New Course:   

Feminist Business History and Heritage:
Learning from our Foremothers

Feminists have created many successful businesses, businesses that were explicitly feminist.

Few people know that these businesses ever existed, and even fewer remember what they were about, what practices and strategies worked for them, and what led to their closures— or their longevity.

Without knowing feminist businesses’ history, we can’t learn from their mistakes. Worse, we can’t build on their achievements.

Starting in February 2023, we will reconnect with the legacy of feminist business, and draw from their experiences some shared principles and guidance for current and future feminist businesses. 

Initial Schedule (to be revised with participants’ input):

Class Session #1, Tuesday, Feb 7, 4:30-6 pm ET: 
Welcome and Introductions. What’s a Feminist Business and what do we know about them?  
Office hour: Friday Feb, 10, 11 am -12 pm ET
Tuesday, Feb 14:  Contribute your Reflection #1 

Class Session #2, Tuesday, Feb 21, 4:30-6 pm ET:  
Feminist Businesses’ customers, products, services, community connections
Office hour: Friday, Feb 24, 11 am -12 pm ET
Tuesday, Feb 28:  Contribute your Reflection #2 

Class Session #3, Tuesday, March 1, 4:30-6 pm ET:
Getting stuff done: organizing themselves, understanding power, authority, and coordination, conflicts and feminist challenges
Office hour: Friday, March 4, 11 am -12 pm ET
Tuesday, March 8: Contribute Reflection #3 

________

Overview

In this class, we will collaborate to create a shared understanding of feminist business history, and to draw lessons and unanswered questions from the stories we gather. We will produce a file/living repository of resources on the businesses we consider. We will create a document that identifies feminist business practices and challenges from history, along with citations, that we can all use as a resource. We will decide together how to share this document with other feminist business folks. 

At the end of this course, we will have created a cohort of feminist business advocates who can teach others about and continue to develop knowledge of our shared feminist business history. This cohorts’ knowledge will support feminist business coaches, mentors, and practitioners who want to build on rather than repeat the lessons of feminist business.

At the end of this course, you will be well-versed in the history of a particular feminist business or sector, able to explain this history to another interested feminist business person. You will have developed some wisdom from the experience of earlier feminists that you can use in designing your future business activities. 

As a facilitator and active participant myself, I expect that our shared work will help me lock in what I’ve learned from my independent reading in feminist business history. Our work together will also help me examine and expand my definitions of feminist business and help me develop better criteria and tools for guiding feminist businesses.   

This class will prototype a collaborative format that we can put to use as we build a learning program for feminist business practitioners, mentors, coaches, and teachers. 

Together, our work will advance feminist business practice.

How We’ll Work Together

We will read stories/ books/ articles/ academic pieces about early feminist businesses (“early” meaning between 1960 and 2000 c.e.), and: 

• Summarize the arc of their stories

• Discuss what they prioritized 

• Examine how they were ‘political’ (e.g., within their societies’ politics, but even more in their everyday actions)

• Consider the ways they were “feminist”, and what they came up with as feminist business praxis (aka practice informed by theory)

• Identify what issues became chronic problems

• Look for how they connected with — and created— a feminist community

• Analyze what they did that helped them succeed for as long as they succeeded, and

• Consider other questions that emerge.

We will also pursue the questions that come up for you, personally, about what feminist business history can tell you about yourself as a feminist and your approach to business.  

You’ll co-create knowledge in a range of ways, including by: 

• Reading analytically and preparing for conversations

• Participating in conversations

• Reading/reflecting and writing up your personal insights and responses to questions, to share with the group

• Reading/ reflecting and writing in response to insights in the group file

• Bringing in your own research to expand the pool of knowledge

• Building a collective, group document that catalogues examples of different feminist business challenges and practices (using a template from CV)  

Together, we will:

• Review the stories I’ve gathered and ones that you contribute (recognizing that these stories are limited and also that they are what we have) 

• Look for commonalities and differences

• Draw conclusions from their histories 

• Summarize these conclusions in a document/ file we can share with our community

• Share some reflections from our class with our feminist communities (e.g., with a co-written blog post in the Feminist Enterprise Commons)

As the course convenor, I will:

• Create a syllabus with carefully curated readings

• Facilitate class conversations and offline work

• Share my own business perspectives and academic frameworks

• Establish themes and questions for each of our three live class conversations

• Develop reflection assignments 

• Develop preparation assignments

• Manage the back end of the class system

• Generally, act like a professor who’s using feminist learning practices to create a learning space for motivated folks who have limited time but unlimited curiosity

You will: 

• Receive a reading list of books, articles, and (where possible) pdfs.

• When you can, purchase new editions of the works published by the historians whose work we will be using, as a way of supporting them.

• Practice good feminist citation — noting the authors of the work we draw from and citing this particular class as a source for your knowledge & opinions going forward. 

• Commit to learning about one segment of the businesses offered in our reading list and becoming well-versed in their history, by:

• Preparing to prepared to summarize that selection of material (verbally) for the group,

• Expanding our file of resources available to learn about this business segment (by doing your own independent searching)

• Adding specific examples, citations, and questions to our collective document on Feminist Practices from Feminist Business History

Course Management

We will host the conversations on Zoom, where they will be recorded so that folks who miss a session can catch up.

We will host our class information in the Mighty Network of the Feminist Enterprise Commons, where all our documents will be stored and where we’ll conduct online conversations between class sessions. Each participant will have access to the course area and a one year membership to the entire Commons as part of their tuition.

Tuition: The reference tuition price for this class is $200, roughly equivalent to the cost of an online class at the Night School Bar, NC (link) or to the cost of a short intro course with Kimberly Johnson, PhD, of The Feminism School (link).  

Students who participate in all three sessions and who also complete their contributions to the collective document will receive a $50 rebate on their tuition at the end of the class (making their total tuition $150). 

The tuition goes to support my active real time work during the course (approximately 40 hours of new, active time), as well as the decades of experience that provide a foundation for this course.

Class Schedule:

Over the course of six weeks, we will have three “in person” classes, and three read/write/reflecting sessions (that you will contribute to by a specific deadline, that you can react to on your own time once everyone has contributed.) I will also offer open ‘office hours’ when folks can drop in to discuss questions informally.

Classes are (tentatively) scheduled to begin in Feminist February, on Tuesdays from 4:30 - 6:00 Eastern Time (3:30 -5:00 Central, 1:30 -3:00 Pacific). The first date/ time is firm, so that we can meet together to discuss what timing will work best for the group. Other times/ dates are tentative because I expect to adjust the times, days, and weeks we meet based on class needs. 

Class Session #1, Tuesday, Feb 7:  Welcome and Introductions. What’s a Feminist Business? What’s generally known about Feminist Business History?  
By Tuesday, Feb 14:  Contribute your Reflection #3 to the course site, and comment on others’ contributions 
Office hour: Friday Feb, 10, 11 am -12 pm ET

Class Session #2, Tuesday, Feb 21:  How did Feminist Businesses understand their customers?  How did they craft and produce feminist products and services? How did they understand their connections with and responsibilities to their communities?
By Tuesday, Feb 28:  Contribute your Reflection #2 to the class site, and comment on others’ contributions 
Office hour: Friday, Feb 24, 11 am -12 pm ET

Class Session #3, Tuesday, March 1: How did feminist businesses organize themselves? How did they understand power, authority, coordination? How did they get stuff done?  How did they struggle with differences and conflicts amongst themselves?  How did they try to address classic challenges of feminism (e.g., racism, homophobia, profit vs politics)?
By Tuesday, March 8: Contribute your Reflection #3 to the course site 
Office hour: Friday, March 4, 11 am -12 pm ET

Our Feminist Pedagogy

I could organize this class like a regular graduate seminar, where the professor assigns readings which students complete and asks questions which students answer, and where the professor remains the sole expert on the topic.  Instead, I want to shake things up with a different format, a more feminist format that invites you participants to develop your own expertise by becoming co-creators of the class. 

This means that we’ll use a class format that’s often called the “flipped classroom”, where participants read and imbibe information before a class session, and then share, investigate, critique and draw consultations about this information collectively through group conversation during a class session. This structure helps to de-center the professor as the ‘only’ expert and also positions participants as co-creators of shared expertise. I will also follow other principles of feminist pedagogy (see this document on What to Expect in Workshops with Me).

I will coach participants in how to read the materials to find the information we need to lift out, and share some possible strategies for helping you capture your own insights and emotions as you read about these feminist business pioneers. I’ll do this not only by helping you shape your approach to the readings (e.g., where you focus, what you prioritize) but also by offering you some frameworks and templates to help you corral your learnings.

Know in advance that the published record of feminist businesses is not large and does not consistently follow conventional historical formats.  Expect to read materials across a variety of genres, including and not limited to memoirs, academic books, newspaper interviews, business school cases, contemporary non-fiction books (historical but not academic), masters theses, pamphlets, and republished archives.

You will also be encouraged to gather additional information about the businesses you chose to focus on. For example, if you choose to focus on feminist book publishers like Kitchen Table Press, you could search for interviews of employees or authors, find a podcast interview of Barbara Smith, reach out to someone at their spin-off community for Black women writers, Kitchen Table Literary Arts or select a poem that they published to give us a sense of their work.  I want you to look beyond the materials on the syllabus to add new readings, podcasts, visuals, or whatever else you find to enrich your (and our) learning.

Businesses and Industries We Can Focus On

With folks who express interest in the class, I will share a list of businesses and industries and related readings that we’ll use to focus our shared inquiry.  The feminist business segments and specific histories we can choose from include and are not limited to:

Bloodroot Restaurant (cooperative)
Kitchen Table Press (book publishing)
Adam’s Rib Magazine (periodical)
The Body Shop (bath & beauty products)
Olivia Records (music) 
Feminist Bookstores
African-American Beauty Parlors 
Feminist Credit Unions/ Feminist Economic Alliance

Participants are encouraged to suggest other organizations and segments if they can come up with enough resources to compose a history. 

Readings and Reading Strategy

If this were a university class and we all were full-time students, our reading list would not only be long but also would be something we were expected to complete. However, where “adult, activist learners” have families, communities and jobs, we have much less time to read and thus more pressure to skim readings superficially (or even skip some altogether). So, while I offer you a full syllabus with a full set of readings, we will not expect every participant to complete every reading. 

Instead we’ll practice “collective enoughness” (a concept from Hildy Gottlieb), where each participant chooses a particular business, a type of organization or a market sector (e.g., The Body Shop, restaurants, publishing). Each participant will complete the reading for that slice of feminist history with the intent of sharing what they learn with the rest of the group. 

I’ve organized the reading into clusters on subtopics, where the clusters will have approximately the same amount of content. Each participant will choose where s/he wants to develop personal expertise by choosing a cluster of readings that s/he’ll read closely.  While I hope that we can cover the range of clusters I’ve identified, if more than one person wants to cover a particular cluster we’ll just have more than one perspective on that material!

You’ll become well-versed in your chosen space of feminist business history and conversant across the other spaces.  I think this strategy will offer you more intellectual nourishment and more potential wisdom than what a more surface level, scattershot tasting menu might provide. And, as we all contribute what we’ve learned about our own area, we’ll create a broader range of shared knowledge.

You will receive the reading list as soon as you sign up, so that you can get a head start on your reading, on purchasing your materials from a feminist bookstore, or getting them from interlibrary Loan, etc.  

_______________________

Note that this class will focus on businesses, broadly defined as organizations that intend to support themselves through the sale of goods and services, whether these organizations are for-profits, not-for-profits, cooperatives, or shareholder-owned.  It will not address the history of feminist organizations oriented towards electoral politics or legal policies (such as NOW, National Coalition of Black Women, Ms. Foundation, etc.) even though these political organizations have a lot to tell us about how feminists work together. 

This class is designed for:

• Feminist Business coaches, mentors, consultants, and teachers who want to build on the wisdom of feminist businesses past and present, as they support feminist businesses of today and tomorrow 

• Feminist thinkers who want to explore how feminists put their ideas into commercial activity and practice 

• Feminist business people who want to connect their own work with the wisdom of a feminist business community

Together, our work will advance feminist business practice.

What does it ask of us, to be a Feminist Entrepreneur?

How do we shape our personal path and our business's roadmap so that we can become more feminist in how we work together, provide needed products and services, generate fair revenues, and demonstrate a transformational way of doing business?

In this workshop, we'll work together to craft a Feminist Framework for Entrepreneurship and sketch out our own personal learning paths.

PLEASE SIGN UP ON THE EVENTBRITE PAGE

https://bit.ly/YourPowerAsFeministEntrep

==> This workshop will be held in Toronto & New York's afternoon, at 1:30 pm ET // London 's evening, 6:30 pm GMT // Vancouver's morning, 10:30 am PT <==

Please note that this will be a 3 hour workshop, with a 15 minute break. We'll spend our time flowing between idea presentations, small group work sessions, and full group discussions.

In this interactive workshop, we will:

• Explore what it means to be a "feminist" entrepreneur.

• Define for ourselves what our radically inclusive, collective, transformational feminism entails.

• Discuss the challenges we feminists face as we "make things that matter", such as businesses, ventures, services, products, and communities, in a world that pressures us to submit to the status quo.

• Assess our current strengths and gifts as feminist business people, and consider where we want to build our business competencies and our political commitments.

• Craft a learning plan and a set of commitments to guide our next steps.

