Paper Details

Name: Harpreet Kaur
Country: India

Year: 2017
Volume: Volume-4, Issue-1 (January-June)
Page Number: 10-15

The intersectionality of race and gender has made it necessary for the colored woman to constantly interrogate feminism which is silent about the problems of racism. Minority voices are forced into silence due to a lack of just representation. According to women of color, the mainstream feminist movement addresses, in the main, concerns of white, middle class women, and dismisses the experiences of these minority groups as insignificant and irrelevant. Being non-white and female, the diasporic woman finds herself in no man’s land. She is unable to identify herself either with her own community where patriarchy does not let her live a fulfilled life, or feminism that is markedly ‘white’ and caters to the problems faced by the white woman, ignoring racism which is a major source of oppression for the colored woman along with sexism.
Many women, sharing marginalized positions, generate alternate platforms to counter the inadvertently narrow world view of feminism. Alice Walker’s concern for the black woman’s rights has made her a strong advocate of black feminism leading her to propound the term ‘womanism’ to describe an appreciation for all aspects of womanhood while embodying the largely uncared-for standpoint of black and other minority feminists. As a stance for black woman to voice her differences from the white woman, the word “womanism” first appeared in her book In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens (1983). Womanism seeks to fill the voids left by feminism. Walker gives an extensive four-point definition of womanism, lending it openness of meaning, providing a platform to all women regardless of their ethnicity or class.