Feminist Popular Education Manual

The 'Feminist Popular Education Manual: Sowing Gender Justice to Dismantle Patriarchy' is a guide published by Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) in December 2020. It provides a pedagogical framework and practical tools for facilitators to conduct inclusive workshops aimed at dismantling systemic oppressions—including patriarchy, capitalism, racism, and neocolonialism—through the lens of anti-capitalist and grassroots feminism.

• Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) defines patriarchy as a system that suppresses and exploits women, their work, and their bodies for the benefit of men as a social group, with the sexual division of labour serving as its material basis.
• The manual argues that the sexual division of labour creates a hierarchy where 'masculine' work (linked to the public space, market, and decision-making) is valued over 'feminine' care work, which is relegated to the private sphere and remains unpaid and unacknowledged.
• FoEI adopts an intersectional perspective, acknowledging that patriarchy is intertwined with and reinforced by capitalism, racism, class oppression, neocolonialism, and heteronormativity.
• From an ecofeminist perspective, the document asserts that the exploitation of nature and the oppression of women are linked, as both are subjected to a logic of capitalist accumulation and extractivism.
• Violence and the threat of violence against women are described not as individual acts, but as political tools used by patriarchy to maintain power structures and control women, particularly when they deviate from traditional roles.
• The manual promotes 'feminist popular education' as a process to move participants from passivity to awareness and political action, allowing them to become the subjects of their own learning to transform realities of exploitation.
• Inclusive workshops are designed to be horizontal spaces that value 'feel-thinking' (sentipensares) and use diverse expressions, including oral language, pictorials, and corporeality (such as theatre and role play).
• The guide introduces the 'mística' as a ritual used in workshops to build trust, unity, and collective power through the use of nature elements, music, poetry, or cultural practices.
• The manual provides specific techniques for analyzing gender injustice, such as the '24 hours in the life of women and men' clock to visualize the sexual division of labour and territorial mapping to examine the impacts of socio-environmental conflicts on different genders.
• FoEI advocates for the reorganization of care work and the adoption of alternatives such as agroecology, food sovereignty, and the feminist economy to move away from an anthropocentric and capitalist outlook.

APA

Molina, J., & Cornils, P. (2020). Feminist Popular Education Manual. Friends of the Earth International. https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Friends-of-the-earth-international_Feminist-popular-education_Sowing-gender-justice_EN.pdf

Chicago

Molina, Johanna, and Patrícia Cornils. Feminist Popular Education Manual. Friends of the Earth International, 2020. https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Friends-of-the-earth-international_Feminist-popular-education_Sowing-gender-justice_EN.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Molina |first1=Johanna |last2=Cornils |first2=Patrícia |title=Feminist Popular Education Manual |publisher=Friends of the Earth International |date=December 2020 |url=https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Friends-of-the-earth-international_Feminist-popular-education_Sowing-gender-justice_EN.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{molina2020feminist, author = {Molina, Johanna and Cornils, Patrícia}, title = {{Feminist Popular Education Manual}}, institution = {Friends of the Earth International}, year = {2020}, month = dec, url = {https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Friends-of-the-earth-international_Feminist-popular-education_Sowing-gender-justice_EN.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }