Our Impact

As we’ve shared before, over the past couple years the pandemic and the national climate gave us the unique opportunity to reimagine who we are and what we do. As part of this reimagining, we did some deep listening, asking the community we serve about their needs and how CWL can help meet them. 

Core takeaways are that the majority of our community members:

• Support our shift from women’s leadership to intersectional feminist leadership (see below)
• Want to see our programming expand beyond college students
• Want us to offer more transformational leadership programming (such as non-patriarchal leadership frames, anti-racist leadership practices, etc.)
• Want us to center our efforts on women and gender-expansive community-based leadership

Our 2021-2023 Impact Report maps out our accomplishments and challenges in each of these areas.

What does intersectional feminist leadership mean? Let’s break it down:

• Intersectionality recognizes that how we’re currently treated depends on the overlapping identities we have—like gender, race, class, ability, and more.
• Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.
• Leadership for us means taking action to build thriving communities that meet the needs of the people and take care of the land.

Leaders who understand intersectional feminism are better equipped to end systems that harm, and instead create policies and norms that advance the well-being of all people.