The inexorable increase in the standard of living has been key in facilitating women to raise their voice against gender inequality. One of the significant contributions to global women’s revolution is Black feminism. Having started from the 1970s, Black women have had to overcome all disadvantages, critiques, obstacles and problems in order to manage to get a word in the world which had only three categories: White men, White women and Black men.
It is evident that black females have undergone sexual oppression from Black before the rise of the liberation movement. Firstly, they have suffered sexual stereotypes and behaviors existing in the black community. The first justification is that black women are obliged to depend on black men who are the breadwinner in a family. They are supposed to be a homemaker whose responsibilities are housework and taking care of the babies since they stand a slim chance of getting a stable job with female inequality. Furthermore, they face an increased risk of fatality. According to UNICEF, roughly 125 million black girls currently enter into child marriages and give birth to a baby at the average age of 15. These girls’ lives are also put into jeopardy as a consequence of a remarkable amount of serious diseases, especially HIV. This fact is attributed to the lack of awareness and education schemes for girls. A prime example of this is that UNICEF reports that in sub-Saharan Africa, the region with the greatest number of people living with HIV, 60 per cent of people living with HIV are women. In the meantime, they have also suffered continuing violence from their partners or other black males as a result of the notion that violence means power which can subordinate the women.
In addition, during their miserable existence in the black community, they have endured double jeopardy from both White men and women. In other words, Black women are victims of blatant racism. Owning to a history of slavery, the White community holds a jaundiced viewpoint towards the Black, which has resulted in racial differences and catastrophic consequences. To be specific, they were subjected to sexual harassment or systematic rape at the hands of white racist men. A report showed that in the 111,490 cases in which the victim of rape or sexual assault were 33.6 per cent of the offenders were black. Moreover, systems of slavery, colonialism and imperialism were also a contributory factor in denying the positions of Black females in the unified women’s movement. For instance, as a consequence of racism, one of the key weaknesses of the predominantly white US feminist movement has been its lack of attention to racism, with enormous repercussions. Failure to confront racism ends up reproducing the racist status quo. Besides, they also have suffered social contradictions. If white women are allegedly passive and fragile, black women are often associated with negative words such as sassy and mules.
As a result of experiencing multiple oppressions, Black women started to speak up in the 1970s and during the 1980s and 1990s black womanhood started to be an important point of debates and since then African American women´s thoughts and ideas are a very significant part of literature and the Black feminism has been a remarkable milestone in the intersection of many Black women’s lives.
In the contemporary world, many black women from the younger generation have responded to Black feminism and joined the dialogue through their activism, music, and writing. And their herculean efforts have succeeded in being the spotlight over the globe as it is reported that the average volume of search for Black feminism on the Internet including the definition, thoughts, and books is approximately 3000 times and this statistic is anticipated to go up sharply in the next few years.
Clearly, Black feminism has revolutionized the pattern of thought and behaviors of black and white men and white women to reach the intersection of a new and better way of living.