With increasing disruption brought about by more frequent disasters, communities in Indonesia and the Philippines are more than ever in need of collective, caring leadership in disaster preparedness and response. Alongside this, there is an increasing demand for women’s leadership in disaster-prone countries. The main way of measuring gender equality in leadership often uses numbers of women holding high level positions at the national level, as an indicator of progress against international standards in this area.

However, these indexes can also undermine diverse leadership forms, particularly overlooking women’s collective leadership in disaster preparedness and response. This is particularly an issue in the Majority World, where leadership through community care work and collectives can align with women’s everyday experiences of care. When such leadership is overlooked, disaster leadership is less effective and attentive to wellbeing, with consequences for community disasters resilience.

This research aims to develop a feminist postcolonial leadership model based on diverse leadership positions inspired by Taman Siswa, one of the Majority World’s caring practices, that pays attention on the complex positionality influenced by different intersectionality factors surrounding leadership. Using self-reflexive research method inspired by Gayatri Spivak, and carefully applying intersectionality approach in conducting the research, this thesis is able to recollect an alternative model of leadership that is rooted in the Majority World’s collective care practices. Expressed through diverse leadership forms, it is known as Taman Siswa Leadership.

The outcome of this research is to propose an alternative leadership in disaster, what I am calling ‘Care-Full’ Leadership, which operates through a synergetic application of Taman Siswa Leadership alongside Joan Tronto’s approach to care and caring subjectivities. Care-full leadership pays attention to the intersectionality of those performing diverse leadership in disaster preparedness and leadership. Rather than imagining women’s leadership as becoming less about caring, this thesis opens the possibility to proliferate care by imagining all leadership to become more about collective cycles of care.