Black women generally refers to women of sub-Saharan African descent.
Intersectionality and misogynoir
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw developed the theory of intersectionality, which highlighted the overlapping discrimination faced by Black women (on the basis of both race and gender) in the United States. The theory has been influential in the fields of feminism and critical race theory as a methodology for interpreting the ways in which overlapping social identities relate to systems of oppression. More recently, the term misogynoir has been created to describe the specific effect of intersectionality on Black women. Misogynoir is the term that is used to describe the overlapping cases of misogyny and racism. Examples of misogynoir experienced by Black women include the stereotype of the angry Black woman or Jezebel (stereotype that Black women are more sexually promiscuous) and vulnerability to sex trafficking among others. These more specific terms were created as Black women have been historically left out of movements for both racial justice and feminist equality.
Womanism is a social theory based on the history and experiences of Black women. Coined by Alice Walker, the concept now encompasses a spectrum of various fields, such as Africana womanism and womanist theology.
Around the world
Africa
The 2003 Maputo Protocol on women's rights in Africa set the continental standard for progressive expansion of women's rights. It guarantees comprehensive rights to women, including the right to participate in the political process, social and political equality with men, autonomy in their reproductive health decisions, and an end to female genital mutilation (FGM).
Ghana Women in Ghana typically experience poverty at higher rates than their male counterparts as a result of less educational opportunities, elevated unemployment rates, and gender inequality.Amu N., Judith (2005). The Role of Women in Ghana's Economy. Ghana: Friedrich Ebert Foundation. pp.16–26. Historically, Ghanaian culture has created the role of women to be in the home cooking, cleaning, and taking care of children. Ghanaian women usually complete only primary school as a result of these societal expectations. Men are primarily regarded as breadwinners and have more economic mobility as a result of their ability to carry on the family name and amass ownership of land, one of the highest forms of capital.
Within theoretical approaches identifying as “Black” or “Afrocentric”, or employing anticolonialist concepts like the “internalization” of “colonial mentality”, scholars forcefully claim and highlight that the patriarchal societal conditions originated particularly from European colonization of Ghana from the 15th century up until the 20th century, but pay much less attention to the intricate effects one would assume also having been played by forces such as the endogenous, distinct and particular, interacting and co-dependent, adaptive and/or mediating cultural and societal features pre- and co-existing in Ghana alongside colonization and its ills. It is possible that this reflects the rigidity as well as the dogmatic and activist commitments inherent to the largely anticolonialist origins of the theory underlying such research. According to the analyses in the vein of said kind of scholarship, the structural colonialist frameworks set up during those five centuries are particularly seen to have favored Eurocentric beauty standards, work ethic, and culture, fracturing the Ghanaian identity and customs, and seen as explaining such harmful practices as providing space for only men to further their education, secure a well-paying job, and be politically active. Some other examples mentioned include only teaching women how to be suitable for men, and promoting skin bleaching among women to become closer to whiteness. After Ghana gained their independence in 1957 from Britain, women were not compensated for their inability to own land and gain foundational skills under colonial frameworks, seen as instrumental in creating the cycle of poverty.
The patriarchality of Ghana's society, regardless of the extent to which it is ultimately the result of colonialism, has been impacting women not only economically but relationally as well. Abuse is a prevalent component of polygamous and monogamous relationships in Ghana. It can be hard for women to get out of being a sex worker because it might be viewed as the only way to provide for their families or themselves. The criminalization of sex work in Ghana also makes it difficult for women to escape abuse from their pimps and customers and seek help.
Another factor that plays a role in the susceptibility of women being in poverty is the rise in female-headed households as a result of divorce, women becoming widows, or women being separated from their partners. This has exacerbated the issue of poverty among women because they're unable to have access to the benefits of the socio-economic status men hold in Ghana.
Economically, the majority of Ghanaian women work within the informal sector of Ghana's economy, meaning they are mostly self-employed. Self-employment does not always guarantee a stable source of income, making it hard for women to make enough money to support themselves and their families. Some of the prominent entrepreneurial jobs women take up in Ghana are hairdressing, dressmaking, market trading, and agriculture. Market trading, especially, has been a good way for women to better their chances of getting out of poverty because they are given the opportunity to take part in credit services, acquire insurance on their personal items, and build their savings. According to Wrigley-Asante in her journal article, “market women are considered the backbone of food distribution, ensuring food security for the urban economy.” Ghanaian women are very important contributors to Ghana's economy despite not having access to steady wages.
