Systemic change requires feminine leadership

The systemic crises facing humanity and all living beings mean that we have to radically change how we operate. Although many of us agree with the well-known saying, ‘We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them’, in reality, doing things differently is extremely hard. We are all part of the system that we want to change – even when we support small farmers, don’t buy things from big chains or don’t take aeroplanes – and we are rewarded or punished according to the values and expectations of the dominant culture.

This kind of leadership embraces systemic thinking, non-linear occurrences, intuition and the unknown

In the last few decades, capitalism has rewarded leaders who achieved exponential growth and vast profits with minimal financial costs, with no concern for the massive natural and human costs that this way of operating incurs. People were taught that the end justifies the means, that you must beat everyone around you and not share any knowledge in order to succeed. These attitudes are so ingrained in us that we replicate them without noticing, and even worse, often encourage others to do the same, consciously or unconsciously.