How often have you heard the word feminine and slipped straight into softness in your mind and body? And soon after that, a feeling of vulnerability as weakness, insufficiency, need for protection? This is how the feminine appears all too often in societies that have been dominated by a masculine mind (and body) set - a masculine sensibility.

This is not the fault of men, any more than any of us are responsible for the blind spots of our ancestors. Most of us - of all genders - are as unaware of the prevailing culture as fish in the water in which they swim. Those that 'wake up' to this mind-set, its nature and power, its tendency to act upon reality - extracting from nature and humans, using hard power to achieve outcomes - have characterised it as a patriarchy. But not all men are patriarchs, and most men are themselves victims of the patriarchy.

What is feminine intelligence?

Within such a masculine culture, the feminine is hard to be seen. Karen Downes, Director and Co-founder of FemmeQ says:

Feminine intelligence is available to every human system. It arises from a subtle energy which has remained relatively untapped within the collective psyche. As the masculine was valorised, aggressively bringing structure, rationale and logic to the creation of our current system, softer qualities attributed to the feminine part of our humanity were marginalised, unrewarded and seen as necessary only in the private spaces of our lives.

This has caused a major dissonance in our thinking and ways of being - we are disconnected internally and externally. By over-valorising the masculine qualities for centuries, we developed a patriarchal society, crushing in its wake the value of the feminine principle. Demanding the sacrifice of intuition, suppressing the more gentle, engaging and relational side of our nature in favour of brute strength. Historically, in many ways, women were compliant with this.

Feminine intelligence is a deep knowing that we are all part of a living universe, bringing an innate sense of responsibility for the survival of human and planetary life. It is the concentration of love, energy and life-force that is dedicated to someone or something of the greatest importance--what is beyond our self-interest.

We are now seeing the devastating results caused by marginalising these qualities of care, requiring compassion, empathy and nurturing that are not only relevant but crucial for our human development. They are now so urgently needed in leadership. And they are foundational to building a life-sustaining future.

Women and men have lived different lives in the past and that history makes a difference to their stance, as well as their instincts. At the same time, women's bodies continue to carry the regenerative potential of plants and trees: to be able to host life and nurture it to independence. The history of our polycrisis points at the lack of women consciously carrying the intelligence of the regenerative feminine into the public space, where the powers of decision making are located.

At the same time, masculinity carried by men raised as purposeful agents, and lacking the way that women nurture and host space, has become stranded, even toxic. Fixing, controlling and forcing outcomes, 'stranded' masculinity can objectify its own resources and rob its own project of creativity and life force.

Yet in the modern day, with women entering into the public space in numerous ways, that distinction of the masculine carried by men is unsafe. Women too have to reckon with their masculine energy, often over-developed due to being previously excluded. Masculine and feminine ways continue to clash because men and women have different histories of power.

Men and women have different histories of power

To examine our shared fate - climate catastrophe, the destruction of civilisation through war and violence, ecosystemic collapse, global mental breakdown - we have to be able to presence the history of power within every actor in the public space. Not simply men and women, but between the masculine and feminine energies existing in relationship within all living entities.

That's not easy to do. A man and a woman standing side by side may present as equal: yet each holds the wider history of power imbalance within them. Except in the most masculine environments, women identify easily with all that is vulnerable and struggling to thrive. They have different stories of potency and expectations of agency. Socially but also personally, the context of their power shapes their opportunities and internalises their view of themself as “weak”.

Despite centuries of struggle between these different kinds of embodied sensibility, producing literature, movements, and rights, our human capacity for transformation appears trapped. We are not winning in the face of impending species self-destruction.

We say human capacity because nature, the embodiment of integration between the masculine and feminine forces, is fighting back. Extreme heat, flooding, earthquakes and other extreme weather events threaten to wipe humans off the face of the Earth. And like the burnt tree that never loses its ability to regrow again, that could give the planet the space it needs to regenerate life itself.

Can we humans avoid that fate? Well, not by simply using the same sensibility that created it. When we expect the same leadership structure, the same language, the same values that defined that public space to provide new spaces, we are unlikely to shift the reality. But it's no easier to escape that present than trying to lift the table you are standing on. There has to be some give: acknowledgement of failure, some allowance - welcoming! - of new energies. In order to lift the table into a new place.

Possibility of regeneration

At the recent FemmeQ Summit, held in Strasbourg over the past week, we played both lightly and intensely with the task of lifting the table we are all standing on. For more on Femme Q and its orientation, see last week's editorial. It was significant that co-founders Karen Downes and Scilla Elworthy were setting the scene. Scilla brought her life-long experience of forging peace globally, in the midst of another breakdown in the Middle East. And Karen, now Director of FemmeQ, brought the active qualities of The Flourish Initiative to news of unprecedented climate breakdown and social injustice.

Fifty women and five men, interrogated the current trap that femininity - the word, the sensibility, the manifestation - is in. Particularly the difficulties of expressing itself as uncomplicatedly regenerative, in the way that the natural world can. Why can't we mention a womb as easily as a pod or a pupa? Why is the blood of war glorified, while the blood of menstruation a source of shame?

