Supporting US women's organizations by strengthening a generative, bipartisan ecosystem that allows women to experience equity, political empowerment, and self-determination
The Women and Democracy Project supports existing coalitions and organizations concerned with women’s political empowerment. Through a series of participatory design workshops, the project aims to:
- better understand current challenges, barriers, and opportunities for women’s organizations in the United States
- leverage participatory design strategies and digital platforms to meet the complex and intersecting needs of the current moment.
If we are successful, such networks will leverage a broad, bipartisan constituency of women in civic processes and public life.
This effort will require continual research in regions nationwide to understand what counts as women’s interests and how women see themselves as agents of civic engagement and mobilization.
A project of MIT D-Lab and the MIT Department of Philosophy
A collaboration between MIT D-Lab and the MIT Philosophy Department, the Women and Democracy Project combines theory and practice, drawing upon the unique perspectives provided by these two programs. Leading the program are MIT D-Lab Associate Director for Practice Libby McDonald and Ford Professor of Philosophy and Women's & Gender Studies Sally Haslanger.
MIT D-Lab
Since its founding over 20 years ago, MIT D-Lab has worked at the intersection of design, development, dialogue, and practice to address global challenges. Through research projects and project-based courses, D-Lab has convened students, staff, and faculty at MIT with local community partners in countries across the world to collaboratively address challenges. The Women and Democracy project extends D-Lab’s ethos, learnings from prior projects, and network of collaborators on and off campus to address current challenges of women’s civic engagement and mobilization in the United States.
MIT Philosophy Department
The MIT Philosophy Department, established in 1976, has been widely recognized for its strong research and teaching, both at the graduate and undergraduate level. Haslanger is a specialist in social and political philosophy, with an emphasis on feminist theory. She teaches both in philosophy and in MIT’s program in Women’s and Gender Studies and at D-Lab.
Co-Design for social change
Co-design is an approach aimed at igniting transformative social change, scaffolded by research and practice that includes diverse stakeholders in solving problems that directly affect them.
By creating space for participants to use their lived experiences to work collaboratively and solve complex challenges, co-design disrupts traditional notions of knowledge, power, and expertise and encourages relationship-building across differences. The co-design approach of this project draws from methodologies developed in prior D-Lab collaborations, particularly Creative Capacity Building and Co-Design Summits.
Creative Capacity Building (CCB) is a workshop methodology that teaches participants the design process to enable innovation, providing a pathway for community members to solve the challenges they face. Underpinning CCB is the belief that anyone can be an active creator.
Co-Design Summits (CDS) are multi-day, hands-on, co-creation workshops that bring together diverse actors to understand complex challenges and co-create prototypes. Co-Design Summits focus on building relationships between sector actors and co-creating technical, service-based, or systems-level solutions to development challenges in a particular region.
Contact
Sally Haslanger, Women and Democracy Project Co-Lead
Libby McDonald, Women and Democracy Project Co-Lead