What to Expect

Prework:

Drawing on feminist teaching practices, participants will be asked to reflect on different models of participating in the community and make a commitment to participating a level that works best for them.

Participants will receive some introductory reading to complete during the week before the workshop.

During the workshop:

Participants will work with each other in small breakout groups as well as in a large, full group conversation. Our four small group conversations will comprise a full hour of our workshop time, so plan to be actively involved in your own and each other's exploration.

Folks in this workshop will be asked to participate under the Feminist Collaboration Agreement, in which all parties agree to keep personal and business details private and not share them outside the workshop community.

Sign up here: https://bit.ly/YourPowerAsFeministEntrep

Follow-up work:

As part of your participation in the workshop, you're making a commitment to complete a feedback form at the end of the workshop to help improve the workshop and help us understand what support you might need as a (more) feminist entrepreneur.

Participants will receive a resource list for further learning and a self-reflection exercise to help you personalize your learning.

Follow-Up Office Hour: As part of the workshop, participants will be invited to rejoin together for a one-hour Zoom conversation, on Weds July 13 at 3:00 pm ET. We'll share insights and discuss any questions that came up during the workshop and followup work.

Please email cv@feministsatwork.com if you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions.

This workshop is best for:

• People who are comfortable with saying that they advocate for a radically inclusive feminism (think "not White" or "not Lean-In") and are open to exploring what they need to learn and do next.

• Folks who are in the earliest stages of starting a business, a non-profit or community, a side hustle, or any beloved project and who want to pursue their venture in a more feminist way.

• Folks who have already established a feminist business or non-profit enterprise, who want to clarify their path forwards.

• This workshop will also be useful for people who mentor and/or lead business accelerators and womxn's entrepreneurship programs, who want to understand how to support people with explicitly feminist business agendas.

People who are uncomfortable with feminisms that embrace all anti-oppression efforts and feminisms that envision a future where everyone and the planet flourishes may find that this workshop is not for them.

Sign up here: https://bit.ly/YourPowerAsFeministEntrep

As feminists, we want our (revolutionary) products and services to reach as many people as possible, especially those folks who have fewer $$ resources. And, as business people we want our pricing and revenue to be bring in enough $$ to make our businesses sustainable financially and emotionally.

Too often, feminist business people pick one objective or the other, failing to realize that we can do BOTH. At the SAME TIME.

In this workshop, we review a bunch of real-world practices that actually work to make products $$ accessible. We craft and commit to some feminist principles that help us find the intersection of accessible & sustainable pricing.

PLEASE SIGN UP ON THE EVENTBRITE PAGE

https://bit.ly/FeministPricingAccessibility

We'll consider several common strategies that entrepreneurs are using to establish accessible prices for our work, and we'll evaluate them against our feminist values to see what we want to keep. We’ll discuss strategies to maximize accessibility to customers with different levels of income, ways to meet customers where they are, ways to loop our communities in to craft more systemic options, and ways to understand our own challenges around setting accessible prices. Because it's true that there are a whole lot of norms, assumptions, and emotions at work as we try to use pricing as a strategy for transformation. We'll apply these strategies to a short case study, and work together to help you identify a range of price accessibility options that feel right for you and your business.

(Note: you don’t have to have an offering for sale right now to participate, to contribute, and to learn.)

Finally, for the community, we'll draft a Feminist Pricing Policy Question List that we can use any time we want to set prices, offer accessible options, and expand the discussion of “value”.

Preparation:

Readings: In advance of the sessions, participants will receive a brief introduction to feminist pricing challenges, along with a list of links to sites where feminist pricing practices are used.

Preparation materials will be shared with participants a week before the workshop.

Followup:

Because this is a feminist business workshop with a responsibility to a larger community of feminist business people, you'll be expected to share your feedback about how to make the session better. This way, we can all contribute to feminist business praxis.

Following feminist teaching/ learning praxis, participants will also be invited to follow a guided, private self-reflection on their participation, their standpoint, and what they learned.

Tiered Tickets for Feminist Pricing

To recognize the value of the work that will go into this workshop, and to generate some funds to support participants with fewer resources, tickets are available at three price levels: Solidarity, Nourish, and Grow. There is also the option to "Pay What Your Wish". As you reflect on the ticket options that are right for you, you'll be experiencing an experiment in feminist pricing and accessibility. (See what I did there?)

Details on the ticket page. https://bit.ly/FeministPricingAccessibility

To select the ticket option that feels right for you, you might draw on the wisdom and example of Holly Poole-Kavana at Red Bird Botanicals. See her explanation on her website. Holly created this guidance (below) which we cite with gratitude.

As Holly Poole-Kavana explains:

"The scale is intended to be a map, inviting each of us to take inventory of our financial resources and look deeper at our levels of privilege. It is a way to challenge the classist and capitalist society we live in and work towards economic justice on a local level. While I ask you to take these factors into consideration, please don’t stress about it. Pay what feels right.”

A bracing tour of "Business Truths that Feminists Can't Ignore",
plus strategies for working through them.

Over the past decade of teaching entrepreneurs, I've been keeping a list of all the things that entrepreneurs would rather not hear me say. There are certain truths about business, whether it's "business as usual", values-driven business, or feminist business, that no business -- no matter how revolutionary -- can avoid. We ignore these truths at our peril.

In this workshop, we'll take stock of a dozen of these business truths. And, we'll strategize how to deal with them in feminist ways so that we and our businesses flourish.

==> This session will be held from 12 ET to 1:30 ET in Toronto & New York// in London 7-8:30 pm GMT // Vancouver 10 am-11:30 AM <==

Tickets available on Eventbrite

Overview

To create business-as-revolution, we imagine that we can and will need to change everything about business-as-usual. And, when people tell us we can't change these things about business, we scoff and think to ourselves "yeah, right". We actually have to believe we can change almost everything about business-as-usual, or else we wouldn't question the status quo enough.

And yet... and yet... there are some things about starting a business, running a business, making a product or service, creating a team of coworkers, designing work processes, paying folks, procuring resources, and even meeting basic legal requirements that we simply can't change. (And, I'm not even sure we would change them if we could. That might be fun to talk about too.)

We'll grapple with these truths together, and then figure out ways that we can work with them (or around them, or in sprite of them) to build our businesses.

My intent is not for you to leave with all the answers, but rather for you to have a richer, more detailed map of the business challenges facing feminists. With this map, you'll craft a better way forward for your business.

Who this workshop is for:

This workshop is for entrepreneurs and startup teams who want to create revolutionary businesses and want to explore some business basics in a context where their resistance to conventional business-as-usual won't be treated as naive. Instead, their resistance will be welcomed, acknowledged, and cared for.

This workshop will also be helpful for business coaches, startup mentors, and other teachers who want insight into the myths and assumptions that might hold back the visionary entrepreneurs they aim to serve. When you are aware of what some entrepreneurs might want to ignore you'll be able to help them better.

