Making Democracy Real

Meridians ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-151
Author(s):  
Joyce C. Follet
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Birth Control ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
Women's Leadership ◽  
Reproductive Justice ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
Human Rights Movement ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Access To Contraception ◽  
Gain Access

AbstractThis essay offers a historical overview of African American women’s efforts to gain access to contraception, from the early stirrings of the campaign to legalize birth control in the 1910s to the eve of mass movements for racial equality and women’s rights in the 1960s. The birth control struggle becomes a window on the racial, gender, and economic structures black women negotiated in pursuit of sexual and reproductive self-determination at that time. Taking us back a century, and with emphasis on resilience and resistance, their story reminds us of the deep roots and broad vision of black women’s leadership in what has become a women-of-color–led human rights movement for reproductive justice today.

scholarly journals On Women and their Wombs: Capitalism, Racialization, Feminism

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 263-267
Author(s):  
Françoise Vergès
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
White Women ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
Women's Liberation ◽  
Forced Sterilization ◽  
Women’S Liberation ◽  
History Of ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

Abstract This article draws from Françoise Vergès's book, Le ventre des femmes: Capitalisme, racialisation, féminisme,* which traces the history of the colonization of the wombs of Black women by the French state in the 1960s and 1970s through forced abortions and the forced sterilization of women in French foreign territories. Vergès retraces the long history of colonial state intervention in Black women's wombs during the slave trade and post-slavery imperialism, and after World War II, when international institutions and Western states blamed the poverty and underdevelopment of the Third World on women of color. Vergès looks at the feminist and Women's Liberation movements in France in the 1960s and 1970s and asks why, at a time of French consciousness about colonialism brought about by Algerian independence and the social transformations of 1968, these movements chose to ignore the history of the racialization of women's wombs in state politics. In making the liberalization of contraception and abortion their primary aim, she argues, French feminists inevitably ended up defending the rights of white women at the expense of women of color, in a shift from women's liberation to women's rights.

Why Reproductive Justice Matters to Reproductive Ethics

2021 ◽  
pp. 17-28
Author(s):  
Melissa Gilliam ◽  
Dorothy Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethical Principle ◽  
Indigenous Women ◽  
Safe Motherhood ◽  
Reproductive Justice ◽  
Reproductive Ethics ◽  
Long Acting ◽  
Disproportionate Burden

This chapter addresses the historical and current attempts by physicians and legislators to regulate the reproduction of Black, Latina, and Indigenous women, with a particular focus on Black women. It connects the contemporary language promoting long-acting reversible contraception for “risky” populations to past policies coercing Black, Latina, and Indigenous women to use contraception and undergo sterilization. At the same time, these efforts to regulate the reproduction of women of color coincide with a rising number of abortion restrictions and lack of access to abortion and safe motherhood, which affect women of color disproportionately. Black women bear a disproportionate burden of the staggering and rising maternal mortality rate in the United States. These topics are often omitted from discussions about reproductive ethics, and social justice is often neglected as a major ethical principle. Approaching the reproductive freedom of women of color from a reproductive justice perspective, therefore, offers an important way to expand our understanding of reproductive ethics.

LEADERSHIP SUCCESSION IN INTERSECTIONAL MOBILIZATION: AN ANALYSIS OF THE CHICAGO ABORTION FUND, 1985–2015*

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 461-474
Author(s):  
Meghan Daniel ◽  
Cedric de Leon
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
Reproductive Justice ◽  
Service Agency ◽  
Leadership Succession ◽  
Social Service Agency ◽  
Movement Organization ◽  
Formal Leadership ◽  
Depth Interviews

While intersectionality is increasingly an object of inquiry in social movement research, few scholars examine leadership’s role in enabling intersectional mobilization. This article draws on data from archives and in-depth interviews (n = 18) to explore the importance of leadership succession in transforming the Chicago Abortion Fund between 1985–2015. Specifically, it explores two types of succession: (1) from grassroots or community-embedded leadership to bridge leadership (which connects the community to the organization), and (2) from bridge to formal leadership. Our study shows how these two types of succession were instrumental in operationalizing margins-to-center organizing. We present our findings in a series of conjunctures or episodes to elucidate how Black women and women of color moved gradually through different forms of leadership. In so doing, they changed the framing and praxis of the organization from a social service agency to a radical reproductive-justice social movement organization.

