What is a project, really?

We’ve spent a lot of time on this blog exploring feminist approaches to project management: rethinking the language we use, the processes we follow, and the practices we take for granted. We’ve been asking: What would project management look like if it was rooted in a feminist approach?

In this post, we want to pause and return to a fundamental question: What is a project? Because sometimes, the very way we define “a project” may be part of the problem: reinforcing mainstream, patriarchal, and exclusionary assumptions about what gets seen as a project, who gets to manage them, and how value is assigned to different forms of work. 

A brief history: Where did project management come from?

People have been managing projects for thousands of years. Think of the building of the pyramids in Egypt or the construction of the Great Wall of China. These were massive undertakings that required coordination, skill, and collective effort. But the concept of “project management” as we know it today is relatively recent.

The discipline of project management began to formalise in the United States in the 1940s, gaining traction in the 1950s and ‘60s, particularly in military, aerospace, automotive, and construction industries. More recently, the tech sector has refined its own approaches, such as agile and scrum. The tools, frameworks, and standards that dominate today - Gantt charts, risk registers, KPIs - were shaped in these environments.

But here’s the question: Are these the only kinds of projects that count? And can frameworks built for weapons systems, skyscrapers, and software products apply to social justice initiatives, youth-led organising, or community-led change?

How we define a project matters

A project is generally seen as a temporary, goal-oriented activity, often with a defined start and end, specific objectives, allocated resources, and measurable deliverables. The conventional definitions of a project often sound like this:

“An individual or collaborative enterprise that is carefully planned to achieve a particular aim” (source).

Or the PRINCE2 definition: 

“A project is a temporary organisation that is created for the purpose of delivering one or more business products according to an agreed business case” (source).

But these definitions are deeply limiting. They tie projects to business, productivity, and measurable outputs. They rely on language that centres control, planning, and risk management. They reflect a mindset steeped in capitalism, patriarchy, and Western modernity. 

What happens when we take a broader lens?

Why we need a more feminist definition of projects

Within the dominant history of project management, women are largely invisible. So are projects led outside of the Global North. But this erasure isn’t due to a lack of women-led or non-Western projects, it’s because of how we’ve been taught to define and recognise what a project is.

However, if we expand our definition of what a project is, we can recognise many women-led projects across time- whether these are more everyday projects like organising weddings, family holidays, or school events, or more high profile such as Emmeline Pankhurst and her campaigns for women’s suffrage in the UK, or the fight by the Madres of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina for their missing children.

In particular there are striking examples of women of colour that ran projects- from women in the Civil Rights movements across the globe like Amy Jacques Garvey in Jamaica, to the Black women mathematicians (Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan)- whose story was celebrated in the book and film “Hidden Figures” that helped launch the space programme in the USA.

The reason these weren’t seen as projects? Often, women were not granted the authority to act end-to-end. Their leadership was fragmented, undervalued, or ignored. The idea of a project requiring a singular (often male) project manager with hierarchical control meant these forms of organising were excluded from the story.

Beyond gender, a decolonial lens pushes us to ask deeper questions. Is it helpful - or harmful - to frame every effort or aspiration as a project? Does the project manager reflect the kind of leadership and collaboration that’s actually happening? Many cultures don’t separate life into time-bound, deliverable-based initiatives framed by urgency, but rather embrace time as more cyclical or seasonal, and the imposition of external goals (e.g., international development projects in the Global South) often erase or override local knowledge, needs, and priorities. If we expand our very definition of what a project is, does the discipline of project management itself start to change?

Expanding the definition of what a project can be

At Feminist Project Management, we argue for a more expansive, fluid, and inclusive understanding of what a project is. Projects aren’t only tied to business cases, budgets, or partners. They can be:

• Personal or political

• Short-term or lifelong

• Formal or informal

• Funded or unfunded

• Organised or emergent

A project can be an artistic collaboration, a community kitchen, a cross-border coalition, or a radical new approach to care. It doesn’t need a risk log to be legitimate. It doesn’t need KPIs to be effective. And it certainly doesn’t need to be led by a singular expert or project manager.

From a Feminist Project Management perspective, we challenge the notion that a project needs to be linear, measurable, or fixed. Instead, we ask: What if projects were cyclical, iterative, and constantly evolving? What if success was measured in relationships and ripple effects, not just outputs? What if leadership was shared, emergent, and contextually grounded?

We can learn from social movements, activist groups, indigenous governance systems, and informal networks, all of which run projects in ways that mainstream frameworks rarely recognise.

When we expand the definition of a project, we also expand what’s possible. We begin to see the value in previously invisible work. We reclaim project management as something rooted in collaboration, purpose, and transformation - not just deadlines and deliverables.

Want to join us in reimagining project management?

We’d love to hear how you define a project and what’s been missing from the frameworks you’ve used.    

Did this post make you want to explore more about Feminist Project Management? Check out our website: https://feministprojectmanagement.com/