The publication of my new book, Women, Power, and the Economy: Collective Feminist Practice Can Transform the World, coincides with a pivotal moment in global transformation debates. Humanity faces converging crises—climate breakdown, deepening inequality, authoritarian backlashes, and economic instability—that demand nothing less than a redefinition of how we organise power and economies. For the Club of Rome, this is not a new insight but a continuation of decades of warnings and calls for systemic change.
The Club of Rome’s Earth4All Initiative offers a roadmap through this polycrisis. Its five turnarounds—ending poverty, addressing inequality, empowering women, transforming food systems, and transitioning to clean energy—are indispensable strategies for creating societies that thrive within planetary boundaries. Yet, have we, as systems scientists, neglected the stronghold of patriarchy?
My book contributes to this debate by highlighting what has so far been underestimated in transformation strategies: the role of collective feminist power practices. These are practices that restructure power itself, shifting it away from patriarchal logics of domination toward life-serving, egalitarian, and collaborative forms. Without such a shift, the Earth4All Turnarounds risk being undermined by entrenched “patriarchal power pathologies.” With them, the turnarounds gain transformative depth and resilience.
Power pathologies: The missing piece
The multiple crises we face are not only ecological and economic. They are also crises of power. Patriarchal systems have normalised forms of power that prioritise competition, exploitation, extraction and control—whether in political regimes, economic models, or social relations. These pathologies create systemic resistance to transformation.
Collective feminist practice challenges this by redefining power as the ability to create a positive impact together. It builds on women’s histories of resilience and the genealogies of care, reciprocity, and commons. Bringing these practices into the heart of transformation strategies makes it possible to align policy ambition with societal capacity for change.
Drawing on insights from feminist thinkers and practitioners across the Global South and North—such as Mary Beard, Hannah Arendt, Srilatha Batliwala, Liepollo Pheko, Jayati Ghosh, Kristina Lunz and Minna Salami—this redefinition of power shifts the focus from control to co-creation.
This feminist understanding of power invites us to imagine and practice leadership that regenerates, rather than depletes, the world we share.
The vision of a reclaimed definition of power directly complements the Earth4All roadmap. Just as Earth4All calls for a shift toward wellbeing economies, feminist practice calls for economies rooted in care, reciprocity, and interdependence. Just as Earth4All emphasises governance innovations, feminist practice insists on leadership that is accountable, relational, and oriented toward the common good.
Strengthening the Earth4All Turnarounds through feminist practices
The Earth4All Turnarounds outline pathways for societies to thrive within planetary boundaries. Yet to truly succeed, these transformations must also challenge the deep-rooted power imbalances that sustain inequality and ecological harm. Feminist practices offer precisely this corrective. Integrating feminist principles into the Earth4All Turnarounds strengthens their capacity to regenerate societies and ecosystems—by ensuring that power is shared, voices are heard, and life in all its forms can flourish.
- Ending poverty
Feminist practices highlight that poverty is not only about material deprivation but also about disempowerment. Collective feminist approaches emphasise overcoming neocolonial structures, true collaboration, mutual empowerment, redistribution of resources, and recognition of unpaid, often female and racialised care work. Embedding these principles into poverty eradication strategies ensures that interventions go beyond income to strengthen agency, dignity, and resilience. - Addressing inequality
Inequality and distributive injustice is often reinforced by patriarchal norms and structures. Feminist power practice insists on intersectionality, making visible how gender, race, class, and colonial legacies intersect. This broadens Earth4All’s agenda by linking inequality reduction to systemic change in governance, labor markets, and social institutions. - Empowering women
While Earth4All rightly places women’s empowerment as a key turnaround, feminist practice deepens this by focusing on collective rather than individual empowerment. Women’s empowerment is not only about access and representation but about transforming the very structures of decision-making. Feminist networks, collective leadership, and egalitarian governance models can multiply the impact of policies that support women’s rights. - Transforming food systems
Food systems are deeply gendered. Women are central actors in agriculture, food distribution, and care economies, yet often marginalised in decision-making. Feminist practice strengthens this turnaround by embedding commons-based governance, valuing Indigenous and women’s knowledge, and shifting food economies toward care for both people and ecosystems. - Transitioning to clean energy
Energy transitions risk replicating old patterns of exclusion if patriarchal structures remain intact. Feminist practices of power foreground participatory governance, distributive justice, and intergenerational responsibility. They ensure that energy transitions are not only technologically green but also socially just, inclusive, and resilient.
From turnarounds to civilisational shifts
My book argues that integrating feminist power practice into transformation strategies is not only an ethical imperative but a systemic necessity. Patriarchal backlash, authoritarianism, and necropolitical tendencies are gaining strength precisely because traditional definitions of power remain unchallenged.
The Earth4All Turnarounds provide the blueprint. Feminist practice provides the capacity-building architecture—the social and cultural power shifts—that make these turnarounds sustainable. Together, they point toward emergent feminist-oriented civilisations where economies serve life, governance is accountable, and societies thrive on plurality and care.
A feminist contribution to Earth4All
As the Club of Rome continues its legacy of challenging dominant paradigms and offering transformative visions, Women, Power, and the Economy brings the lens of feminist practice into the conversation. It is a call to recognise that structural change cannot succeed without addressing the deep roots of power pathologies—and that feminist genealogies, practices, and networks offer concrete, proven strategies to do so.
To create a good life for all within planetary boundaries, we must not only change policies but also transform the very practice of power. This is the contribution feminist practice brings to Earth4All—and to the future of humanity.
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If you’ll be at the Frankfurt Book Fair, let’s make this tangible — join me for a conversation on Collective Feminist Power Practices: Women, Power and the Economy — Collective Feminist Practice Can Transform the World on Sunday 19 October 2025, 11:00–12:00 at the Taylor & Francis Group Stand — Hall 4.0 D15.
More about Collective Feminist Power Practices in the Feminist Transformation Newsletter.
