by Sanna Ketonen-Oksi & Tiina Wikström
Why feminism?
As authors, we are two white middle-aged females with a doctoral level degree in science. As mothers of 3 daughters, we live in Finland, a democratic country that was ranked as the happiest country in the world in 2024, seventh time in a row (!). There is not much for us to complain or worry. Right?
Yet, we have both lived in several continents and have always been internationally oriented, interested in learning about and from other cultures. The many personal connections and everyday experiences we have encountered both in the Global North and South have made us highly sensible to the recent global development regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion and the overall notion of belonging. Now that our daughters are reaching adulthood, the world looks quite different than in our 20s and 30s, when we could go almost anywhere and feel safe.
When our daughters were children, we celebrated books like The loveliest girl in the world (The Therapeutic Care Journal, 2009) and Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls (Favilli & Gaballo, 2017) and used those stories to teach our daughters empathy and self-esteem. The former introduced 10 young women, grown up in an orphanage and whom photographer, art and social educator Miina Savolainen, together with filmmaker Pasi Pauni, had visualised in a unique way in fairytailish worlds. The aim of this pedagogic textbook, and the therapeutic method it represents, is to enhance the self-image and self-confidence of these girls to parallel the heavy experiences of their life stories and to help them gain confidence. The latter, Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls written by Elena Favilli, broke a record as the most crowdfunded campaign in literary history. The book spotlights the stories of everyday female heroes across time, and this also gives attention to the dominant gender inequity in our world.
Today, the ideal of living in a society where women’s rights are taken seriously and where a girl can educate herself, live independently and take part in politics and decision-making or to otherwise openly speak up about things she sees important, seems to be turning into an illusion at a high speed: At war zones, women and even the smallest of children are being raped and tortured, if not starved to death. The authoritarian regimes have become more and more powerful and even in countries with long-established democracies, we are seeing systems failures like never before, resulting in politics that promote hatred, violence, and unbridled power. Even in the heartlands of democracies, in Western countries, human rights are being continuously violated – not to even talk about the rights of non-human nature.
Ironically, despite outperforming in its level of equality and sense of responsibility for social welfare, the key characteristics to happiness, Finland is also leading in statistics of violence: According to a recent European survey on gender-based violence against women and other forms of inter-personal violence (Attila et al, 2023), one out of three adult Finnish women have experienced physical domestic violence at some point in their lives, and every second of them suffers from emotional violence caused by their partner. Also, Finnish men suffer from intimate partner violence and many other issues of inequity and discrimination. We could do so much better. Feminism knocks on our doors even if we try to hide from it.
Our outlook of feminism
As Ivana Milojević suggests (2024), given the existing variety of interpretations and misinterpretations of feminism, it is always wise to start a conversation by defining what it means in the given context. In this short essay, our outlook on feminism is largely rooted in what, for example, the Native American indigenous cultures call Mother Earth: Feminism is that of Mother Earth. What it represents to us is a holistic view on life, a strive for balance and goodness, respect for all living things. The aim is not to colonise indigenous knowledge (see Minniecon & Milojević, 2022), but to be inspired by its interconnectedness and respect with all the living.
Interestingly, in indigenous cultures, females are respected and veneered as holders of wisdom and cultural traditions. Women and especially grandmothers are seen as healers, fire keepers, spiritual elders and wisdom bearers. They are also caregivers and educators of future generations, leading their societies through change and transformation. Or as native writers such as Louise Erdrich (Ojibwe), Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo), Paula Gunn Allen (Laguna Pueblo) and Joy Harjo (Muscogee Nation) elaborate in their oral-art-turn-written, females have many roles in creating and maintaining the spiderweb of all life forms while healing the past and making future circles and cycles possible. (Wikström, 2020). Besides seeing this as an example for all of us, it brings forth the importance of seeing a meaning in care ethics (Tronto, 1993), thus referring to maintaining, continuing, and repairing our world the best we can.
In practice, this means that we see ourselves as highly value-driven everyday activists, something that fits well with Milojević´s (2024 p. 46) characterisation of feminism as a social movement, ideology, theory, philosophy, worldview, or a way of life that helps women to collectively find their own voices, but what interpreting Milojević, Peterson would in turn call “overly moralistic, authoritarian, and intolerant” (Milojević, 2024, p. 28). Also, we lean onto critical futures studies (see Minkkinen et al., 2019), strongly directed toward uncovering and questioning any prevailing assumptions about what feminism is or could be (Miller, 2018).
A world that respects the wisdom of Mother Earth – what is holding us back?
In their recently published Futures article on Methods to imagine transformative futures, Ketonen-Oksi and Vigren (2024) call for an urgent need to rethink the tools we use to make sense of the previously unknown and unimaginable. According to their extensive data set – covering three large databases and three major journals in futures studies – they brought up a significant lack of methods that would support change in our recurring systems and structures or which would embrace transition from one system to another. These findings are fully in line with Miller´s (2024) notion on how perception always precedes choice (action) and that imagined futures always precede perception. Same applies to Milojević (2024) who claims for more imaginative images of the future. Indeed, Milojević´s fictive book series – The Future Maker, The Gold Maker, and The Peace Maker, featured at Journal of Futures Studies by Sohail Inayatullah (2022) – is a great example of using constructive storytelling as an educational practice that can bring about the needed feminist shift in worldviews.
