Can democratic innovations be feminist? Should they be? What would it take for them to become genuinely so, and could such innovations counter developments such as macho populism and broligarchies? This Workshop centres infrastructures for feminist publics in and around democratic innovations: the supports and arrangements that enable equal and inclusive participation, redistribute power, and foster collective will-formation alongside counterpublics that contest exclusion and disrupt domination. It critically assesses how feminist perspectives can reshape the design, practice, and evaluation of democratic innovations, and examines the prospects for equal and democratic participation across formats amid today’s authoritarian and patriarchal backlashes.
Early feminist theorists showed how participatory and deliberative inequalities are sustained by norms of impartiality, rationality, and dispassionate exchange, which silence or marginalise particular groups (Fraser 1989; Mansbridge 1990; Pateman 1989; Phillips 1995; Young 2000). These perspectives prompted scholars and practitioners to rethink ideals and practices, recognising storytelling, emotion, and embodied experience as legitimate political expression. Yet the feminist critique targets the foundations of participatory forms of democracy and is not easily resolved. Moreover, perspectives from Black, queer, decolonial, and postcolonial feminisms continue to reshape the debate, as scholars draw on ideas such as intersectionality, predatory inclusion, vulnerability and affect, ethics of care and personal accountability, epistemic injustice, the coloniality of gender, and subalternity (Asenbaum 2020; Banerjee 2022; Candón-Mena et al. 2024; Drake 2023; Ferguson 2012; Holdo 2025; Holdo and Khoban 2025; Medina 2013; Mendonça et al. 2024; Pateman and Mills 2007; Wojciechowska 2019). Meanwhile, the rise of authoritarianism and anti-feminism casts doubt on whether democratic innovations can confront exclusion and domination and translate voice into influence.
An infrastructural lens that translates feminist critiques into concrete and durable arrangements is therefore urgent. By centring infrastructural conditions (access, care, belonging, and power redistribution) and interrogating platform ecologies (moderation, safeguarding, and algorithmic amplification), this Workshop advances a cumulative, comparative agenda that cuts across formats (mini-publics, participatory budgeting, co-production, and digital platforms). It specifies normative standards, operational criteria, and design principles that equalise access and influence, and clarifies the promise and limits of democratic innovations amid democratic backsliding and rising anti-feminism.
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Banerjee, Subhabrata Bobby. 2022. “Decolonizing Deliberative Democracy: Perspectives from Below.” Journal of Business Ethics 181 (2): 283–99.
Candón-Mena, J., Arencón-Beltrán, S., & Sola-Morales, S. 2024. Deliberative democracy in feminist theory and practice: The case of the Unitary Feminist Assembly of Seville (Spain). European Journal of Women’s Studies, 31(4), 440–455.
Drake, Anna. 2023. “Deliberative Democracy and Systemic Racism.” Canadian Journal of Political Science 56 (1): 92–112.
Ferguson, Michaele L. 2012. Sharing Democracy. Oxford University Press.
Fraser, Nancy. 1989. Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory. University of Minnesota Press.
Holdo, Markus. 2025. “Caring for Democracy: Feminist Ethics and Radical Democratic Spaces.” Journal of Deliberative Democracy 21 (1).
Holdo, Markus, and Zohreh Khoban. 2025. “To Walk the Walk: Why We Need to Make Things Personal in Public Deliberation.” Constellations 32 (1): 97–109.
Mansbridge, Jane. 1990. “Feminism and Democracy.” The American Prospect, February 19.
Medina, José. 2013. The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and Resistant Imaginations. Studies in Feminist Philosophy. Oxford University Press.
Mendonça, Ricardo Fabrino, Lucas Henrique Nigri Veloso, Bruno Dias Magalhães, and Filipe Mendes Motta. 2024. “Deliberative Ecologies: A Relational Critique of Deliberative Systems.” European Political Science Review 16 (3): 333–50.
Pateman, Carole. 1989. The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism, and Political Theory. Stanford University Press.
Pateman, Carole, and Charles W. Mills. 2007. Contract and Domination. Polity Press.
Phillips, Anne. 1995. The Politics of Presence: The Political Representation of Gender, Ethnicity, and Race. Oxford University Press.
Wojciechowska, Marta. 2019. “Towards Intersectional Democratic Innovations.” Political Studies 67 (4): 895–911.
Young, Iris Marion. 2000. Inclusion and Democracy. Oxford University Press.
1: What does it mean for democratic innovations to be feminist?
2: How can key feminist ideas, such as intersectionality, be operationalised in innovation design and practice?
3: Which normative standards and infrastructures promote co-creation of inclusive democratic spaces?
4: How do feminist counterpublics and platforms interact with formal processes?
5: Which designs stay resilient amid feminist backlash, austerity, care deficits, and labour precarity?
1: Normative grounds for feminist innovations
2: Design principles for feminist innovations
3: Infrastructures that equalise access and influence in practice
4: Indicators, methods, and evidence for assessing inclusion and power
5: Single and comparative case studies across formats and contexts
6: Feminist counterpublics in and around innovations
7: Feminist digital participation and platform governance
8: Designs resilient under hostile or resource-poor conditions
