1. Who they are

This project to address feminizing politics as a sine qua non condition for radical democracy was presented to FundAction by a group of municipalist organizations within the Fearless Cities movement which, according to their own definition, is “an informal network of municipalist organisations aimed at promoting the radicalisation of democracy by following a municipalist political strategy and putting local politics at the centre of the political debate.” This project was joined by members of Barcelona en Comú, Marea Atlántica in A Coruña and Madrid129 (Spain), L’Asilo – Massa Critica in Napoli (Italy), Zagreb JE NAS (Croatia) and Ne da(vi)mo Beograd (Serbia).

2. What they did

Due to the diversity of the municipalist network, and the situated nature of the feminist approach, the project implemented a methodology with different steps:

1- Establishment of a steering group that mapped the desired changes based on the four pillars of the feminisation of politics: parity between women and men; reduction of verticality, promotion of real co-responsibility and incorporation of gender equity.

2- Design of a first assessment questionnaire that provided a self-diagnosis of the organizations involved.

3- Development of local workshops based on the previous assessment and as a collective reflection within each participating organisation.

4- Two-day International workshop with all organisation on 25th-27th January 2019 in Barcelona that helped to identify common priorities and goals, to get to know each other and to share experiences, achievements and challenges in the present and future.

5- Development of a second assessment questionnaire to tackle the institutional, political and social context of each organisation.

6- Peer-to-Peer interview to strengthen links and reach a deeper understanding of each organisation’s perspective and results on the project.

Part of the outcomes of this process have been incorporated in an Executive Report and dissemination Video that were presented in the Panel discussion: Feminisation of politics – equality is much more than quota as part of the Fearless Cities Conference in Belgrade that took place  on June 9th 2019

3. Why is this relevant to the FundAction community?

“To feministisize politics, it is necessary to make feminist politics that structurally challenge gendered relations and the construction of roles itself. Politics that search a radical transformation of the material conditions in which women develop their lives, which implies a deep redistribution of wealth and resources, remove male privileges -which entail a deep cultural change- end violence and fight androcentrism, among other issues.” Beatriz Gimeno and Clara Serra

The project focused on the way the feminisation of politics shapes our movements and organizations: how it is addressed within the movement, the challenges of implementing feminist practices within the organisation and of introducing feminist principles among members, the need to integrate feminist principles into internal structures and organisations, activities of the

movements and the policies they movements advocate for. At the same time. It has analysed, from the own organisations and practices, the correlation between movement’s policies and practices in

regard to feminization of politics, the efforts on the individual and movements level and of movements’ feminisation efforts. Finally, it effectively identifies concrete measures to address the theoretical principles.

Although local politics might seem a very specific area of political action, these values, principles and concrete measures can be very used in any organisation and collective, not only within the municipalist movement.