Some of the women interviewed talked about finding great satisfaction in learning and teaching the “hard skills” for permaculture. Some mentioned that it would have been easier if they had female mentors to facilitate their mastery of these skills. Many said that mentoring other women is a part of their present work. They universally agreed that women mentoring women is vital for building professional leadership skills.

Lisa DePiano, a permaculture designer and teacher in the Northeastern US, feels called to mentor other women. “I’m offering teaching apprenticeships, and design/install apprenticeships. There’s a demand for it, and it strengthens our networks,” she said.

Lesley Byrne, a permaculturist working internationally with children and rural subsistence farmers through educational gardens, sums it up this way: “Part of leadership is setting an example for others to follow in your path, mentoring, forward thinking, being a pioneer and taking risks. Younger women come to me for advice on how to navigate through the male dominance of permaculture and younger people come to me for guidance whether it be in the field of international aid or striking out on their own.”

Pattern 6: Value archetypically “feminine” ways of leading

The women I interviewed agreed that although some qualities are considered archetypically “masculine,” and others archetypically “feminine,” they are qualities available to all humans and not necessarily tied to gender. We need to value the archetypically “feminine” qualities.

“I’ve been sitting with the question of how deeply ingrained cultural dynamics of patriarchy are, and the reality that they are so deep that they become invisible. We fall into a trap of defining leadership in a very masculine way that reflects how we define what is of value, so starting from the first premise, we are flawed–because there are actually many ways leadership can look.” –Lindsay Dailey

“There often is a bias that the guys who work with big machines are the ones who really know, and the technical skills are most important. They are extremely valuable, but the social skills are often the real constraining factor in moving from the theory to the practice,” said Starhawk. “People often go off and set up a wonderful intentional community and the next thing you know they are all fighting and break up. Also, women are often constrained from traveling because of families, so they may not be in position to do big sexy international projects. A lot of women are working locally and are committed to working on their own home fronts and we need to learn to value those things more as well.”