Ensuring equity of power, resources, influence, and holistic well-being for women and girls.
“Far from being a strictly theoretical enterprise, womanist theology evolved from the life and witness of Black women. The roots of womanist theology span the 256-year period of chattel slavery in the West and the survival and support commitments of Black women during this period including the new racism of the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s.” - Rev. Dr. Emile Townes
A process that emerges as Black females in the blossoming phase of their identity development come to understand agency as the ability to defy a forced simplicity in an effort to influence the choices made in one’s life and as a conscience being aware of political and social conditions that stimulates resistance against being marginalized.
The affirmation of the loving connections and relational bonds formed by Black women—including familial, maternal, platonic, religious, sexual, and spiritual ties. Black women’s ability to create, re-member, nurture, protect, sustain, and liberate communities which are marked and measured not by those outside of one’s own community but by the acts of inclusivity, mutuality, reciprocity, and self-care practiced within it.
An assertion of the humanity, customs, and aesthetic value of Black women in contradistinction to the commonly held stereotypes characteristic of white solipsism (an unawareness of the views or needs of others).
The epistemological privilege of Black women borne of their totalistic experience with the forces of interlocking systems of oppression and strategic options they devised to undermine them.
Source: Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas. Deeper Shades of Purple: Womanism in Religion and Society (Religion, Race, and Ethnicity) (p. 10). NYU Press. Kindle Edition.
16 Days of Activism is an international campaign that takes place each year beginning on November 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and continuing until December 10, Human Rights Day.