scholarly journals I’m Every Woman: Advancing the Intersectional Leadership of Black Women School Leaders as Anti-Racist Praxis

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 7-28
Author(s):  
April L. Peters ◽  
Angel Miles Nash
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
The United States ◽  
Women's Leadership ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Leadership Framework ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Resisting Oppression ◽  
Epistemological Basis

The rallying, clarion call to #SayHerName has prompted the United States to intentionally include the lives, voices, struggles, and contributions of Black women and countless others of her ilk who have suffered and strived in the midst of anti-Black racism. To advance a leadership framework that is rooted in the historicity of brilliance embodied in Black women’s educational leadership, and their proclivity for resisting oppression, we expand on intersectional leadership. We develop this expansion along three dimensions of research centering Black women’s leadership: the historical foundation of Black women’s leadership in schools and communities, the epistemological basis of Black women’s racialized and gendered experiences, and the ontological characterization of Black women’s expertise in resisting anti-Black racism in educational settings. We conclude with a four tenet articulation detailing how intersectional leadership: (a) is explicitly anti-racist; (b) is explicitly anti-sexist; (c) explicitly acknowledges the multiplicative influences of marginalization centering race and gender, and across planes of identity; and (d) explicitly leverages authority to serve and protect historically underserved communities.

scholarly journals Balancing race, gender, and responsibility: Conversations with four black women in educational leadership in the United States of America

2021 ◽  
pp. 174114322199183
Author(s):  
Natasha N Johnson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Educational Leadership ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Hermeneutic Phenomenology ◽  
The United States ◽  
Women's Leadership ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
And Gender

This article focuses on equitable leadership and its intersection with related yet distinct concepts salient to social justice pertinent to women and minorities in educational leadership. This piece is rooted and framed within the context of the United States of America, and the major concepts include identity, equity, and intersectionality—specific to the race-gender dyad—manifested within the realm of educational leadership. The objective is to examine theory and research in this area and to discuss the role they played in this study of the cultures of four Black women, all senior-level leaders within the realm of K-20 education in the United States. This work employed the tenets of hermeneutic phenomenology, focusing on the intersecting factors—race and gender, specifically—that impact these women’s ability and capability to perform within the educational sector. The utilization of in-depth, timed, semi-structured interviews allowed participants to reflect upon their experiences and perceptions as Black women who have navigated and continue to successfully navigate the highest levels of the educational leadership sphere. Contributors’ recounted stories of navigation within spaces in which they are underrepresented revealed the need for more research specific to the intricacies of Black women’s leadership journeys in the context of the United States.

Gender Theory in Philosophy of Race

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi Zack
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Black Men ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
White Women ◽  
Main Idea ◽  
Race Theory ◽  
Philosophy Of Race ◽  
The Subject

The subject of critical race theory is implicitly black men, and the main idea is race. The subject of feminism is implicitly white women, and the main idea is gender. When the main idea is race, gender loses its importance and when the main idea is gender, race loses its importance. In both cases, women of color, especially black women, are left out. Needed is a new critical theory to address the oppression of nonwhite, especially black, women. Critical plunder theory would begin with the facts of uncompensated appropriation of the biological products of women of color, such as sexuality and children.

What Is Reproductive Justice?

Meridians ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (S1) ◽  
pp. 340-362
Author(s):  
Kimala Price
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Reproductive Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Reproductive Justice ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
New Framework

Abstract Frustrated by the individualist approach of the “choice” paradigm used by the mainstream reproductive rights movement in the United States, a growing coalition of women of color organizations and their allies have sought to redefine and broaden the scope of reproductive rights by using a human rights framework. Dubbing itself “the movement for reproductive justice,” this coalition connects reproductive rights to other social justice issues such as economic justice, education, immigrant rights, environmental justice, sexual rights, and globalization, and believes that this new framework will encourage more women of color and other marginalized groups to become more involved in the political movement for reproductive freedom. Using narrative analysis, this essay explores what reproductive justice means to this movement, while placing it within the political, social, and cultural context from which it emerged.

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