ONLINE: Feminist Leadership, Education and the Future: Can we Build Back Better?

press release: Women have faced economic disparity, voting disparity, and more for years. The current COVID-19 pandemic has pushed some of these issues to the forefront of the education realm as we see female K-12 educators facing a higher burden of caregiving and emotional labor than their male counterparts.  

The Feminist Fireside Chats are a series hosted by PLACE, the office of Professional Learning and Community Engagement in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The series was created to re-energize, refocus and inspire women who are working in pre-K-12 schools during the pandemic.

“One thing was universally true, and that was that it was women who were doing all of this emotional labor,” program creator and PLACE Program Coordinator Sarah Odell said. “I wanted to give all of these educators the opportunity come together in a space where they could process that, and also think about the kind of institutional change that they want to see after the pandemic ends. While we are all in mourning that the fall will not be the same, there is also an opportunity to demand structural change to better support teachers and students.” 

The Feminist Fireside Chats are a prelude and a part of the Women’s Leadership Incubator, a new program from PLACE designed to serve as a launchpad for the next, most diverse generation of K-12 school leaders—coming in July 2021. 

The next Feminist Fireside Chat, the second of four planned events, is June 11–Feminist Leadership, Education and the Future: Can we Build Back Better? In a time when we all long to go back to “normal,” what might the future be where schools are better set up to support the teachers who work in them? Lori DiPrete Brown, founding director of the 4W Women and Wellbeing Initiative at UW-Madison, Olivia Dahlquist, assistant director of the 4W Women and Wellbeing Initiative at UW-Madison, and Dr. Amy Bintliff, associate professor of educational leadership at the University of California, San Diego will guide participants through a reimagining of school culture and organization so we can think about building back better, more equitable institutions for teachers and leaders.

“In summer 2021, we will welcome our inaugural cohort of the Women’s Leadership Incubator,” Odell said. “Sarah Klein [Executive Director at PLACE] and I will use the lessons we have learned from the Feminist Fireside Chats to think both about how to create community in a virtual environment, but also what kind of curriculum needs to exist so that gender diverse leaders can build capacity to serve schools and districts. The feedback that we have gotten is that women want access to a female network, and a mission sensitive approach to leadership.”