What is needed is to increase the understanding of imagination as something that both kindles and is entangled with future(s) consciousness (Miller, 2024). It means surrendering to the uncertainties of the later-than-now within their trans-generational and trans-civilizational contexts (Lombardo, 2015), thus moving beyond our ruling perceptions about the world. Importantly, this requires not just better tools, but a shift of focus from seeing futures practitioners as capability developers rather than method appliers (Ketonen-Oksi & Vigren, 2024).
Using the Multisensory Space method to feed feminism with all our senses
After all, as stated by Verges (2008; 2021), not much has changed in the last two decades as decolonial feminism keeps on grappling with topics such as Eurocentrism, white supremacy, inclusion, and exclusion. In this situation, how to address the easily and often multiply marginalised and underrepresented voices and approaches? What kind of imagining is needed for them to become the main narrative while the now dominant narrative would become the Other? How can we best support (re)imagining futures that build on the wisdom of Mother Earth?
In Sensing Feminism by Baxter et al. (2018), feminism is addressed via sensory expressions: “Feminism feels like comfort, like soft, strong corduroy […] Feminism looks bright, light – feminism is vivid; being visible. Its imagined futures are brightly coloured, colourful with the intersections of experience […] Feminism smells like ozone…its mountain-fresh air is utopia […] Feminism tastes like staunch coffee, of stout. It is pungent as blue cheese and pickles, or marmite between two thick slices […] Feminism sounds like chatter, the buzz of voice. It is chanting, enchanting.”
One prominent way to support the creation of similar new narratives is the Multisensory Space method (Räty, 2018; Räty & Wikström, 2022). Developed at Laurea University of Applied Sciences (Finland) since 2008 – around the time the poetical and powerful message of “The Loveliest Girl in the World” was published – it is a social work method that allows to build and imagine spaces while sharing stories, joys, sorrows and dreams. The method can be applied both off- and online (Wikström, 2021; Wikström, 2022). Supported by a variety of multisensory stimulus such as sounds, images, touch, and even scents and aromas, it is used to provoke thoughts, feelings, emotions and memories which can help to envision culturally sensitive and relevant future visions. That is, Multisensory Space allows participants to co-create, rethink and reimagine alternative futures. It inspires them toward system changes that begin by what Miller (2024) refers to as embracing both knowing and not-knowing, or, anticipation-for-the-future and anticipation-for-emergence.
So far, this method has given voice to thousands of females both nationally and globally – migrants, students, teachers, educators, and the elderly (Sigobodhla & Wikström, 2019; Wikström, 2022). Empowered by using multisensory stimulus and empathic dialogue, many misconceptions and stereotypes have been encountered. At its best, using different sensory channels, the Multisensory Space can facilitate ethical, impactful and empathic encounters leading to a deeper human connection and dialogue. Through shared stories, even the most complex sociocultural issues have been addressed constructively – including harm and endured trauma, or things leading to those circumstances (see also Hovenden, 2024). In summer 2019, the Multisensory Space concept was awarded by the Global Women Invention and Innovation Network (Laurea News, 2019).
A few final words
In this essay, our goal was to bring out the idea of feminism which links it with the sensibility, humility and earthiness represented by Mother Earth, i.e., the wisdom of Indigenous women. As our interest lies in the empowerment of women, we do not regard equity being a matter of women only. On the contrary, this essay could have equally been about men’s rights had the context been different.
By highlighting how the ontological and epistemic grounds on which the prevailing perceptions about the new, the uncertain, and the unknown, as well as their relationality, tend to be highly imprisoned by their surrounding cultural norms, imagining our ways out of those conditions may be sometimes a very demanding exercise. And yet, the idea of feminism we support relates to creating pathways for imagining such transformations wherever they are welcomed or needed. Hence, what we refer to as rebellious girls is the critical aspect of relinquishing control over futures that needs to be enhanced.
The Multisensory Space concept was presented as one among many other potential approaches to empower women. However, given its relatively strong record of success in questioning current and in (re)imagining novel system-level structures and processes, we also consider it as a useful method for elaborating interest in feminist futures. For example, instead of focusing on individuals, it is well aligned with the idea of expanding our horizons of imagination collectively (Bosch & Chalali, 2024), with a strong focus on dialogue (Ketonen-Oksi & Shkreli, 2025). Most importantly, without acknowledging the role of the used methods in producing change in the participants’ cognitive abilities to use the futures, their full potential cannot be achieved (Ketonen-Oksi & Vigren, 2024; Conway, 2022). The multisensory stimulus provided with the Multisensory Space method and other methods alike might well play a part in empowering resistance to patriarchy and other forms of colonising the futures.
References
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