Feminisms in (narrative) practice

In Chapter 2 we will dive into a rich smorgasbord of individual and collective narrative practice from across the globe. This will be an opportunity to see how practitioners are turning the ideas from Chapter 1 into action!

Introducing Shelja Sen (she/her): Shelja is a narrative therapist, writer and co-founder Children First. She is originally a mountain dweller, now inhabiting the city (New Delhi) and hoping to live near the sea one day. She has worked in various contexts in India and the UK, curating stories of the know-how of the children and young people she has the honour of working with. What she values most in her life and work are staying curious and intentional, and nurturing and being nurtured by diverse communities.


In this video, Aunty Dolly Hankin and Aunty Kerry Major innovatively combine externalising practices and a doormat to address the silencing influence of shame with a group of First Nations women in Queensland, Australia.

Shame Mat by Aunty Dolly Hankin (she/her) and Aunty Kerry Major (she/her) [14:42]


Australian Lebanese Muslim practitioner Lobna Yassine describes some of her work with young Muslim people of different genders through the Tree of Life framework. Lobna makes visible how whiteness and Islamophobia intersect with gender to create particular pressures, single-storied accounts of identity and experiences of discrimination for Muslim young people, and invites us into some of the many alternative stories those forces seek to obscure.

Working at the intersections of gender, racism and Islamophobia by Lobna Yassine (she/her) [14:14]


It is not uncommon for reports of sexual harassment and violence to be met by calls for women to learn assertiveness and develop resilience. What discourses underlie these suggestions? How might we respond with feminist ethics to shift responsibility to those enacting harm while avoiding totalising narratives of perpetrators? Join Carolyn Markey as she unpacks these dilemmas and responds with narrative practice in a school in South Australia.

Exploring feminist narrative practice and ethics in a school setting by Carolyn Markey (she/her)


Now we step outside of the world of therapy and into the realms of narrative practice in media making. The Story Kitchen amplifies women’s voices, perspectives and histories in the male-dominated media of Nepal. Jaya Luintel describes the work of bringing women together while carefully attending to differences of caste, class, education, sexuality and ethnicity.

Feminism in The Story Kitchen, Nepal by Jaya Luintel (she/her) [16:50]


Our Host Shelja Sen, along with Rhea, P and Amrita, introduces us to another feminist narrative practice innovation drawing on the metaphor and the acronym COURAGE, which celebrates the resistance of young women in New Dheli, India, to violence and injustice and to rigid binaries of ‘good girls’ and ‘bad girls’.

Just Girls: Conversations on resistance, social justice and the mental health struggles of women by Shelja Sen (she/her)


Fariba Ahmadi shares an innovative project that transformed a school playgroup into a space where Afghan mothers newly arrived in Australia could link their stories of struggle and survival together and share them with others through definitional ceremony.

Journeys of faith, strength and persistence: Stories of new arrival Afghan mothers by Fariba Ahmadi (she/her) 


Now we’ll hear directly from young Muslim women in South Australia describing their skills and knowledges of surviving and responding to the intersecting oppressions of patriarchy, racism and Islamophobia: another opportunity to practice double listening to stories of suffering and reclamation.

‘We try not to take people’s hate into our hearts’ [9:02]


Next, we head to Toronto, Canada, to learn about the Building Bridges project, which recognises that ‘there are few spaces for women to examine the influence of challenging cultural images and social encounters’. It created a space for women living with facial and physical differences and/or disabilities to collectively co-construct diverse and sustaining stories of identity and experience.

Envisioning new meanings of difference by Carla Rice, Hilde Zitzelsberger, Wendy Porch, Esther Ignagni and Loree Erikson (all use she/her)


Why does gender matter? ‘It matters because I am not a man. And this has had social, political, historical and economic implications, and also life and death implications for women in my country and other Latin American countries.’ marcela polanco, a Mestiza from Bogotá, Columbia, describes how she brings the politics of Latin American decolonial feminist movements and an interest in doing the work with an agenda of social transformation to her current work context in the United States.

Finding Latin American ways to think our humanity in theory and practice by marcela polanco (she/her) [8:17]


Finally, Ncazelo Ncube-Mlilo introduces us to COURRAGE, a methodology developed in partnership with women in South Africa that honours their skills and knowledge about surviving hardship and trauma.

Women and COURRAGE in South Africa by Ncazelo Ncube-Mlilo (she/her) [1:00:33]

Reflection questions

  • How are women incited to continually evaluate and police their bodies and forge them as docile? How does it occur that these operations of power are rendered invisible to those who experience them most intensely?
  • How does psychiatry or psychology become complicit in these operations? How can that complicity isolate women in their experience of subjugation?
  • Why is it important to make visible, externalise and politicise acts of social injustice?
  • How can the practitioners invite personal agency and build richer counter stories by acknowledging micro acts of resistance, care and protest?

