Feminine Economy Exchange Guide

By

Ainsley

A step-by-step guide to run your own Feminine Economy Exchange experiment, and prototype a new way of interacting with commerce, money, and each other. If you're interested in building new systems rooted in feminine values, this guide will show you how!

Short story:

In April 2017, a group of 18 people in San Francisco prototyped a feminine economy by exchanging what they had in abundance. This is the story of how that came about, and a step-by-step guide for how to run your own exchange!

Long story:

One thing that’s certain about the world today is that we live in almost exclusively patriarchal systems. Politics, corporations, capitalism, the nuclear family (to name a few) are all structured to promote productivity, individualism, and scarcity consciousness.

As we look around at where these values have gotten us today, and as we wish for an alternative, it can be daunting to imagine replacing every system we know. What does that look like? Moving to Canada? Joining a commune? 

Inspired by the work of many women before me, and most closely the Feminine Economy work of Jennifer Armbrust, this book walks through prototyping one version of how a system rooted in feminine values might look. It looks particularly at an economy based in ideas of abundance, community, and interdependence might actually come to be.

I walk through an introduction of how I was inspired to do this work, a few of the many inspirational guides I’ve been influenced by, and then a step-by-step manual for how to replicate one yourself!

Printed by hand in limited edition, in vibrant risograph ink in San Francisco, the Feminine Economy Exchange Guide is a manifestation of what a new way of being can look like.