“It seems very ironic to me that it is often the organizer types who get over-looked as designers, when they are, in fact, very skilled at the much harder ‘invisible structures’ design that is so essential in making anything happen,” said Stella Strega, permaculture teacher and designer in the Canary Islands. Organizer designers, for example, focus on people-care aspects: bringing people together; organizing events, course schedules, book publication, and even entire permaculture networks. “They do the very complex ‘weaving’ work without which we would never hear about permaculture or any of the illustrious teachers in the first place. When permaculture projects fail, it is because they didn’t have enough of those skilled kinds of designers, not because the trees or plants failed to grow.”

So, how do we shift mental models?

First, one can commit to educating oneself about them and dialoging about their impact on us and on our organizations.

Second, we can counter gender schemas and other forms of “unconscious bias” by learning to be an allies who co-create equitable environments (see Pattern 8).

Third, we can build habits of giving “micro-affirmations”?which not only block inequities, but also can reverse their negative effects. This modeling of small, appreciative acts also invites others to replicate them, thus creating a snowball effect. Finally, we can value the work of people quietly doing the work of organizing and implementing permaculture on the land. For example, although value isn’t measured only by money, several women organizers are developing business models for events to ensure that their work doesn’t have to remain unpaid.

Pattern 2: Understand and advocate for the “30% Solution” as an vital step toward parity

Valian’s studies also relate to numbers of women in the workplace: “…being a minority increases a woman’s likelihood of being judged in terms of her difference from the male majority, rather than in terms of her actual performance. Her minority status highlights her gender and, accordingly, makes her seem less appropriate for the job, which seems more masculine because of the large number of men filling it.”

However, the impact of gender schemas is reduced or eliminated when women are more numerous in a group: “…researchers found that women’s performance ratings were more negative than men’s when women were only 1-10% of a work group; somewhat less negative when women constituted 11-20%, and shifted to more positive when women were 50% or more of a group.”

Along these lines, Linda Tarr-Whelan shows when 30% of the people at power tables are women, organizations reach a tipping point. Women can then change agendas, inform goals, allocate resources, and impact the style in which goals are achieved. Cultural stereotypes are altered so that women are no longer seen as women, but as professionals.

Serving as a classic example of win-win solutions, a critical mass of women at top levels not only benefits individual women, but also leads to better government and better business outcomes. The “Benchmarking Women’s Leadership” report states, “A growing body of research demonstrates that women’s ‘risk-smart’ leadership is perfectly suited to what our nation needs to get on the right track.” Further, “…women tend to include diverse viewpoints in decision making, have a broader conception of public policy, and are also more likely to work through differences to form coalitions, complete objectives, and bring disenfranchised communities to the table.”

Tarr-Whelan challenges all of us to look at our organizations, and if we notice that women are in less than 30% of leadership positions, to start a conversation about the benefits of women’s leadership. We can ask, “What is the landscape for women in permaculture in our circles?” If not at parity, we can set policy to have 30% of our boards, teaching teams, speakers lists, etc., occupied by qualified women. They are out there, and we can find them by replacing the question, “Who do I know?” with “Who don’t I know?”

Pattern 3: Value diversity

This permaculture design principle is true for both natural and human systems. Diverse groups perform better than homogenous groups when it comes to decision making, not only because of input from the minority group, but also, in the case of ethnic diversity, because white participants improved the quality of their participation, according to a 2008 Tufts University study. Another 2012 study shows that heterogeneous groups are more apt to makeethical decisions. Other studies reveal that “diverse groups almost always outperform homogenous groups, even if the people in a homogenous group are more capable.” This reveals a pattern for optimizing human organizations.

Starhawk, an expert on Goddess religion, earth based spirituality and activism, offers Earth Activist Trainings (EAT). EAT has developed a two-pronged approach to capacity building: 1) by building long-standing relationships to support communities with unmet needs; and 2) by reinvesting surplus funds into diversity scholarships, which in this case, were offered for people of color. “It was tremendously successful–we went from 1-2% of our course being people of color to perhaps 40%.” Starhawk emphasized that inviting more than one person of color to the course ensures that they have support and avoids tokenism, shifts the whole dynamic of the course and is very enriching. It is also important for teachers to have training in the factors that create barriers to full participation and to be prepared to facilitate the stuff that may come up when we become a diverse group. “For permaculture to succeed in changing the world, it has got to move beyond the usual suspects and embrace the wide diversity of the world we live in.”

Pattern 4: Intersecting Identities

This article cannot speak for all women in permaculture–the women I was able to contact for interviews through electronic social media on rather short notice were mostly of European descent, from industrialized nations. All of the women I interviewed voiced concerns about permaculture presently being accessible to mostly white, middle class folks in their regions. Moreover, we know that women are active in permaculture elsewhere in the world and we want to create better networks with those women, as the “women in permaculture” movement must include multiple perspectives informed by diversity of age, ethnicity, nationality, religion, geographic area, class, physical ability, educational level, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Indeed, the women of color in the feminist movement of the 60s added a new dimension by pointing out that the experiences of women are not homogenous, but that theintersection of identities and discriminations forms experiences and perspectives that are critical to humanity’s understanding of oppression.

Similarly, Pandora Thomas, a rising permaculture leader in the San Francisco Bay Area says, “There hasn’t been enough work done around permaculture principles translating them for the people care ethic, so now there’s this misconception that permaculture is about farming and gardening, which it isn’t–it’s mostly about relationships. It’s about looking at systemic problems and finding relationship-based whole system solutions?and one of most vital systemic issues, along with the status of women, is cultural and racial inequity.” Thomas believes the phrase “women in permaculture” fails to acknowledge that there are many types of women who are treated in such divergent ways, with black women often finding themselves invisible in conversations about women in permaculture. At the same time, many women from diverse backgrounds are engaged in and taking leadership around permaculture design, she said.