Participants should have a firm commitment to challenging the ideas I’ll share with your own lived experiences. You should feel ready and willing to look at these issues critically and personalize their implications for yourself and your business.

Finally, participants should feel comfortable with the idea that the workshop will not cover everything that’s important to know about business and feminisms. Every concept that’s included will be important, but not every important concept/ conversation will be included.

This workshop will work best for folx who are comfortable with saying that they advocate for a radically inclusive feminism (think "not White" or "not Lean-In") and who believe that feminist businesses are possible. This workshop will work best for folx who want to experiment with feminist business practices.

Conversely, people who are uncomfortable with the idea of creating imperfectly, prefiguratively feminist businesses right now to help us transition to a feminist future, or people who are unconformable with the challenges of finding ways to work differently within our current capitalist system may find that this workshop is not for them.

Our Approach

This workshop will follow a (more) feminist pedagogical approach. Although much of our time together will be me talking and using slides (with only a few small group conversations and exercises) I don’t want to call this a ‘webinar’ because webinars are framed too much on the one-sided, ‘banking model’ of learning and that’s not how I see this unfolding. I invite you to (and assume that you will) engage actively, not only during the workshop but also after the session. Rather than expecting you to “grab ideas and go”, you’re invited to dwell, muse, consider, and question. Even if I’m talking a lot.

Expectations

• Before the session, I’ll ask you to answer a few questions about your interests so that I can shape the emphasis of the session.

• At the start of our time together, I’ll ask you to review, possibly modify, and then agree to a set of group participation norms.

• I’ll also ask you to share with me, anonymously, your feedback about the process of the session and your reflections on the content of the session.

• Finally, I’ll invite you to consider a few private “take home” reflection questions to build your own wisdom.

The ticket order form will ask you to agree to these expectations. If they don't work for you, please email me at cv@feministsatwork.com.

Tickets available on Eventbrite

Feminist Ticketing Tiers

As part of our exploration of feminist pricing strategies, we'll be using a tiered ticket format.

• The Steadfast Ticket is for folx who are financially secure and covers the cost of your participation.

• The Supporters Ticket is for folx who are able to contribute, beyond the cost of your own ticket, to add funds to the Community-Resourced Ticket Pool.

• The Solidarity Ticket is for folx with limited financial resources; your tickets will be supported by the community and by CV.

Currently, 20% of anticipated tickets are available at the Solidarity level. I'm starting with a target of 10 folks signing up, so this would include 2 Solidarity tickets. More will be added as/if the workshop signups grow.

Community Members -- Finally, folks who are already members of the Feminist Enterprise Commons (FEC), PowerBitches, and We Are The Culture Makers can get 20% off their ticket, using a code I will post on the event listings/ blog posts in each of these communities.

Caveats:

I’ll be drawing on insights from the Lean Startup (Eric Ries) and Running Lean (Ash Maurya) approaches to business-b(Er8cuilding , along with insights from the work of Barb Orser and Catherine Elliot on feminist entrepreneurship. I’ll also draw on what I’ve been learning with my entrepreneurial feminist community, particularly my conversations with Kelly Diels and Petra Kassun-Mutch. That said, much of the material I will share will be new, experimental exposition. You will not have heard this all before.

This workshop will be focused on business ideas emerging from an assortment of progressive business movements (e.g., B Corp, Purpose-led, Evergreen, Social Value, Donut Economics, Indigenomics, Horizontalism, and more). I will do my best to document these influences with a list of references I'll share for your future learning. I will also draw on feminist ideas emerging from an Anglophone, North American conversation, including intersectional feminisms, Black feminisms, and materialist feminisms.

Although I’ll be speaking from my academic expertise and taking the role of a scholar/teacher, I’m not planning to impose my views as though they are objective or the only relevant way to understand things. So that you know the constraints and boundary conditions on the perspectives I’ll be sharing, I’ll be sure to identify my own standpoint and positionality at the start of our time together. I'll also ask you to consider your own standpoint and positionality as you explore these ideas. And, I'll be sure to define standpoint and positionality to you know what I'm talking about and why it matters.

Media Consent

Recording: We will be recording portions of this workshop, and these recorded portions might be used in later workshops. Breakout room conversations will not be recorded. Only sections that feature CV speaking will be shared outside the actual session. By registering for this workshop, you understand and consent to the idea that your image and voice may be recorded. Your image in the Zoom gallery might appear later in video clips that CV shares, but your voice and personal comments will not be shared. If you have concerns about your image or voice being recorded for these purposes, please email cv@feministsatwork.com and we'll work something out.

Emails: Signing up for this class will automatically put you on the email list for the Feminism&Business newsletter, so that I can keep you up-to-date on issues and workshops. Know that you can unsubscribe at any time, and that I will keep your information private.

Because this session will have small group breakouts, and because I'd like participants to connect with each other, the order form will ask you to confirm that you'll share your email contact information with other participants.

Please email me at cv@feministsatwork.com if you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions.

Learn how to design feminist values into the revenue model of your business and the service delivery model of your non-profit.

See Eventbrite for Tickets and more Details.

Join us where feminist values meet business practice -- and learn how to design your business / venture using the Feminist Business Model Canvas (FBMC).

The Feminist Business Model Canvas (Harquail, 2016) is a tool, a process, and a world view designed to help entrepreneurs and teams build their transformational, inclusive values directly into the ways they identify and pursue business opportunities. It helps future-oriented businesses create their own criteria for success, building a new paradigm of feminist business.

What will we do together?

In this interactive workshop, participants will be introduced to business modeling as a process and business model canvases as design tools. With this foundation, we'll explore the FBMC and learn the feminist thinking behind the elements that compose the Canvas.

See Eventbrite for Tickets and more Details.

Participants will experiment with the design process using the FBMC's unique set of questions. These questions ask you to dig into what matters to you, to establish an empathic and caring connection with your customers, and to imagine products that meet functional and meaning-filled needs.

Participants will also work to identify the unique strengths and gifts you and your team have to offer as a business.

I'll send participants an introductory exercise to complete the week before the workshop, as well as some pre-reading. After the workshop, you'll receive a resource list and a self-reflection exercise to help you personalize your learning.

Before the workshop, I'll also send you a pdf of the full FBMC workbook (about 75 pages) including blank canvases, a step-by-step explanation of the modeling process, and all the questions you'll need to complete the remaining steps of the modeling process (e.g., the Values Build-In process, Alignment Check, Adjusting the Model as Your Business Grows, Addressing Oppression).

Participants will work in small groups during a few breakout sessions, as well as in the full group.

As part of the workshop, participants will be invited to join a short-term online community platform which they can use to discuss insights, share canvases, and ask follow-up questions for me and other workshop participants to help answer. FEC members already pay for access to the community, and I'll be contributing $5 to the FEC for each non-FEC ticket, to pay for the FEC hosting our materials and our conversation.

