Discussions of the GND is key to societal transformation — debating over the specifics of the GND integrates feminist methods into the policy

These interviews reveal a collective understanding of the Feminist Green New Deal initiative and its applicability and potential contribution to not only policy discourses, but also overarching narratives of societal transformation. While many topical insights about the content of policy proposals could be extracted from these responses there are also three ontological themes that emerge. First, the feminist valuation of intersectional analysis – assumed by these activists as the tool de rigeur – corresponds to the ways in which knowledge in the Coalition is created, ordered, reified, and prioritised. Secondly, the collection of ideas points towards an overarching policy solution, reorienting the economy towards one centred on care and regeneration. Such a perspective reflects the trajectory of feminist thought, erected on decades of feminist economic analysis, that rejects the inimical framing of environmental problems being addressed through reductive, singular measures focused on treating the outputs of toxic processes instead of redesigning the processes. Lastly, the advocates demonstrate an undeterred investment in collective action, rooted in solidarity and rights, equal exchange, and mutual learning, as the most effective approach to movement building, indicating such an approach has emerged rightfully from the history of organising for justice.

Intersectional analysis as a key tool

The value placed on intersectional analysis in the FemGND, an analysis that is central to the entire project’s conceptualisation and formulation, is fundamental to these activists’ work and their responses to the current interlocking and overlapping crises. When Respondent 1 points to the particular impacts of man camps on Indigenous women, it is an intersectional analysis that elucidates differentiated impacts, and rejects a homogenisation of all women’s experience as the same. Respondents 2 and 3 used as an example the disproportionate impact of Hurricane Katrina on Black womenFootnote14 in comparison to men of all racial identities, as another illustration of how intersectional analysis brings to light injustices and inequalities otherwise obscured. These examples reinforce Respondent 4’s case for ‘confront[ing] issues around power, privilege and interconnected forms of oppression at every stage of the design and delivery of these policies/programmes/practices’.

Intersectional analysis has been a vital tool for feminists working on environment and development since the early 1990s (Sturgeon Citation1997). Respondent 5 noted the prioritisation of organisations for initial invitation to collaborate based on those having a ‘similar political analysis – which was a deeply intersectional feminism’. Kaijser and Kronsell (Citation2014) embraced the application of this feminist tool to climate change, highlighting that it enables deeper understanding of the dynamics of power and injustice interwoven into climate change.

Moreover, this project of developing, debating, and articulating the connections between the climate catastrophe and the COVID-19 pandemic not only reflects the intersectional thinking that powers the FemGND Coalition, but also demonstrates the knowledge-making happening through this work. Through building an understanding of these connections, via collective conversations and experience sharing between the participants in the FemGND, the activists are participating in the production of knowledge (Wijsman and Feagan Citation2019) and addressing the ‘epistemic gaps and injustices’ in climate change knowledge and discourse, inseparable from questions of power (Tuana Citation2013). In line with Ferguson’s observation that feminist theorists do their ‘best thinking’ when engaging in interdisciplinary, intersectional analysis (Ferguson Citation2017, 271), the activists are also committed to interdisciplinary and intersectional approaches and praxis at every opportunity. These different lenses and frameworks expand and enrich the analysis, rather than redirecting or limiting it into a siloed approach.

The creation of a FemGND through visioning is an iterative process that should have moments of tension in order to uncover and generate appropriately comprehensive solutions. While one member spoke of the importance of practising ‘radical honesty and being in struggle together’, another characterised the work of uprooting patriarchy, racism, and colonialism within the process of coalition building as ‘never-ending’. Kagal and Latchford’s (Citation2020) description of ‘messy-ness and discomfort’ as necessary to truth-telling in coalition building speaks to the multiplicity of spheres in which operationalising a collective effort may generate tension, from the negotiations about what is included and excluded from the Principles, to who can claim participation in this effort (with an open participation policy ultimately expressed in the organising structure).