We acknowledged how the history of inequality has problematised the notion of feminine, in the hands of women as much as men. How the fear of being returned to the historic material disadvantages of women, encourages a neutrality around gender. An active denial of difference.

Setting the scene on Day 1 were Meenakshi Gupta, Co-founder of the globally celebrated Goonj social enterprise that connects villages and neighbourhoods, enabling the establishment of local economy through right livelihood; Elise Buckle, Director of She Changes Climate working tirelessly to bring 50/50 representation into COP and other decision-making bodies for the future; Katerina Stephanou, Founder & CEO of Step Up Stop Slavery, bringing attention to the 'business model' of the biggest organisation in the world, currently trafficking 100 million people worldwide.

Meenakshi emphasised the feminine power to stand by the vulnerable and incubate their own agency, rather than lead and instruct. "It's the women and the poor who witness the dysfunction of our society. We already know what is wrong. We don't need empowering to take part in that system, we need resourcing to change it." Elise echoed that distinction, saying that parity would never be enough. Integration is needed to achieve the 'unity in diversity'.

Going meta

To get at the possibilities of transformation, we had to go meta – that is, tackle how we were thinking and being the problem and seeing that as a source of change. Rather than focusing singularly on mitigation. We looked at the public space where binaries (two'ness) have become polarised and institutionalised as opposites - male v women - rather than dualities - men and women. So, hard v soft, strong v weak, winning v losing, individualists v socialists. In this context transgender culture finds it hard to bring its newness, its transformative effects: instead, it is obliged to fight for acceptance within the prevailing binary, male or female.

Occupying these oppositional binaries the masculine sensibility, brought historically by men, has materialised as a deeply unjust socio-economic-political system. The strong, hard, competitive aspects of men have characterised the leadership (both male and female) of a world that is slowly dying for lack of wholeness.

Even as society ackknowledges these differences as 'issues of fairness and rights' the prevailing culture responds defensively, constantly strategizing to stay in control of all eventual outcomes. Masculine is focused on survival of the fittest, even as it harnesses the power of others to maintain its own authority. Even so we can't do without it: without this masculine aspect in balance with the feminine, we might atrophy. However, on its own, stranded, it is suicidal, destroying the environment in which it tries to thrive.

Dr Sangeeta Sahi, creator of the Conscious Cancer Programme and Founder of the Unified Human Foundation, emphasised the failure brought on by fragmentation in medicine - our history of separating out the mental, physical, spiritual and social when healing the body.

Noora Firaq, Deputy CEO of Climate Outreach, described how being born and raised in the Maldives she could observe how the wide psychological effects of environmental breakdown are already felt. She described growing up on the islands and seeing the change from idyllic self-sufficiency to ugly dependency on tourism to even maintain a freshwater resource.

Wholism, said Noora, does not mean every part of the globe has the same rights and responsibilities: instead, those responsible elites have to accept their role in the healing of the whole. Leading through the infinite growth economy, cannot bring our planet into flourishing.

Feminisation of politics

Indra Adnan, Co-initiator of The Alternative Global, emphasised the multiple forms of agency appearing at once across the globe. Similar to the way her own life unfolded, she observed that narrative was the key factor as a young person - developing a story of agency. Yet later this developed into a wider understanding of system and spectacle as shaping our ways of being in society, defining reality for us. Within that, how the history of each individual shapes their ability to develop their agency. It's only recently that Indra understood that feminine intelligence is so vital for building the containers, holding the space for the permanent potential of humanity to unfold.

In her later workshop on the Feminisation of Politics, Indra invited the challenge to bring wholeness in the face of an insistently binarised - often polarised - public space.

While there is not enough space here to do justice to the whole schedule, let's mention two futher points. Firstly the role of language and data in the shaping of the future. Founders of the Sutra platform Natasha and Lorenz Sell, shared a conversation with Scilla Elworthy about the future of technology, including AI.

Since AI only has the current world of data to refer to when answering questions, there is a possibility - some say inevitability - that our future will only get more unbalanced in favour of the masculine than before. Others, recognising the unprecedented numbers of data generators from across a global community, claim the opposite.

Taking responsibility for AI

As Mo Gawdat writes, as long as those women who once only operated in a private space now consciously develop the virtual space, there is every chance that our public realm can transform. To do that, Scilla suggested, needs the urgent and assiduous activating of HI - human intelligence and a new language of the heart.

No doubt many listening to that clear goal will become doubtful that any kind of kinder, loving space for humanity is either possible or even desirable. After all, if peace excited people's commitment, wouldn't we already be there? Once again, is that not a simple binary: war versus peace?

Much more likely in the quest for the survival of the human species, conflict will continue to evidence our differences, our diversity. Yet maybe, within a more feminine context, that conflict will not lead inevitably to violence. Without the industries of hard power to satisfy, a heartfelt yearning for the better life can manifest as energy, creativity and excitement. What's not to love?

Alternative Editorial: Feminine Intelligence Can Transform Reality