when she learned of SEWA’s embroidery initiative, she joined the program, despite resistance from her family and community. This income-earning activity has led to positive outcomes for her family:
I used that money to buy agricultural land for my husband and sons, paid for education of my sons and even constructed our house from that income. Looking at my success, gradually more and more women came forward to join the embroidery initiative at SEWA and I helped link artisans from over 45 villages in my district to livelihood through embroidery.
Participants noted that gaining new skills for employment was a key result of participation in ENGAGE. For example, when the women gain skills in finance and economics, they share that knowledge with family members and others in their communities. One CCDB participant described how her son also learned from her training materials, and he has begun rearing pigeons with her, which has now become another source of income for the family. At WISE, participants have been sharing their knowledge around the benefits of savings through the SACCOs with other community members. Entrepreneurship skills also extend beyond the program participants. CLE participants shared how they have learned how to mobilize the resources in their environment to create wealth and give back to their communities. They then provide mentorship and support around social entrepreneurship to others wanting to start their own social businesses. The knowledge and skills are shared with both women and men:
ABCD was an eye opener. Through this training, we saw what we already had. We also discussed GBV (gender-based violence), economic empowerment, community coming together. ABCD encouraged every woman to have a vegetable garden, and to preserve vegetables by drying in the sun. (TGNP participant)
The men of my village and surrounding villages find me knowledgeable and all know me. I am invited to all important village meetings and people approach me to learn about various topics – like availing loans, agricultural inputs, managing finances, etc. (SEWA participant)
Lessons for Feminist Organizing and Movement Building
The participants’ reflections point to the potential for shifting women’s power and participation in multiple realms – within the home/family, community, state, market, civil society, and religious or cultural institutions. They also demonstrate how these women display qualities of feminist leadership as their self-awareness and power increases – they seek to extend that power to others around them through advocacy, mentorship, and knowledge sharing leading to collective voice. These insights support ongoing organizing and movement building and are key to the sustainability of the positive changes noted above beyond the life of ENGAGE. Already, seeing how the participants have been sharing knowledge and forming connections and networks beyond the program activities indicates how they will hold onto gains without program interventions. As ENGAGE partners continue their work in their respective countries, there are important lessons around how to support this type of movement building, so communities are not dependent on the program itself. These lessons can also inform the design of future funded projects.
Value of Nurturing Feminist Leadership
It is clear from the interviews that there is a strong presence of feminist leadership among program participants. This type of leadership, alongside innovative and supportive programming from ENGAGE partners, is supporting significant shifts in the lives of these women and their community members, such as cultivation of networks and relationships that provide emotional and material support and knowledge sharing; shared decision making; increased awareness of rights; development of new skills; and improved livelihood options. Participants highlight the importance of the group when it comes to leadership, describing how there is strength in the unity of their groups. Partners should continue to support the development of grassroots, bottom-up feminist leadership, where people self-organize to share knowledge and skills to advocate for and create change in their communities. Creating space for this kind of leadership is critical to feminist movement building.
Value of Creating Space for Relationship Building
Although the idea of valuing time for relationship building may feel intuitive for the ENGAGE partners, it is not easily quantifiable, and, thus, often disregarded during project development. Yet, as seen throughout this report, there is immense value in providing spaces where women can meet, network, build relationships, mentor each other, and share knowledge. Seeing the strength in collectivity has been critical to the successes and gains of the women supported by the ENGAGE partners. Partners note this may begin at an individual level – for example, through SACCOs, which increase confidence and lead to knowledge sharing – or through grassroot network building, as seen by CCDB, where collective action was cultivated through their women’s groups and moved even faster than they had anticipated.
Importance of Building Self-Confidence and Awareness around Rights
Finally, partners observe when women are mobilizing, they all ask themselves the same question: “How can we have agency?” Through the program’s focus on awareness raising around rights, women have been able to connect their struggles with larger systems and demand changes to local and national policy. As the women in these programs gained more knowledge and skills, their self-confidence grew, leading to increased participation in decision making, both at the household and community levels. The agency expressed at the household level, such as decision-making around where to spend additional income they were generating, and the inclusion in local decision-making bodies in their communities is another key to this movement building.
FUTURE RESEARCH
ENGAGE partners acknowledge the need for deeper exploration in several areas, including:
y the power relationships at play in these contexts,
y how women’s approaches to negotiating the power dynamics at play have shifted throughout the ENGAGE program,
y how these shifts impact power dynamics, such as affecting decision making in the household and other spaces, including engaging men and boys in transforming dynamics around women’s equity, justice, and agency,
y what facilitated the shift to self-advocacy, especially for women who had mostly been confined to the home, and
y how, in relation to their leadership development, women are sharing these experiences and skills with each other through program activities or otherwise, and in what ways that may be informing the actions and experiences of other women.
