Designing Communities for Women with Yomi Abiola
What led you to start The Fem League?
The Fem League is a community committed to advancing women and simultaneously transforming our narratives in society. It is a space in which women are invited to step in to the fullness of our power. I’m not an advocate for communities that exclude, we’re focused on women to provide a space where women can realise and revision our futures. We create a space to grow, heal and vision.
What have you learned along the way about designing communities for women?
Demonstrating care is essential to our community.
Experiencing care doesn’t need to mean being saccharine or not having boundaries. Through the Fem League, I’ve seen how integral care is – transformation can happen when you feel cared for, and possibilities increase when you feel cared for. Through The Fem League we have demonstrated a new way of being with each other. We were already designing for this before the pandemic, but the pandemic has highlighted how misprioritized our societal values are and how important care is. We demonstrate care through our weekly Thursday check-ins, the way in which we curate our League of Experts and the way in which we celebrate every member of our community.
Design for seasons of her life
We view women’s lives through the lens of seasons – the season of motherhood, or building a business, or being in transition or new relationships. We believe that by being aware of our seasons, we can hold a greater container for life's ups and downs. Seasons support us to prepare for the unforeseen. Our experts and the collective community intelligence provide our members with the wisdom to navigate the season and optimally benefit from it.
Reduce the comparison culture
Our members communicate on our bespoke platform. One of the reasons we’re not on an existing platform is to get away from all the other noise. It is essential to get a break from the comparison culture we are constantly in. Within the community, we don’t speak in terms of comparison to men either – because anything being created “in comparison to,” lacks integrity and free vision.
What advice would you have for someone creating a community for women?
In designing for women, we are designing for humanity. It’s essential for us to be aware that inequality affects us all. In knowing this, we need to remember that equality benefits us all.
Have a deeper level of intentionality in how you create space
One way to do this is to be really clear about why you are creating the community – and what is the change that you as the community leader want to embody. It’s easy to fall into habitual toxic behaviors associated with women – such as scarcity thinking, gossiping, backstabbing. For example, I’m interested in creating a space so that women can step more fully into who they are and sometimes that needs to be practiced in a cocoon of safety and care so that we can build the muscle of being our whole selves in the world. In our spaces, women are able to identify toxic practices or behaviors that can undermine our evolution.
Lead with curiosity & be open to being surprised
So often we go into work thinking that we know what it should look like or what it’s going to look like. But, there’s a lot of organic expression that happens and if we don’t lead with curiosity we miss out on that. Authorship is really important as well — to leave space for what different lived experiences are. These organic expressions of leading with curiosity, space and being open to being surprised is what begins to shape the external outpicturing of the community in the world.
About Yomi Abiola
Yomi Abiola's mission is clear, as a media entrepreneur and journalist her commitment is to the advancement of women as the key to human growth. Yomi is the founder of The Fem League, a multimedia platform and incubator that provides a powerful perspective on women as leaders, creatives and entrepreneurs globally. Yomi is a former creative director and model.