Teaching with the third wave new feminists - MailChimp

WoMen at workIn all, it took us almost a year before we managed to define the project and itspractical details collectively. During all this time our project benefited fromseveral resources we had at our disposal: the academic research on femaleentrepreneurship realised by one of the partners was used as a reflexive mirror forour own creation; the initial MBA background of one partner was used to givethe project a business perspective; the technical training on entrepreneurshipoffered by the national unemployment agency (ANPE) was followed by anotherand benefited the project as whole. We also used our respective networks to getadvice on management, commercial strategy and communication.The particular character of our project, as well as our personaltrajectories, ethics and convictions led us to opt for an egalitarian partnership,i.e. we all have the same status as founding associates. We all work in turns asthe privileged interface with clients and suppliers and share the responsibilityof contracting and managing projects. However, working independently and asequals does not mean that our partnership is reduced to a group of individualsworking side by side. On the contrary, and as we said before, our objective wasto create a collective working process. Here, we faced several difficulties: thegeographical distance between us, 5 our different specializations and workingmethods and the variety of lifestyles with different professional timetables.In order to overcome these difficulties, we decided to create a ‘fifthassociate’, the corporate body itself. Valta Göra is an umbrella structure forour diverse activities. We all support this structure financially and share theadministrative responsibilities within it. In addition, all the pedagogical toolswe create under the name of Valta Göra belong to this collective structure.Besides our common organization, we also define our strategy collectivelyand work at least in pairs, and whenever it is possible we extend the teamworkto the three or four of us. In order to keep contact with each other, we reportcontinually on our respective team activities, and meet on a bi-monthly basis.However, the most important element of our cooperation is mutualrespect. This was an essential part of the creation process and it allowed us tostart our joint venture with solid groundings. In fact, before our project wehad never actually worked together and, thus, we needed to get to know eachother better both professionally and personally. This meant that we accepted5None of us is currently living in the same city and the geographical distance between us ranges from seventy toalmost seven hundred kilometers!112