Some of the women identified the necessity of men’s buy-in for social change – that men need to both support and lead (in certain spaces) the shift toward equity, and seek men’s cooperation to this end. They also hope the men respect, honour, and appreciate them, see them as having a place in every part of society, and recognize their value. Some of the respondents from CCDB are starting to see positive changes in men’s attitudes toward women, though it would be interesting to explore this more deeply across the different organizations’ contexts—including learning from work the partners are already undertaking. Therefore, another area for future research should be to look at the role of men and boys in this type of social change, including their views and reactions to women in their lives expressing more agency and autonomy and engaging in income-generating activities.
All partner organizations continue to demonstrate the effectiveness of long-term programs grounded intentionally within a social justice framework that promotes human rights, dignity and empowerment. The findings of this study will contribute to the ongoing conversation arising from the numerous research, evaluative and learning activities within the ENGAGE project. We will continue to explore deeper insights into how feminism is understood, experienced, and practiced in programs like ENGAGE.
REFERENCES
Batliwala, S. (2022). Transformative feminist leadership: What it is and why it matters . Gender and Health Club.
Batliwala, S. (2010). Feminist leadership for social transformation: Clearing the conceptual cloud CREA.
Brookfield, S. D. (2010). Theoretical frameworks for understanding the field. In C. Kasworm, A. D. Rose, & J. M. Ross-Gordon (Eds.), Handbook of adult and continuing education (2010 ed., pp. 71–81). Sage.
Chant, S. (2016). Addressing world poverty through women and girls: A feminised solution. LSE Research Online.
Government of Canada. (2021). Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy. Government of Canada. (2024). Gender-based analysis plus Oxfam Canada. (2021). Feminist approaches to climate justice: A toolkit for building inclusive climate advocacy.
Rao, A., & Kelleher, D. (2005). Is there life after gender mainstreaming? Gender and Development, 13(2), 57-69.
Scheepers, E., & Lakhani, I. (2020). Caution! Feminists at work: Building organizations from the inside out. Gender and Development, 28(1), 117-133.
Wakefield, S., & Zimmerman, K. (2020). Re-imagining resilience: Supporting feminist women to lead development with transformative practice Gender and Development, 28(1), 155-174.
Zennou, F., Rahamatali, A., Yao, M.P., & Bagha, Z. (2022). The Village Savings and Loans Association pathway: Feminist solidarity groups leverage COVID-19 to have their voices heard Agenda, 36(3), 130144.
APPENDIX: INTERVIEW TOOL
Questions and Prompts
Prompts are bullet points in italics below the main questions. They are suggestions that you can add to help guide the respondent to expand on their answers. You do not need to use them if the respondent’s answer covers the prompt, and you can also use your own prompts based on responses.
Background
Background and context setting to understand their involvement and experience.
1. So, to get started, could you tell me a little about yourself and how long you’ve been involved with [ENGAGE organization]?
2. Can you please tell me a little about your experience as a member of [ENGAGE group]
y How have you been involved?
y What have you done so far?
How are women perceived and described?
3. How do you describe other women who have been part of this experience with you?
y What words would you use to talk about them?
4. How would you describe yourself?
5. How would you like to be described by other women in [ENGAGE group]?
y What words would you like them to use to describe you?
6. How do you hope you are described by men in the community?
y What words would you like them to use to describe you?
Experience and appreciation of feminism
This is grounded in the conceptualization that feminism is about equality, rights, intersectionality, working with the most marginalized (from the literature review for the project). We are purposely not using the word “feminism” in these questions.
7. How would you describe equality in your own words?
y How do you know when you are being treated equally?
y What do people do that makes you feel equal?
8. Based on what you previously shared, did you experience equality in the [ENGAGE group/ programming]?
y If so, how?
y If not, what could have been done differently?
y Can you give me some examples?
9. How would you describe respect of rights in your own words?
y How do you know when your rights are being respected?
y What do people do that makes you feel like your rights are being respected?
10. Thinking about what you just told me, were your rights respected during this experience?
y If so, how?
y If not, what could be done differently?
y Can you give me some examples?
11. Is there anything you would like to share with me about your experience with the [ENGAGE group/ activities]?
12. Do you have any questions about me (who I am) or for us about ENGAGE?
