{"id":2854,"date":"2025-03-12T15:16:30","date_gmt":"2025-03-12T14:16:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emancipator.nl\/we-are-the-change\/"},"modified":"2025-05-08T16:02:49","modified_gmt":"2025-05-08T14:02:49","slug":"we-are-the-change","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/emancipator.nl\/en\/we-are-the-change\/","title":{"rendered":"We are the change"},"content":{"rendered":"

More human in our work<\/h3><\/div>

Emancipator not only brings an innovative perspective – engaging men for gender justice and liberation from traditional masculinities – but also an innovative way of working. We want to work both for a change that should happen later, elsewhere, outside ourselves, and to allow that change to exist in the here and now. We are the change. <\/p>\n

The \u2018normal\u2019, taken for granted way of working in organizations and throughout society is patriarchal. What is considered \u2018professional\u2019 work or cooperation is a lot of \u201chead\u201d, reason, doing, result- and goal-oriented, competitive, individual – and more such characteristics traditionally called \u2018masculine\u2019, which are socially valued higher than characteristics or traits traditionally called \u2018feminine\u2019: emotion, being, process- and people-oriented, connecting, facilitating, listening, collaborative, intuitive. And those patriarchal, \u2018masculine\u2019 norms, exist, of course, not only in men. They are omnipresent: in structures, norms, expectations about who and what is \u2018professional\u2019, in organizations and society as a whole. <\/p>\n

We believe that we cannot dismantle patriarchy if we continue to work (together) in that patriarchal way<\/strong>, and cannot transform masculinity if we continue to work in a “masculine” way. The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house<\/i>, as Audre Lorde wrote. One of the core values of our organization, central to who we are and how we work, is a different, essentially anti-patriarchal, regenerative, what we call gender transformative<\/i>, way of working together, inspired by an approach called Genuine Contact<\/i><\/a>. <\/p>\n

Genuine contact<\/h3>\n

Genuine contact assumes that people cooperate best, and therefore that teams and organizations function best, when they do so as whole people<\/b>. And that people are precious and valuable as whole people. When everyone can bring all that they are, including and especially all that is often considered \u2018not professional\u2019, to share with colleagues, they feel more connected to each other and their professional results will be better too. <\/p>\n

Each and every person is more than their thoughts, reason, words. Everyone has feelings, emotions, experiences, different forms of intelligence and of knowing, and all of these things are an important part of who we are. If we don’t consciously and explicitly allow room for all those non-rational (not \u2018professional\u2019) sides of our humanity, then they will remain present under the surface, disrupting what we are trying to do. The harder we ignore and push them away, the more they will get in the way. And not only is it impossible but also undesirable to push that side of people away like that, because we can work better together if we do allow space for it. <\/p>\n

Working together as whole human beings<\/h3>\n

In the way we work, we consciously make space for our full humanity. We express this in different ways. <\/p>\n

In our internal team collaboration:<\/strong><\/p>\n