Folks in this workshop will be asked to participate under the Feminist Collaboration Agreement, in which all parties agree to keep personal and business details private and not share them except within the workshop community.

As part of the commitment you make by participating, you'll be expected to share an anonymized version of your FBMC (all juicy details removed) with the community, and to complete a feedback exercise to help improve the tool and/or the workshop.

Who is this for?

This workshop is designed for participants who already have an idea for a business or non-profit venture, who have a startup-in-process, or who are part of an established business that’s ready for real focus on building values into their ongoing work.

Folks who are interested in feminist businesses as a concept, in the FBMC as a tool for entrepreneurs in incubators and accelerator programs, or in non-feminist but still values-led businesses will also find the workshop useful but will need to 'play along' with a business idea to get the full value of the workshop.

We expect that every participant will be interested in transformational, radically inclusive feminism. If you don't support and advocate for radically inclusive feminism, this is not the workshop for you.

Your guide in this process will be me, CV Harquail, the designer of the FMBC. More info about me and the FBMC here.

Feminist Ticketing Tiers

See Eventbrite for Tickets and more Details.

As part of our exploration of feminist pricing strategies, we'll be using a tiered ticket format. See Eventbrite for details.

Media Consent

We will be recording portions of this workshop, and these recorded portions might be used in later workshops. Only sections that feature me/CV speaking will be shared outside the actual session. Breakout room conversations will not be recorded.

By registering for this workshop, you understand and consent to the idea that your image and voice may be recorded. Your image in the Zoom gallery might appear later in video clips that I/CV share/s, but your voice and personal comments will not be shared. If you have concerns about your image or voice being recorded for these purposes, please email cv@feministsatwork.com and we'll work something out.

Finally! A full, rich conversation and practice of Feminist Business is emerging, as entrepreneurs, coaches, mentors, teachers, and business people are claiming the core ideas of feminism as tools for transforming how we work together, how we produce together, how we support our right livelihoods, and how we organize our economy.

Our conversation is spirited and enthusiastic, and it is also often disconnected and uneven.

Let's fix that.

We need all. the. words. to describe what we believe. We need simple definitions for the terms we use to convey big ideas. We need an analysis and an understanding to support the concepts we share with each other. We need to be able to explain why we believe what we do so that we can inspire others.

With a shared foundation in key feminist constructs, we’ll be able to connect across our community and increase our impact.

In this workshop, we’ll take a whirlwind tour through concepts and analyses that you’re likely to need as you put feminism into practice in your business, coaching, and teaching.

==> This session will be held from 12 ET to 2:00 ET in Toronto & New York// in London 7-9 pm GMT // Vancouver 10 am-12 pm PT <==

Get tickets on Eventbrite!

Overview

This workshop assumes that even the most enthusiastic feminists might have gaps in their ability to explain and apply feminist ideas they deeply believe. Having a chance to re-view and renew a host of feminist concepts will help participants put their ideas into words and identify areas of feminist thinking that they want to explore next.

Concepts we’ll discuss include:

• An inclusive, collective, transformational definition of feminism

• How to work with the fact that there are so many different takes on feminism

• Why flourishing (and not just the end of oppression) is the goal of feminism

• Women as a political category

• The power dynamics of gendering, how the strategies that lead us to accept “dominance gendering” are also deployed in other systems of oppression

• “Expressive gendering” versus “dominance gendering” (Harquail)

• Dominance Gendering as a colonialist, imperialist, racist practice

• Feminist vs. feminine, and why we advocate for feminism

• Feminism and anti-oppression

• White feminism: what it is and how not to get caught there

• Why Feminism and not Humanism, Equalism, or World Peace

• Intersectionality (Crenshaw), Kyriarchy (Schussler Fiorenza), and the relationship between them (Harquail)

• Dominance systems vs Partnership systems (Eisler)

• Five Values promoted by Feminists (Harquail)

You can tell from this list of concepts and the fact that this workshop is only two hours long that we’ll only get to *introduce* these ideas. My intent is not for you to leave with all the answers, but rather for you to have a richer more detailed map of feminisms, and a whole lot of better questions to pursue.

[[ Please note that this workshop is not designed to help you understand feminist business and feminist business practice (it focuses on the “feminist” part of feminist business). For that, you’ll want to participate in the second part of this series, Feminism for Business: Challenging Conventions and Inventing New Practice, which I’ll host later this Spring. ]]

Who this workshop is for:

This workshop is for entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, coaches, and teachers who want to bring feminist ideas into their business and want a contemporary, coherent picture of concepts at the core of many different feminist conversations.

Participants should have a firm commitment to challenging the ideas I’ll share with their own lived experiences and learning so that you can personalize the practical implications of these ideas.

Finally, participants should feel comfortable with the idea that the workshop will not cover everything that’s important to know about feminisms. Every concept that’s included will be important, but not every important feminist concept/ conversation will be included.

This workshop will work best for folx who are comfortable with saying that they advocate for a radically inclusive feminism (think "not White" or "not Lean-In") and are open to exploring what they need to learn and do next.

Conversely, people who are uncomfortable with feminisms that embrace all anti-oppression efforts and feminisms that envision a future where everyone and the planet flourishes may find that this workshop is not for them.

Our Approach

This workshop will follow a (more) feminist pedagogical approach. Although most of our time together will be me talking and using slides (rather than small group conversations and exercises) I don’t want to call this a ‘webinar’ because webinars are framed too much on the one-sided, ‘banking model’ of learning and that’s not how I see this unfolding. I invite you to (and assume that you will) engage actively, not only during the workshop but also after the session. Rather than expecting you to “grab ideas and go”, you’re invited to dwell, muse, consider, and question. Even if I’m talking a lot.

Expectations

• Before the session, I’ll ask you to answer a few questions about your interests so that I can shape the emphasis of the session.

• At the start of our time together, I’ll ask you to review, possibly modify, and then agree to a set of group participation norms.

• I’ll also ask you to share with me, anonymously, your feedback about the process of the session and your reflections on the content of the session.

• Finally, I’ll invite you to consider a few private “take home” reflection questions to build your own wisdom.

Caveats:

I’ll be drawing on the work I’ve presented in Chapter One of my book, Feminism: A Key Idea for Business (Routledge, 2020) along with my keynote talks at the Entrepreneurial Feminism Forums (2018 & 2019), and my more recent explications and conceptualizations. I’ll also draw on what I’ve been learning with my entrepreneurial feminist community, particularly with Kelly Diels, Kimberly George, and Petra Kassun-Mutch. That said, much of the material I will share will be new, experimental exposition. You will not have heard this all before.

