Step Into Our Power
RetreatsReconnect with your purpose, coming together as powerful women to explore and deepen your understanding and practice of Feminist Leadership
Sisterhood
Recent years have seen us all challenged in new and unexpected ways, stretching our energy, commitment, resolve and hope to their limits in the face of systemic and ever-changing crises. Each new set of circumstances has required us to learn and be creative within a highly complex setting to develop and implement solutions and imagine new solutions.
Based on inputs from women in civil society organisations, and continuous learning from the 7 powerful Retreats we have hosted so far, we have designed a highly interactive series of retreats, each session for up to 12 participants. These Retreats are grounded in intersectional feminist principles, and together we explore the practice of implementing the four dimensions of feminist leadership: transforming power; centring care, deepening collaboration and building inclusion. All rooted in the courage to shift outdated and toxic systems.
Retreat 1
Stepping Into Your Power
Retreat 1 Stepping Into Your Power, is focused on strengthening the ‘Power Within’ and will take place in Mechelen, Belgium over 2 days, 17-18 October 2024, facilitated by qualified women’s leadership and executive coach, Angela Philp and experienced feminist leader, Joanna Maycock.
This workshop is your chance to gather with other women in similar roles to take a step back from the day to day to regain clarity of thought, reconnect with your purpose and hope as inclusive feminist leaders and step into your power with renewed resolve, joy and integrity.
At the Retreat, you will :
- understand, live and lead with inclusive feminist leadership principles.
- reconnect with your purpose as an inclusive feminist leader
- deepen your understanding about power and shifting power dynamics
- explore the importance of self-awareness and self-care within systems change work
- share, exchange and build upon valuable feminist experience, practices and insights
- develop fresh, creative and practical feminist approaches to face the challenges ahead
What they say...
I would describe this course as a soul bath for feminist leaders that are struggling with the realities of putting that kind of leadership into practice. I arrived with a particular leadership challenge, feeling the full burden of how to practice feminist leadership, loving kindness, delegating power, practising fairness ...
The training gave me strength to continue working to apply feminist leadership principles in my work. It created a trusted space where we were able to share, to listen deeply, to learn, to celebrate and support each other, without judgment.
It has reinforced the sisterhood links we ...
The other day, I looked back at my notes from the workshop, and I was thrilled to re-read the wisdom that the group shared with me. The power of the workshop lies in the group, the facilitators, the pace (thinking slow and fast!), the location.
Stepping away ...
The 2 days of the Feminist Leadership program were a very special gift.
I did it at a time when I was experiencing extreme fatigue and didn’t see the extent to which I was in “survival mode ”. I work as a feminist Economist on global issues, for...
My favourite part was being in this circle, the guided exercises, the laughter, the beauty of the space and the safety.
What would I say to other women ? DO IT!! Don’t be afraid. You need this. It’s worth the effort.
The energy...
What I loved most ? My meeting with my future self. This group and each of its members, trust in our power and wisdom, sense of support - sisterhood is the way!
What would I say to somebody about coming ? You will discover what is...
Who’s
Joanna?
I am committed to the fight against poverty and injustice through the fight for women’s rights and through transforming leadership. My professional experience encompasses work on women’s rights and gender equality, feminist leadership, systemic change, and in international poverty, gender and rights. I believe that if we want to get serious about transformational and systemic change, this means recognising and valuing women’s central role in transformative changes in their homes, their workplaces and societies. Our failure to transform leadership effectively has translated directly into our failure to integrate the transformative power of feminism into our work. Whether we are talking about climate change, tax justice, trade or the redistribution of natural resources, all have gendered dimensions that need to be understood, integrated and addressed.
I am a lifelong feminist, with 25 years’ experience in leadership positions in international civil society, both at governance and Director level. I am passionate about putting feminist leadership into practice in a variety of roles and contexts, including through building communities of women leaders to learn together and lift one another up.
I have experienced first-hand attempts to promote inclusive feminist leadership within civil society : the challenges and pitfalls, the resistance and also some successes. I have also seen, from my networks of women in civil society, how difficult it still is for women to flourish, even in our allegedly progressive organisations: macho cultures prevail, with long hours working making it difficult for women and men to manage work-life balance; women face everyday sexism and sexual harassment in the work place; and unconscious bias in recruitment and promotion systems continue to make it twice as hard for women than men to advance into leadership positions.
This is not just about having more women operating within a toxic and outdated system, but also about transforming the nature of the systems of decision-making to ensure they are more inclusive, diverse and effective.
We rightly talk a lot about shifting power dynamics, and this approach to changing leadership has the real potential to invert power structures and rethink power and participation within our organisations. As feminists, we seek to disrupt the notion of power as being finite – i.e. either yours or mine – to see power instead as an endless resource that can be shared by focusing on building the power within (self-awareness); the power with (ability to build dialogue and effective coalitions); and the power to build new ways of doing things.
The power dynamics between women and men need to be discussed as one of the core systems endangering our future; patriarchy and male domination should be identified, named and addressed in our work towards system change, in our values, missions and activities, and within our own movements.
I provide the space for holding these conversations and transforming the system with effective, practical actions, with you!
Who’s
Angela?
There is deep work to be done to redefine leadership to be inherently inclusive of women and all minorities. This is my life’s commitment – to transform leadership from the inside out. I believe that it is possible and necessary to both transform the system through embodying feminist leadership principles AND that half of all leadership positions worldwide to be held by women within the next 10 years. Currently, statistics say that, at the rate we are going, it will take another 100 years. If we are such an advanced society, I ask myself,
“How can that be? How can we continue to let that be?”
I am a stand for women’s leadership – powerfully, joyfully, boldly with care, integrity love and courage.
At the magical age of 52, I actively embrace using the words love and care in the same sentence as responsibility, results, prosperity, and leadership. I am intimately convinced that powerful, transformative leadership – leadership that will help the Earth and humanity to flourish – comes only from deep connection with spirit, compassion, and the courage to hold uncertainty, explore paradoxes and decolonise ourselves of patriarchy’s imprint.
We can’t. As women, we are one half of the world’s population and yet for the majority of history we’ve contributed to holding ourselves back. How can I say this, with so many courageous and determined women who have fought and struggled for equality over millennia? Simply to put the power back into our language. If we are victims of a system, if life ‘happens’ to us, we have no power to transform it. The truth is, we impact life as much as life impacts us. Also, we have internalised this patriarchy whether we recognise it or not; it shows up in all of our judgements and fears and in our rejection of ourselves and others.
My own life has been one long adventure right from the womb. I’ve moved countries 4 times. Have been an extreme adventure athlete – racing on horses, camels, ropes, sea kayaks and bikes, as well as running up mountains, down glaciers and across deserts for days on end. I spent 3 years homeschooling my 3 children, and I studied contemporary calligraphy for 8 years – transforming old doors and driftwood into pieces of art. And like many women I’ve suffered at the hands of domestic violence, abuse of power (including by other women) and generally done more than my fair share of the work. Courage. Resilience. Leadership and Transformation – They’re who I am. And I’m willing to bet that’s who you are too.
I’ve designed education programs through UNESCO for women and girls in developing countries, and for the last 12 years have run programmes and workshops to help women step fully into their leadership and create amazing results for themselves and their communities. My clients are extraordinary, brilliant, creative, resilient, dedicated, incorrigibly fun women who are solving the world’s greatest challenges. I LOVE what I do. I LOVE my clients. I believe that LOVE is the secret sauce and quintessential ingredient to successfully thriving. It is also sadly missing from our patriarchal, hierarchical, extractive system.
If you know that you are here to transform leadership rather than conform to it, then join us!