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Africa and African Diaspora Feminism

Feminism In The African Diaspora

Diasporan feminism is rooted in the historical experience of enslavement and racism, so it challenges the oppression of women within the relations of racism that still curtail the prospects of black people located in Western contexts.

African diasporan thinkers in the United States have therefore developed feminist thinking that maintains the centrality of racism in black women's experience. In the United States these include Angela Davis's book Woman, Race and Class (1982) and bell hooks's Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and the Politics of Feminism (1982). Literary works that illustrate changing African-American feminist perspectives include the well-known work of writers such as Toni Morrison, Audre Lourde, June Jordan, Maya Angelou, and Alice Walker, all of whom have had an influence far beyond the United States.

In the European diaspora, the debate on black feminism opened up in the early 1980s with the publication of Hazel Carby's article. Caribbean and black European feminist thinkers have since produced a body of feminist thought that incorporates antiracist and anti-imperialist perspectives, while displaying a sensitivity to class oppression (Amos and Parmar; Grewal et al.). Julia Sudbury's Other Kinds of Dreams: Black Women's Organisations and the Politics of Transformation (1998) presents an overview of the British black feminism that emerged out of the black struggles against racism and state harassment carried out within the predominantly working-class Caribbean, African, and Asian communities during the 1980s.

The history of feminism in the Caribbean diaspora is also rooted in antislavery and antiracist movements, with its contemporary manifestations typifying postcolonial struggles around identity and difference, while pursuing feminist agendas of antiviolence activism, and responses to sexual exploitation and global economic development, to name only some of the various fronts (Reddock; Mohammed; Antrobus; Barriteau). The Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Activism (CAFRA) and the Centre for Gender and Development Studies at the University of the West Indies have played key roles in articulating and internationalizing Caribbean feminism.

African and African diaspora women concerned with emphasizing the distinctiveness of African legacies and not always wishing to be identified with feminists in the Western world have improvised a number of alternative terms. Womanism is a term attributed to the African-American writer Alice Walker and adopted by some South African and Nigerian writers, while others prefer the term motherism. Catherine Achonulu advocates motherism, while Omolara Ogundipe-Leslie advocates stiwanism, to denote commitment to the social transformation involving women of Africa (stiwa). The more pragmatic term gender activism has been increasingly deployed by women activists working in development organizations, where policy demands require expertise in gender, but the term feminism is considered too political.

While it may be hard to discern a unified and coherent feminist movement in many African countries given the complexity of gender politics and the disparate influences of the state, local, and international development agencies and diverse women's movements, it is clear that African women have been able to come together as a powerful force at key historical moments in various countries during the recent historical period. Feminist thought continues to evolve on the African continent and to maintain links with women located in various Western countries, not least because conditions on the continent ensure that continental feminists often find themselves in the diaspora.

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Amina Mama

Additional topics

Science EncyclopediaScience & Philosophy: Adrenoceptor (adrenoreceptor; adrenergic receptor) to AmbientAfrica and African Diaspora Feminism - Continental Feminism, History, Postcolonial Feminism, Feminist Activism, Feminist Intellectuals, Feminism In The African Diaspora