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ince the 1970s, feminist thinkers on non-violence have been trying to redefine what power means. Their call was to move away from the traditional notions of domination and control to authenticity and integrity, aligning self with one’s deepest values. Reconnecting inner belief with public action is what Lynn Blackmore saw as a process of “rediscovering one’s authentic strength.” Anne-Marie Fearon, pointed out that patriarchal systems promote violence as they thrives on men hiding their emotions by seeing empathy as a flaw. Jill Sutcliffe expanded this view by suggesting that men are raised as authoritative and this aggressive mindset has fueled environmental injustice through science and technology. Collectively, these feminist scholars have moved non-violence from passivity to an actively engaged moral practice, connecting the self, society and the Earth.
Over the decades, women leading various non-violent movements have sought to suggest the way to hold moral authority without being turned into symbols for the very status quo they rise against. Audre Lorde noted that due to “the master’s tools” activists can easily lose their ethical roots on gaining public recognition. This results in the flattening of messages into slogans for easier global news consumption. However, there are also others who choose a less travelled path, rejecting comfort and privilege to stay with their cause even if their efforts are not acknowledged. Both paths reveal how deeply ingrained gender expectations influence who is celebrated and who is sidelined.
Literature on feminist pacifism offers three explanations for these dynamics. First, authentic non-violence depends on personal coherence. Fearon says boys are taught not to mix empathy with identity and softness is frowned upon as shameful. To be non-violent, thoughts, feelings and actions have to be aligned. To maintain credibility in social movements, leaders must mirror their principles. Greta Thunberg’s climate justice activism is a powerful example of such moral consistency. This is why her influence stems not from being an international celebrity, but from her unwavering conviction.
A second critical lesson is that social movements cannot fight one form of injustice while tolerating another. Sutcliffe’s analysis of nuclear power demonstrated that the logic that justifies war also drives environmental harm and rampant consumerism. To oppose one structure of domination while benefiting from another is an ethical contradiction. Some institutionally-approved activism falls into this trap, treating issues like gender, education or ecology as separate, isolated problems. Feminist approaches to non-violence, long before “intersectionality” became a buzzword, insisted that peace cannot be partial. It has to stretch across systems and scales, from the home to the planet itself.
Non-violent leadership, then, is not about who speaks the loudest on the world stage. It is about who remains truest to the struggles that define our survival.
Lastly, collective strength is more radical than heroic suffering. Helen Michalowski’s The Army Will Make a Man Out of You revealed how militaries manufacture obedience by humiliating individuality. In contrast, feminist peace organisers, from the Greenham Common women’s camp to Leymah Gbowee’s Liberian movement, replaced hierarchy with empathy and coordination. Their power came not from a single face but from the shared refusal to harm. As Gbowee later wrote, “Our strength was in our togetherness.”
In this framework, the public contrast between celebrated and disregarded women activists becomes less about personality and more about structure. When a movement’s image concentrates in one individual, it risks sliding from participation to representation - from we to I. That shift often accompanies a move from grassroots accountability to global consumption. Media narratives prefer an icon they can photograph over a network they cannot control. The result is what feminist theorists call the commodification of conscience, i.e. moral energy packaged for visibility rather than transformation.
This helps explain why some audiences, including some in Pakistan, feel alienated by figures who seem to have ascended beyond struggle, while they are drawn to voices that remain visibly accountable to the collective. The rejection is not of female leadership itself but of its perceived detachment from lived reality. As Fearon observed, power that pleads for acceptance ceases to be power; it becomes performance.
Yet the answer is not to disavow visibility altogether. As Gbowee’s reminds us, moral authority can circulate through storytelling, ritual and solidarity if it stays relational. The task for contemporary non-violent leaders is to maintain this relational integrity in a media environment that rewards spectacle.
Ultimately, feminist theories of non-violence teach that change is neither glamorous nor instant. It requires coherence of life, intersectional vision and collective courage. When any of these falter - when activism becomes branding, when justice is selective, when the self eclipses the movement - moral power erodes.
The women who sustain it, from local peace workers to global climate strikers, share a quiet defiance: they refuse to separate the personal from the political, or the human from the planetary. Their strength lies, as Lorde wrote, in “using the erotic as power” an energy rooted in connection, not control.
Non-violent leadership, then, is not about who speaks the loudest on the world stage. It is about who remains true to the struggles that define our survival. Some movements forget this and fade into symbolism. Others, grounded in coherence and community, endure. Not because they are celebrated, but because they remain whole.
The author is a doctoral student at Kent State University, USA. Her research interests include gender, media, social movements and technology.