Edith is the Director and Co-Founder of Be Her Lead. This post continues a conversation about feminist schools. Read Part 1 or return to blog

Introduction: not just a ‘woke badge’

In my previous post, I proposed that schools proudly identify as feminist institutions, rather than only including feminism as a take-it-or-leave-it optional extra on the curriculum. But all this comes with a big caveat.

I am very sceptical about feminism being tacked onto the curriculum or school website, like a cool new accessory so schools can claim their Ofsted-approved woke badge. And I’m also sceptical about feminism being the goal in itself.

Feminism isn’t the goal; empowerment is

When I started writing this, I figured that hey, I run a feminist organisation that works in schools, so of course I want feminism in schools. We are also unashamedly feminist - our events are often hosted by the Feminist Library here in London, and we tend to attract teachers who are passionate about feminism and clued up on their gender studies. But it’s really important that you do not have to identify as feminist to take part in Be Her Lead, whether you are a teacher being trained, or a student taking part in our weekly workshop series.

Feminism is not the price of entry to our programme, nor is it the prize. If Be Her Lead acts as a gateway to feminism for some teenage girls, then that’s thrilling. Some of our student alumni have gone on to run period poverty or International Women’s Day campaigns in their schools. But it’s more important to us that they emerge feeling more confident and happier in themselves, and that they feel better-resourced and supported as they work towards their life goals. Our mission is to empower women, especially women who experience a lack of privilege for other reasons such as their class or race.

I see a similar approach in other organisations working in the spaces where gender and education meet. Lifting Limits and You Be You, for example, work to combat gender stereotyping and shift unconscious bias in nurseries and primary schools. Stemettes and The Girl’s Network facilitate mentorship to help girls make more empowered career choices, so much easier when you have relatable role models. The new crop of sex ed organisations like Split Banana and Sexplain, take a feminist approach to consent, body image and sexuality. For all these organisations, like for Be Her Lead, feminism is a tool for empowerment - and also a foundation stone, a reason we’re doing what we’re doing. But teachers, students and other stakeholders don’t have to identify as a feminist to support our mission, or feel empowered. And we’re all part of something bigger, too; this conceptual model, published by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, visualises the idea of empowerment on a global level.

“Feminism is not the price of entry to Be Her Lead’s programme, nor is it the prize.”

Alienation, inclusion and edgy t-shirts

Clarifying this feels particularly important given how, for many people, feminism feels like a club for privileged white women - like me, and many of you reading this. An increasingly trendy club, too. Like so many of my peers I have a growing collection of edgy feminist t-shirts, and I definitely wear them to look cool to other people who think like me already, rather than change the mindsets of misogynists on my commute.

But I wasn’t always like that. Until my late teens, I embraced a Catholic identity which meant that for me, feminism was irredeemably associated with abortion - even as I increasingly picked up on ways in which my world was unfair to women, including me. I wonder now if a more inclusive feminist space than the ones I encountered growing up - one that did not require you to ‘convert’ to feminism before entering it, would have helped me explore and develop my interrogation of gender expectations earlier on. I had many strong, supportive women in my life growing up - my teachers, my grandmothers, my mum - who gave me invaluable strength and love through difficult periods, including a severe bout of anorexia in my late teens. But I also wonder if the structure of a close-knit feminist community, including peers as well as older female role models, (like our Be Her Lead groups) would have helped me growing up. Retrospectively feeling like I lacked a space like that during my adolescence, is definitely an underlying reason why I founded Be Her Lead.

If we don’t want to alienate our young people, and if we genuinely want to help them rather than earn a woke badge, then the goal should not be to appear “feminist” to the world - much as I’d love to be like the edgy Swedes, who have the world’s first feminist government. Rather, our goal should be to end inequality and empower women, with feminism educating and supporting us along the way.

“Retrospectively feeling like I lacked a space like that during my adolescence, is definitely an underlying reason why I founded Be Her Lead. ”

Conclusion: continuing the conversation during crisis

Over the next few months, our education system will be handed over to parents as they are required to homeschool their kids. This will cause a load of problems, and a load of inequality, but on the other hand there will also be a lot of experimentation and reevaluation of how education works in our country. We’ll be forced to think about which lessons are worth learning, with a view to how we want to shape the future.

This is intended as the beginning of a conversation rather than a done-and-dusted manifesto. I guess in summary, the points I would like to offer are as follows:

We desperately need feminist schools, to protect and empower young women, and to build a fairer future for everybody. Not the odd lesson, but intersectional feminism as a value-system underpinning our education system.
Feminism as an identity and community can be helpful for young people but in our current climate it can also alienate young people. So it’s important that we emphasise that our goal is to empower the oppressed, not convert all our kids into feminists.
It’s also vital that the way feminist thought is integrated into our curriculum feels relevant and practically helpful for students, many of whom are facing very real internal crises and external prejudices related to their gender.

Now over to you. What’s your vision of a feminist school system, both on a macro policy level, and on the ground?