Although I’ll be speaking from my academic expertise and taking the role of a scholar/teacher, I’m not planning to impose my views as though they are objective or the only relevant way to understand things. So that you know the constraints and boundary conditions on the perspectives I’ll be sharing, I’ll be sure to identify my own standpoint and positionality at the start of our time together. I'll also ask you to consider your own standpoint and positionality as you explore these ideas. And, I'll be sure to define standpoint and positionality to you know what I'm talking about and why it matters.

This workshop will be focused on feminist ideas emerging from an Anglophone, North American conversation, including intersectional feminisms, Black feminisms, and materialist feminisms. It will not include a full introduction to all relevant feminisms (there are so many!) and unfortunately will not include feminist thinking of the Global South, Turtle Island Indigenous feminisms, Chicana feminism, or psychoanalytic feminism. Even though I’ll draw on concepts from feminist epistemology and ontology, sociology, social psychology, and organizational theory, the conversation will be accessible and welcoming to folks who haven’t studied these disciplines formally.

Feminist Ticketing Tiers

As part of our exploration of feminist pricing strategies, we'll be using a tiered ticket format.

For details and tickets, see Eventbrite!

Media Consent

Consent is a feminist issue, and getting consent to record our session and to send you emails is very important to me. So, please read this next section….

Recording: We will be recording portions of this workshop, and these recorded portions might be used in later workshops. Breakout room conversations will not be recorded. Only sections that feature CV speaking will be shared outside the actual session. By registering for this workshop, you understand and consent to the idea that your image and voice may be recorded. Your image in the Zoom gallery might appear later in video clips that CV shares, but your voice and personal comments will not be shared. If you have concerns about your image or voice being recorded for these purposes, please email cv@feministsatwork.com and we'll work something out.

Emails: Signing up for this class will automatically put you on the email list for the Feminism&Business newsletter, so that I can keep you up-to-date on issues and workshops. Know that you can unsubscribe at any time, and that I will keep your information private.

Because this session will not have small group breakouts other than for our introductions, you will not be asked to share your email or contact information with other participants. You may, if you like, use direct messaging in the zoom chat channel to invite one-to-one connection.

Please email me at cv@feministsatwork.com if you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions.

Explore how to support other feminist entrepreneurs, develop a feminist relationship with them,
& help them grow their feminist enterprise.

Feminist business people depend on each other to show what’s possible, to ask tough questions, to encourage smart experimentation, to practice care and nurturing, and to support our own growth as leaders-- all while growing a feminist enterprise. Feminist business mentoring is a framework, theory, and practice that helps you work directly with other feminists to grow your individual and our collective expertise.

Together, we'll work through a Model for Feminist Business Mentoring that works at all three levels: personal, interpersonal, and organizations. We'll identify action steps for each element. Then, we'll work together to craft an action plan for an important mentoring relationship that you can transform with feminist practices.

Tickets available on Eventbrite.

The second half of this workshop is scheduled for Mon, Feb 8, at 2:00 pm ET for Toronto & New York // London 7 pm GMT // Vancouver 10 am PT <==

How can we hold ourselves accountable to feminist values and feminist communities as business people
and as ventures?

==> This workshop meets TWICE. The first half of the workshop will be Mon, Feb 1 and the second half on Mon, Feb 8, at 2:00 pm ET for Toronto & New York // London 7 pm GMT // Vancouver 10 am PT <== Plan to attend both halves.

By virtue of calling ours "feminist" businesses, we are making a public and personal commitment to holding ourselves accountable to feminist values and feminist communities. 

However, since there is no "Feminist Authority" to tell us when we're meeting our commitments or straying from them, we need to develop our own systems of accountability.

In this workshop, we'll explore several tactics being used in feminist businesses to hold ourselves accountable as individuals, as groups working together, as entities within marketplaces, and as actors/agents in a larger feminist movement.

Tactics we'll discuss include (and won't be limited to) accountability statements, quarterly scorecards, clearness meetings, accountability partners, and peer review teams.

Purchase tickets on Eventbrite.

We'll also consider and help each other understand:

- what kinds of commitments make sense for ourselves and our businesses,

- how we can establish relationships within which we can hold brave and effective accountability conversations, and

- how we can participate in our feminist ecosystem to nudge each other forward with care and love.

Participants will leave with a fuller sense of what commitments they want to take on personally and as a business unit, how they want to be held accountable, and how they can contribute to and support other feminist businesses' goals.

This workshop is best for:

• People who are comfortable with saying that they advocate for a radically inclusive feminism (think "not White" or "not Lean-In") and are open to exploring what they need to learn and do next.

• Folks who are in the earliest stages of starting a business, a non-profit or community, a side hustle, or any beloved project and who want to pursue their venture in a more feminist way.

• Folks who have already established a feminist business or non-profit enterprise, who want to clarify their path forwards.

This workshop will also be useful for people who mentor and/or lead business accelerators and womxn's entrepreneurship programs, who want to understand how to support people and businesses with explicitly feminist business agendas.

People who are uncomfortable with feminisms that embrace all anti-oppression efforts and feminisms that envision a future where everyone and the planet flourishes may find that this workshop is not for them.

What to Expect

Prework:

Participants will receive an introductory exercise to complete the week before the workshop, as well as some pre-reading.

Drawing on feminist teaching practices, participants will be asked to reflect on different models of participating in the community and make a commitment to participating a level that works best for them.

During the workshop:

Participants will work with each other in small breakout groups as well as in a large, full group conversation.

Folks in this workshop will be asked to participate under the Feminist Collaboration Agreement, in which all parties agree to keep personal and business details private and not share them except within the workshop community.

Follow-up work:

Participants will receive a resource list for further learning and a self-reflection exercise to help you personalize your learning.

As part of the commitment you make by participating, you'll be expected to complete a feedback exercise to help improve the workshop and help us understand what support you might need as a (more) feminist entrepreneur.

Participants will be invited to join a short-term online community platform (paid for as part of their ticket) which they can use to discuss insights, share canvases, and ask follow-up questions for CV and other workshop participants to help answer.

Please email cv@feministsatwork.com if you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions.

Purchase tickets on Eventbrite.

Please note that you’ll purchase one ticket, that covers both halves of the workshop.

Feminist Ticketing Tiers

As part of our exploration of feminist pricing strategies, we'll be using a tiered ticket format.

The Steadfast Ticket is for folx who are financially secure and covers the cost of your participation.

The Supporters Ticket is for folx who are able to contribute, beyond the cost of your own ticket, to add funds to the Community-Resourced Ticket Pool.

The Solidarity Ticket is for folx with limited financial resources; your tickets will be supported by the community and by CV.

Currently, 20% of anticipated tickets are available at the Solidarity level. I'm hoping to have 20 folks sign up, so this would include 4 Solidarity tickets. More will be added as/if the workshop signups grow.

