Feminising politics: Care, regeneration, social movements

Jess Adams & Rosalba Ellis will explore feminist theories of how care, social reproduction and regeneration operate as power-building practices in social movements.

Through discussion and case studies, we will examine how feminist approaches to care can strengthen organising, sustain participation and transform movement culture.Feminise Politics Now! (FPN) is a movement infrastructure project equipping grassroots organisations to develop effective strategies and tools to take on the challenges of the next decade – examining not just what we’re fighting for, but how we get there.

This talk will cover the movements that have inspired FPN that are geared towards longer-term movement sustainability and transformative change, including the European Municipalist ‘Fearless Cities’ movement and the Feminise Politics Now! booklet (from where they take their name). It will also dig into the principles surrounding ‘feminising politics’ and examine its key strategies and principles from cooperation to coalition-building, leadership to collective care, participation and democracy, and anti-oppression.

Jess Adams - Jess is practice-based researcher exploring the theory and practice of participation. She is currently a Research Associate on a £1 million Wellcome Trust-funded project, Reimagining Leadership, at Newcastle University, where she coordinates the project's Participatory Action Research methodology. Jess's PhD, from the University of East London, used a militant research methodology to understand contemporary notions of political participation in the Corbyn and post-Corbyn movement. Jess is a coordinator with Feminise Politics Now!, a UCU rep, and has organised with several different groups, including The World Transformed.

Rosalba Ellis - Rosalba is a political designer, campaigner and researcher working across social and worker movements. Having completed a master's in political communications at Goldsmiths last year she is planning to return for a PhD next year and continue her research into how bottom-up relational practices of care and healing strengthen and sustain worker movements. Rosalba's approach is grounded in feminist participatory action methods and draws heavily on wider movements seeking to ‘feminise politics’, in particular FPN where she is a researcher and coordinator on the Pathways to Power and Justice trade union participatory action project.

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