What does it mean to be a feminist organisation existing within the non-profit industrial complex?
For us at SUPERRR, it means that we’re constantly questioning what we do and, perhaps more importantly, how we do it. As we described with our Policy Building Blocks, there’s no checklist to assess whether something is feminist or not; and feminist policy is ‘uncomfortable, because it does not offer easy solutions, and it is honest because it actively points out the gaps.’
The same, I think, is true for feminist organisations. How we work is just as important as what we do, and though we spend a lot more time talking about what we do, in this blog post series Walking the Talk, we wanted to share a bit more about how we think about accountability internally.
This discussion feels particularly important in the German context given what we’ve observed happening at various feminist-labelled organisations in the civil society sphere in recent weeks, and in the political sphere. There’s no such thing as a perfect feminist, much less a perfect feminist institution – and mistakes are inevitable. What’s not inevitable, though, is how we – as feminists, as leaders, as people, react to those mistakes, and how we make space to own those mistakes and hold ourselves and others around us accountable in a caring way.
Internally at SUPERRR, we have a colleague who is our ‘Ethics Ombudsperson.’ This role isn’t on the Executive Leadership team at SUPERRR, but internally plays a crucial role in providing both somewhat of a moral compass for the team, as well as a caring and open ear to problems that people might have. Within the German context, too, an ‘Antidiskriminierungs-Beauftragte’ or ‘antidiscrimination officer’ is always needed, regardless of the size or positioning of the organisation.
At the same time, we recognise that SUPERRR’s ways of working might not be for everyone. We’re inspired by documents like this from Chayn, which describe in detail ‘what it’s like to work at Chayn’ – outlining clearly what their values mean and (perhaps more crucially) what they don’t mean, within the context of them being a small non- profit organisation working to support survivors of gender-based violence. There are limitations to what we can offer and what we can’t, and what that means for people – and that naturally intersects with the boundaries of what we (more specifically, our leadership) can be held accountable for. There are always improvements to be made, but acknowledging the limitations of what we can change and what we can’t are also important to recognise in a transparent way.
As an organisation founded by two white European women, there’s naturally lived experiences that don’t feature in how the organisation functions – and that shows up in all sorts of ways, and is something that we’re thinking deeply about internally. Julia and Elisa, the co-founders, have worked with an organisational coach from the beginning, to help think through some of these issues – and in more recent months and years, invited various members of the team to sessions to be able to speak more openly with external guidance, and improve and implement better internal policies . Processes that we’re beginning include holding retrospectives to discuss tricky organisational moments, and all-hands coaching sessions where we make space to talk about how we’re all feeling and experiencing being part of the SUPERRR team.
We’ve also held workshop sessions where we’ve talked about what intersectional feminism means for us. Each of us brings a different socialisation and understanding of feminist praxis, and these – along with our own lived experiences – influence how we move in the world, how we treat each other, how we build an organisation together, and what we want it to mean for us. Are there limits in how we are able to act as an intersectional feminist organisation, given the structures we operate within? What does that mean for how we describe ourselves, and our identity?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are always hard moments and smoother times, and the political situation we’re all operating within makes things harder for some. We recognise that some members of the team will face oppression on axes that others won’t – and organisation-wide policies often don’t recognise those individual needs within these broader systems of oppression. In responding to this, we’re inspired by communities and resources like RadHR, ‘working together to create radical, anti-oppressive approaches to HR and operations.’ For example: recognising that different team members will have individual needs and face different issues to others, and considering how we as an organisation can make space for those individual needs to be first acknowledged, and then addressed.
Our internal discussions range from what we need to feel secure and safe; acknowledging that equality is not equity but grappling with what exactly that means for us as a team, and how we perceive it as fair (or not); and the discourse and silencing in Germany surrounding the topic of Israel/Palestine, among others.
We share all this for two purposes: firstly, to acknowledge that claiming the label ‘feminist’ as a civil society organisation means applying feminist values to what you do but also in how you do it. It means acknowledging mistakes and owning up to imperfection, and (in the best case) being ready to be ‘called in’ with those mistakes, listening to that feedback (however hard it might be to hear), and keep up the conversation, despite the discomfort it might bring. And secondly, to express our deep solidarity with employees and ex employees and collaborators of feminist organisations who have not lived up to those values, and who have been left in difficult situations as a result.
To be clear, though, we are by no means doing things perfectly – in fact, we’re definitely not doing things perfectly. What we are doing though, is trying our best, and being open to feedback of all kinds. If there are other feminist organisations out there who would like to talk more about living up to intersectional feminist values in how you work, we’d love to chat.