‘Intersectional collaboration’: a new form of leadership from the WomenEd movement

ABSTRACT

This paper takes an interest in tackling inequalities in school communities and considers how networks of change agents can work together to enact change. To do so, an ethnographic study is conducted examining WomenEd, a charity and grassroots movement of aspiring and existing women leaders in education. Building upon the perspective of collective leadership as a social process, the ‘social-symbolic work’ perspective is applied to analyse the activities of the movement. By drawing upon observations and interviews conducted over a three-year period, this paper offers detailed depictions of the motivations, practices, and effects of the social-symbolic work of WomenEd. The study observes a form of collective leadership underpinned by valuing difference, which enables participants to respond to oppressive school conditions and achieve shifts in autonomy and agential institutional influence. The study thus advances understanding of collective power, or ‘power with’, and the practical activities which can affect change, ‘power work’. Building upon Crenshaw's concept of intersectionality, we term the WomenEd practices ‘intersectional collaboration’, a novel form of collective leadership for social change. The study highlights the significance of inclusion and intersectionality in theorising ‘collectivity’, which has implications for understanding collective leadership and social change.

KEYWORDS:

• Intersectionality
• collective leadership
• social-symbolic work
• agency
• power

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rosie Boparai

Rosie Boparai: With a background in physics and computer science, Rosie is an experienced leader and educator, specialising in building communities and digital networks and in leading computer science, mathematics and physics pedagogy. She is a graduate of the MSt in social innovation at the University of Cambridge, where she focused upon teacher-led organising as a driver for innovation and systems change. Her present PhD research is located in the department of strategy and marketing at The Open University, where she is researching a global organisation navigating change, with a focus on tensions in strategic decision making. Rosie is also a board member of Journal of Physics Education, and a Graduate Research Associate at the Cambridge Centre for Social Innovation.

Michelle Darlington

Michelle Darlington: Michelle is Head of Knowledge Transfer at the Cambridge Centre for Social Innovation and holds a PhD in drawing and cognitive psychology. Her work applies cognitive principles to education, facilitation and research methods. She has written and edited academic publications on drawing, visual literacy arts integration, and social innovation. She is co-founder of the Thinking Through Drawing project, a research network and professional development provider that focuses on creativity and visual literacy in education and research.