Optional further activities

  1. Write a letter to patriarchy. Here are some prompts:
    • What has it convinced you into believing about yourself?
    • What are society’s ideas of success, worthiness, beauty that it uses against you?
    • What confusions does it push you into?
    • How are you still standing up to it all?
    • Who are the people in your team who support you in this? What would they say about what you are up against? What do they know about you that keeps them rooting for you?
    • Why is it so important for you to not listen to what patriarchy is saying to you? What hopes for your life and work does this speak to?
  1. What song of sustenance comes to you as you wrap up your reflections on this chapter? Who would you like to share this song with? What do you think they would appreciate about this song? Would sharing this song create further ripples of change?

This Post Has 6 Comments

  1. deborahwatkins521

    Starting with the building of a rich counter-narrative with resonance and validity as propose by Shelja Sen and I would add vitality. The counter argument can struggle against dominant discourse as feeling unrealistic. so important to ground women’s stories in lived experiences. Women experience ourselves as problematic when distanced from historical, cultural and familial conversations leading to guilt and shame, and empowered by shared experiences of exposure and resistance. The work of Shelja Sen, Kerry Major, Jaya Luintel, marcella polanca and the awesome Ncazelo Ncube-Milo all speaking powerfully to this. Loved all the creativity of this chapter and the gaining of new ideas and tool such as “shame mat”, COURAGE acronym and COURRAGE methodology, which can all influence my own therapeutic practice. Reflecting on how my practice is complicit with patriarchy through language and labelling and reframing into an increasingly narrative approach that politicises rather than pathologises to bring forth agency and resistance. The young Muslim women’s story of love and resistance in the face of hate was so moving. Constant vigilance needed to decolonise and rethink systems and structures of oppression in individual and community spaces to honour and celebrate women’s lives and aspirations.

  2. crystalsoares90

    Carolyn Markey’s article provides an insightful example of how narrative therapy concepts can be applied in a school counseling setting to address issues of gender-based harassment in a way that is feminist and empowering for students. The counsellor describes how she worked to de-individualize the problem and broaden the discussion to include the social and cultural contexts that contribute to these issues. She facilitated conversations between groups of girls and boys to surface impacts and perspectives in a way that did not further marginalize or blame. The counsellor employed externalizing practices and questioning to center students’ voices and agency. Her narrative approach seems effective at responding to societal problems while respecting individuals and fostering community understanding.

    I personally do not work in a school setting, but reading this had me reflecting on ways I too can incorporate similar narrative rooted techniques in discussions about gender-based harassment in the drop-in setting that I work in.

  3. jiahuanhe.psy

    Externalising and politicising social injustice are so essential, as power often manipulates people’s perceptions, leading the majority to unconsciously or intentionally adopt a dominant stance, while minorities internalise blame for these injustices.

  4. Melanie Lotfali

    Why is it important to make visible, externalise and politicise acts of social injustice?
    In order to make visible, externalise and politicise acts of social injustice we must
    – develop capacity to read our reality
    – develop our power of expression which can involve the creation of new language and concepts where need be
    – develop our capacity to analyse and synthesise, engaging personal, individual, collective knowledge, experience, and actions
    – find ways to explore and promote new ways of thinking that lead to greater insight, greater unity
    These capacities in and of themselves enrich us, and contribute to an ever advancing civilisation.
    Naturally these processes also allow us to recognise and challenge unhealthy dynamics within ourselves (individually and collectively), and unhealthy dynamics among the various protagonists/stakeholders.

    How can the practitioners invite personal agency and build richer counter stories by acknowledging micro acts of resistance, care and protest?
    It can be disempowering to embrace the notion that problems and solutions lie outside of our realm of influence – whether we assign blame/responsibility to government, or other institutions, or groups of people (men, white people etc). It can be liberating to conceive of change as being driven by three protagonists – the individuals, the communities, and the institutions of our society and to strive to act within our sphere of influence.
    It can also be disempowering to have rigid and narrow understandings of what contributes to social change. Of relevance to this is Margaret Mead’s famous statement: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

  5. boodika

    Young Muslim women of Adelaide, trying to make sense of their “weird” experiences and not take other people’s hate into their hearts. Wow. Setting an example for everyone in the world to follow, and a what wonderful idea of resistance against abuse and hatred directed at those percieved as different or “other” is society.

  6. Kay

    This course is so enriching already and I’m only in chapter 2.

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