Feministas en Holanda: sharing ideals and struggles
We are several individuals from Abya Yala, a term various Indigenous peoples use to refer to the Americas. We are a group of people living in the Netherlands, with diverse backgrounds and expertise, who encountered this collective space as one to share ideals, common struggles, and a collective vision to amplify feminisms from our territories, within a context that continually violates our bodies. Through gatherings, conversations, and trust-building spaces, we plant seeds in our community.
Self-led
Being self-led, to us, means being critical of existing ways of how power is distributed. We reject impositions from outside and give space for co-creation. We move at our own pace and are in constant communication about the future we want for our grupa, all the while being aware of our cycles and what’s happening in our personal lives. Being self-led brings hope and trust in collective ways of organising, a daily evidence of how grassroots activism works and makes a difference.
Shared leadership
In this context, leadership is shared and in constant motion.
Whenever someone brings an idea to the group, the political trust we’ve built allows each of us to find our role in the process.
We don’t have fixed roles, and we don’t sacrifice relationships or values just to tick boxes or deliver outcomes. We had to unlearn patriarchal ideas of leadership, and bet instead for a more feminist approach where we value collaboration, respect each other’s perspectives and ideas, and share responsibility in decision-making.
A lifeline
Mama Cash’s support through the Spark Fund, since 2021, has been a lifeline. Because of it, we’ve been able to do what is at the core of our decolonial feminist praxis: bring people together, hold space, resist through joy, and practice acuerpar – the political act of showing up for one another in our feminist struggle in body and spirit. We’ve created a community rooted in radical care. We’ve centred healing, art, rage, and joy.
We’ve made space for those who are often pushed to the margins of Dutch society – and even the mainstream feminist movements here – to affirm that we belong.
In these spaces, we painted banners, sewed together, shared food, discussed, rested, danced, organised, relaxed, briefed, and debriefed.
Feminist March
In February 2025, alongside other collectives, we mobilised thousands for the 8M Feminist March in Amsterdam under the banner of a Decolonial, Internationalist, Revolutionary Block.
Being visible, loud, and bringing people together in the largest Feminist March in the country mattered, especially at a time of rising fascism and genocide.
Our call was loud and resonated with many: a feminist movement that is unequivocally for Palestinian liberation, intersectional, and that puts life-affirming practices at the centre. It is through the Spark Fund that we’ve also been able to slowly but steadily weave a grassroots feminist network with fellow comrades and collectives in the Netherlands, because we know liberation is a dream and a destination we walk toward together.
Ripple effect
So the impact of our work is really a ripple effect. When you fund Feministas en Holanda, you’re not just supporting a single collective. You’re helping sustain the life of a broader, living feminist movement, one rooted in solidarity, care, and resistance, and committed to building other possible worlds. From the Netherlands to Abya Yala.
Support the work of groups like Feministas en Holanda by donating today.
