Listening Before Speaking: A Strategic Shift in Feminist Communication

This presentation examines the current communication challenges faced by feminism and proposes a strategic shift from message transmission to systematic audience listening. It considers the effects of antifeminist backlash, increasingly closed communication circles, internal intolerance of disagreement, and the unequal access of Women’s Declaration International (WDI) to mainstream media and institutional channels. Particular attention is given to adolescent girls and young women as active audiences who interpret, negotiate and reformulate feminist messages within complex digital, educational, family and peer environments. The presentation outlines a diagnostic research framework for examining how girls aged 13–17 respond to different topics, words, slogans, voices, images and communication formats. It also proposes methods for testing attention, comprehension, trust, emotional relevance and willingness to share. Based on this evidence, feminist campaigns could develop short and emotionally resonant messages without abandoning feminist principles or women’s sex-based rights. The presentation introduces this diagnostic framework as the basis for a broader postdoctoral research project in Communication. Originally delivered in an internal online session for members of Women’s Declaration International on 12 September 2026. The ideas, research proposal and presentation are the author’s own.