Ghana's government has made strides to address the inequalities present within the culture by creating the WID (Women in Development) initiative in the 1970s to cater to women's welfare, SAPs (structural adjustment programs) in the 1980s to help women enhance their productivity, and PAMSCAD (Program of Action to Mitigate the Social Costs of Adjustment) in the late 1980s and early 1990s to help boost the socioeconomic status of Ghanaian women. These initiatives and programs ultimately failed because they were not addressing the root cause of poverty among women, and colonialism's lasting impacts have arguably rendered the Ghanaian government ill-prepared to give the necessary resources to such complex programs.
Women play a modest role in Ghana's two major political parties, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and New Patriotic Party (NP), as well as in the Convention People's Party (CPP). The first president, Kwame Nkrumah (CPP), made Ghana the first African nation to introduce a quota in 1959, reserving 10 seats for women in Parliament. Ghana has recently been laggard, however, with a representation of 11% women after the election in 2012 and 13% after the election in 2016.
Tunisia In Tunisia, Black women are victims of double discrimination, facing prejudice both because of their gender and race. Testimonial evidences complied by the Tunis-branch of Rosa Luxemburg Foundation presented cases of Black women being "stigmatised, hyper-sexualised, and objectified" It has been noted that this sexualization of Black Tunisian women leads to them being viewed as objects by Arab men to "achieve sexual satisfaction" and face sexual harassment.
The feminist movement in the Arab world—including Tunisia—has been labelled as racist, failing to take into consideration the issues of women who are not Arab; this has led to parallels between Arab feminism and White feminism. In 2020, four Black Tunisian women created the Facebook group Voices of Tunisian Black Women in an attempt to bring to light these issues affecting them, which they felt were not being discussed in the Me Too movement. Khawla Ksiksi, one of the group's founders, has stated that comments made by President Kais Saied in 2023 regarding Sub-Saharan migrants has worsened living conditions for Black Tunisians, with many Black Tunisian women participating in the "Carrying My Papers Just In Case" trend.
Caribbean
Jennifer Palmer argues that in the plantation world of the colonial Caribbean, women of color were typically treated as property owned by White men. In the French islands, race and gender shape popular assumptions about who could own property. However, there were legal loopholes that sometimes opened up windows of opportunity for women of color to be landowners.
United States
According to the 2023 American Community Survey from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Black female population in the United States was approximately 21.1 million.
The history of African American women in early America can be divided into three main periods: from settlement to the formal establishment of slavery (1607–1660s), the late seventeenth century through the American Revolution (1670–1780), and from the constitutional era to the early antebellum period (1780–1830). Initially, Black women brought into British North America as captives were subjected to the same legal restrictions and social roles as European women. When the first large group of Africans arrived in Jamestown, Virginia in the year 1619, English settlers had no laws supporting lifelong slavery. As a result, African captives were bound by traditional English indenture contracts lasting five to nine years for adults or until minors reached adulthood. Although race was evident, it was not yet a legal factor. African women performed labor similar to that of European or Native women under indenture, with work divided by gender rather than race. The first legal change came in 1643 when the Virginia legislature passed a law taxing all tithable persons, explicitly including “all youths of sixteen years of age upwards, as also for negro women at the age of sixteen years,” distinguishing between white and Black women. A crucial legal development was the shift from indentured servitude to lifelong servitude. While the status of Africans before 1660 is uncertain, a 1661 court case shows that some Africans were already held in permanent bondage. By the end of the seventeenth century, lifelong servitude had become standard for most people of African descent. Virginia colonists altered English common law, which did not mention slavery, to create a local system recognizing the unique status of African men and women. In the 1660s, Virginia passed several laws further restricting the rights of African and African American women. Notably, a 1662 law declared that a child's status—free or enslaved—would follow that of the mother, ensuring slavery was inherited through the maternal line. By the early eighteenth century, institutionalized slavery and legal codes enforcing racial discrimination fully shaped the lives of Black women. Although Virginia led in enacting these laws, other British North American colonies soon adopted similar statutes establishing chattel slavery as inheritable through the mother and denying African American women legal recognition as human beings.
American slavery