Community Members -- Finally, people who are already members of the Feminist Enterprise Commons (FEC) can get $5 off their ticket, using a code I've posting on the event listing in the FEC. FEC members already pay for access to the community, and I'll be contributing $5 to the FEC for each non-FEC ticket, to pay for the FEC hosting our materials and later our conversation.

Media Consent

We will be recording portions of this workshop, and these recorded portions might be used in later workshops. We expect to record and possibly re-use only the parts of the workshop where CV presents an initial Feminist Accountability framework, strategies and tactics along with the full group's discussion. The breakout room conversations will not be recorded. Recordings will be used privately by CV to improve the workshop and will not be shared outside the participant group. By registering for this workshop, you understand and acknowledge that your image and voice may be recorded during the group portion and used for learning purposes. If you have concerns about your image or voice being used for these purposes, please email cv@feministsatwork.com and we'll work something out.

==> This workshop will be held two different times to catch folks in different time zones.

This second, afternoon session will be held for Toronto & New York at 2:00 pm ET // London 7 pm GMT // Vancouver 10 am PT <==

What does it ask of us, to be a Feminist Entrepreneur?

Together, let’s craft a Feminist Framework for Entrepreneurship and sketch out our own personal learning paths.

How do we shape our personal path and our business's roadmap so that we can become more feminist in how we work together, provide needed products and services, generate fair revenues, and demonstrate a transformational way of doing business?

==> This workshop will be held two different times to catch folks in different time zones.

This session will be held in Toronto & New York's morning, at 9:00 pm ET // London 2 pm GMT // Dhaka 8 pm BST // Wellington 8 am NZDT Tuesday <==

In this interactive workshop, we will:

• Explore what it means to be a "feminist" entrepreneur.

• Define for ourselves what our radically inclusive, collective feminism entails.

• Discuss feminist approaches to business, business-building, entrepreneurship, and leadership.

• Assess our current strengths and gifts as feminist business people, and consider where we want to build our business competencies and our political commitments.

• Craft a learning plan and a set of commitments to guide our next steps.

Get tickets on Eventbrite.

This workshop is best for:

• People who are comfortable with saying that they advocate for a radically inclusive feminism (think "not White" or "not Lean-In") and are open to exploring what they need to learn and do next.

• Folks who are in the earliest stages of starting a business, a non-profit or community, a side hustle, or any beloved project and who want to pursue their venture in a more feminist way.

• Folks who have already established a feminist business or non-profit enterprise, who want to clarify their path forwards.

• This workshop will also be useful for people who mentor and/or lead business accelerators and womxn's entrepreneurship programs, who want to understand how to support people with explicitly feminist business agendas.

People who are uncomfortable with feminisms that embrace all anti-oppression efforts and feminisms that envision a future where everyone and the planet flourishes may find that this workshop is not for them.

What to Expect

Prework:

Participants will receive an introductory exercise to complete the week before the workshop, as well as some pre-reading.

Drawing on feminist teaching practices, participants will be asked to reflect on different models of participating in the community and make a commitment to participating a level that works best for them.

During the workshop:

Participants will work with each other in small breakout groups as well as in a large, full group conversation.

Folks in this workshop will be asked to participate under the Feminist Collaboration Agreement, in which all parties agree to keep personal and business details private and not share them except within the workshop community.

Follow-up work:

Participants will receive a resource list for further learning and a self-reflection exercise to help you personalize your learning.

As part of the commitment you make by participating, you'll be expected to complete a feedback exercise to help improve the workshop and help us understand what support you might need as a (more) feminist entrepreneur.

As part of the workshop, participants will be invited to join a short-term online community platform which they can use to discuss insights, share canvases, and ask follow-up questions for CV and other workshop participants to help answer.

Please email cv@feministsatwork.com if you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions.

Get tickets on Eventbrite.

Feminist Ticketing Tiers

As part of our exploration of feminist pricing strategies, we'll be using a tiered ticket format.

The Steadfast Ticket is for folx who are financially secure and covers the cost of your participation.

The Supporters Ticket is for folks who are able to contribute, beyond the cost of your own ticket, to add funds to the Community-Resourced Ticket Pool.

The Solidarity Ticket is for folx with limited financial resources; your tickets will be supported by the community and by CV.

Currently, 20% of anticipated tickets are available at the Solidarity level. I'm hoping to have 20 folks sign up, so this would include 4 Solidarity tickets. More will be added as/if the workshop signups grow.

Community Members -- Finally, folks who are already members of the Feminist Enterprise Commons (FEC) can get $5 off their ticket, using a code I've posting on the event listing in the FEC. FEC members already pay for access to the community, and I'll be contributing $5 to the FEC for each non-FEC ticket, to pay for the FEC hosting our materials and later our conversation.

Get tickets on Eventbrite.

Media Consent

We will be recording portions of this workshop, and these recorded portions might be used in later workshops. We expect to record and possibly re-use only the parts of the workshop where CV presents an initial Feminist Framework for Entrepreneurship along with the group's discussion. The breakout room conversations might be recorded, but these recordings would only be used privately by CV to improve the workshop. They would not be shared outside the participate group. By registering for this workshop, you understand and acknowledge that your image and voice may be recorded during the group portion and used at our discretion. If you have concerns about your image or voice being used for these purposes, please email cv@feministsatwork.com and we'll work something out.

Learn how to design feminist values into the revenue model of your business or the service delivery model of your non-profit.

About this Event

Join us where feminist values meet business practice -- and learn how to design your business / venture using the Feminist Business Model Canvas (FBMC).

The Feminist Business Model Canvas is a tool, a process, and a world view designed to help entrepreneurs and teams build their transformational, inclusive values directly into the ways they identify and pursue business opportunities. It helps future-oriented businesses create their own criteria for success, building a new paradigm of feminist business.

Purchase tickets on Eventbrite.

What will we do together?

In this interactive workshop, participants will be introduced to business modeling as a process and business model canvases as design tools. With this foundation, we'll explore the FBMC and learn the feminist thinking behind the elements that compose the Canvas. Participants will experiment with the design process using the FBMC's unique set of questions. These questions ask you to dig into what matters to you, to establish an empathic and caring connection with your customers, and to imagine products that meet functional and meaning-filled needs. Participants will also work to identify the unique strengths and gifts you and your team have to offer as a business.

• Participants will receive an introductory exercise to complete the week before the workshop, as well as some pre-reading. After the workshop, participants will receive a resource list and a self-reflection exercise to help you personalize your learning.

• During the workshop, you'll receive a pdf of the full FBMC workbook (about 75 pages) including blank canvases, a step-by-step explanation of the modeling process, and all the questions you'll need to complete the remaining steps of the modeling process (e.g., the Values Build-In process, Alignment Check, Adjusting the Model as Your Business Grows, Addressing Oppression). Participants will work in small groups during a few breakout sessions, as well as in the full group.

• As part of the workshop, participants will be invited to join a short-term online community platform which they can use to discuss insights, share canvases, and ask follow-up questions for CV and other workshop participants to help answer.

• Folks in this workshop will be asked to participate under the Feminist Collaboration Agreement, in which all parties agree to keep personal and business details private and not share them except within the workshop community.

• As part of the commitment you make by participating, you'll be expected to share an anonymized version of your FBMC (all juicy details removed) with the community, and to complete a feedback exercise to help improve the tool and/or the workshop.

Who is this for?

This workshop is designed for participants who already have an idea for a business or non-profit venture, who have a startup-in-process, or who are part of an established business that’s ready for real focus on building values into their ongoing work.

Folks who are interested in feminist businesses as a concept, in the FBMC as a tool for entrepreneurs in incubators and accelerator programs, or in non-feminist but still values-led businesses will also find the workshop useful but will need to 'play along' with a business idea to get the full value of the workshop.

We expect that every participant will be interested in transformational, radically inclusive feminism. If you don't support and advocate for radically inclusive feminism, this is not the workshop for you.

Please email cv@feministsatwork.com if you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions.

Your guides in this process will be CV Harquail, the designer of the FMBC, and Petra Kassun-Mutch,  FBMC coach and serial feminist entrepreneur.

Feminist Ticketing Tiers

As part of our exploration of feminist pricing strategies, we'll be using a tiered ticket format.

The Steadfast Ticket is for folx who are financially secure and covers the cost of your participation.

The Supporters Ticket is for folks who are able to contribute, beyond the cost of your own ticket, to add funds to the Community-Resourced Ticket Pool.

The Solidarity Ticket is for folx with limited financial resources; your tickets will be supported by the community and by CV.

Currently, 20% of anticipated tickets are available at the Solidarity level. I'm hoping to have 20 folks sign up, so this would include 4 Solidarity tickets. More will be added as/if the workshop signups grow.

Purchase tickets on Eventbrite.

Finally, folks who are already members of the Feminist Enterprise Community (FEC) can get $5 off their ticket, using a code I've posting on the event listing in the FEC. FEC members already pay for access to the community, and I'll be contributing $5 to the FEC for each non-FEC ticket, to pay for the FEC hosting our materials and later our conversation.

Media Consent

We will be recording portions of this workshop, and these recorded portions might be used in later workshops. We expect to record and possibly re-use only the parts of the workshop where CV presents the FBMC along with the group's discussion of and questions about the FBMC. The breakout room conversations and Canvas presentations might be recorded, but these recordings would only be used privately by CV to improve the workshop. They would not be shared outside the participate group. By registering for this workshop, you understand and acknowledge that your image may be taken during the group portion and used at our discretion. If you have concerns about your image being used for these purposes, please email cv@feministsatwork.com and we'll work something out.

The Feminist Business Model Canvas — the very first tool to help you bring feminist values into your business— was designed in 2015 to help construct a feminist revenue model in a “greenfield” context. The premise behind the tool was that designing from a deliberately feminist perspective would help us create a business that defied the oppression built into conventional business as well as to resist the oppressive dynamics in our larger culture.  

Alas, too many of us find that within our current markets and industries we have to build our businesses in a “brownfield” world, a world already struggling with kyriarchy-- the master nexus of all systems of oppression (including and not limited to racism, sexism, colonialism, ableism, ageism, extractivism, and more.) How can we dismantle these oppressive systems at the same time as we build our feminist enterprises?

Address the obstacles of today as we build the businesses of the #FeministFuture.

Join us for a zoom-based interactive workshop on Monday Nov. 2 7 ET/6 CT to 9:30 ET/8:30 CT.

Since we are building our feminist businesses in a world currently struggling with kyriarchy-- the master nexus of all systems of oppression -- we need to build our businesses to fight oppressions now.

Building on top of the Feminist Business Model Canvas, we'll draw from five main anti-oppression movements (feminism, anti-racism, anti-classism, decolonization (anti-settler colonialism), and anthropocentrism) to identify practices that can address any form of dominance regardless of its current system of justification.

This will entail, particularly, that we critique ways that business themselves justify some people having power over so many others. We'll face the fact that oppressing and dominating others is how we've been taught to extract financial value from other human beings. 

When we're done, we'll have developed and tested -- together -- the latest expansion of the Feminist Business Model Canvas - the Anti-Oppression Lens For Feminist Enterprises.

Sign Up Here => https://www.eventbrite.com/e/designing-your-feminist-business-with-an-anti-oppression-lens-tickets-120325955171

Preparation:

Readings: In advance of the sessions, participants will receive a brief introduction to defining a feminist business and a (condensed) version of the Feminist Business Model Canvas (FBMC). Participants will need to read these materials and become familiar with the concept of a feminist revenue model so that we can move directly to anti-oppression practices in the workshop. Plan to spend between 30 and 60 minutes to review the FBMC download and consider how it describes your current business.

Google Docs: Participants will also need to make sure they can access and use Google Docs.... here's a link to a test page so you can try this out!

These materials will be shared with participants a week before the workshop.

Followup:

As part of their commitment to learn within the session and with other learners, participants will be asked to share their feedback about how to make the session better.

Following feminist teaching/ learning praxis, participants will also be invited to follow a guided, private self-reflection on their participation, their standpoint, and what they learned.

All participants will receive a list of resources to continue your learning after the workshop.

Tiered Tickets for Feminist Pricing

To recognize the value of the work that will go into this workshop, and to address our feminist commitment to making learning more accessible financially, tickets are available at five price levels: Solidarity, GiftExchange, Seed, Nourish, and Grow. Details on the ticket page.

Sign Up Here => https://www.eventbrite.com/e/designing-your-feminist-business-with-an-anti-oppression-lens-tickets-120325955171

Join us in an online workshop!

Create your own understanding of what it means to be a feminist enterprise, whether a business, a non-profit, or another organizational form. Explore your own imagination, co-create with others, and conjure up what we can look forward to. Use the Feminist Enterprise Design Map™ to sketch out what you want your enterprise to demonstrate and to be.

Sign up via Eventbrite, here: https://bit.ly/3bu7CFy

Over the course of two workshops, we’ll explore a few practices of worldbuilding and visioning to help us envision the feminist future.

=> Workshop One: Worldbuilding the Feminist Economy.

We’ll start with the big picture. In the first workshop, we’ll build a larger, more “macro” world, the world in which feminist enterprises work with each other, along with communities, governments (maybe), society, families, and other groups of people, as well as the flora, fauna, and physical matter of our planet, to create a world devoid of oppression where everyone and everything can flourish. With this workshop, we’ll be the most speculative, inviting ourselves to play with ideas, and imagining an economy that’s really far out and fully functioning in 2040.

The event will be held on zoom -- link to follow.