Intentional Design: The Case for the Feminist Democratic Designer-Builder

The coming together of an ethnographic analysis of gender sensitizing one parliament – and the introduction of the concept of the feminist academic critical actor (Childs Designing and Building Feminist Institutions forthcoming) – with the development of feminist democratic design (Celis and Childs 2025) has given life to the character of the feminist democratic designer-builder. Engaged in intentional design and building work, they reject the choice of addressing women’s equality as an additional extra - only for those with a particular interest in gender and understood only formally (Saward 2021). Instead, they follow Philips’ (2021) preference for starting their design work from an appreciation of the inequalities of their ‘time and place’. Informed by feminist design ideas, as well as real world efforts at transforming parliaments and democratic politics, this Chapter explores the who, what, and how of feminist democratic design. Feminist democratic designer-builders draft and realize their new designs, in situ. Theirs cannot be fantastical, even as they are informed by normative goals. Feminist democratic design work designs to end inequality by ‘making equality happen’. Nor do feminist designer-builders reflect the preferences of a heroic individual designer but of their design/build coalitions. They are moreover highly attuned to their political contexts. In our case, reaction and backlash are the very political project of illiberals, populists and anti-democrats. The Chapter accordingly makes the case for feminist designer-builders intentionally introducing and sequencing new and innovative practices and devices throughout the democratic polity.