Measuring Feminist Leadership Principles
Research
In a time of growing pressure and precarity across the global health sector, feminist leadership offers a roadmap for organisational resilience. Yet while there is growing discourse on feminist leadership, measurement lags significantly behind theory. A critical gap remains in how to assess whether organisations are genuinely practicing feminist leadership or merely adopting surface-level changes. At Global 50/50, we are working with partners to advance a new framework to translate feminist principles into measurable practice, helping organisations live the values they espouse.
This work is informed by researcher and advocate Dr Priya Nanda’s paperTowards a Framework for Measuring Feminist Leadership: From Principles to Practice (forthcoming). The paper explores the conceptual foundations of feminist leadership, proposes a practical framework for assessing its implementation, and outlines a pathway for developing tools to help organisations embed and evaluate feminist leadership in practice.
Convening
To advance this work, Global 50/50 has also been convening gender justice advocates to reflect on how equity, care, and accountability can be embedded into the fabric of global health work. Our most recent session, held in Berlin during the World Health Summit, focused on how feminist principles can be measured and what difference that could make.
Participants shared the relief of being able to speak honestly about the painful trade-offs required to survive in an increasingly hostile political environment, about power, layoffs, and the contradictions of working for justice within hierarchical systems. The discussion underscored what feminist spaces do best: creating room for listening, learning, and mutual support, while fostering courage, connection and action.
“Despite decades, if not a millennia, of work advancing women’s rights in health, the “f-word” (feminism) is still considered almost forbidden. And that’s what makes Global 50/50’s work all the more important. You are incredibly trailblazing. Many organisations have been enriched and strengthened by the work that you’re doing and I’m grateful for this space you’ve provided for us today.”
Resources
Global 50/50 curates a living bank of Tools for Change – good practice drawn from a range of experts, actors and sectors to inform organisations’ efforts in building workplaces that are fair and equitable. These include practical tools, guidance, research and assessments on putting feminist leadership principles into practice.
Our goal is to build an evidence base and suite of tools for translating feminist principles into measurable policies and practices that make organisations stronger, more just, and more effective.
If your organisation is interested in piloting or co-developing this tool, get in touch with us. Together, we can measure what matters.
