Africana Womanism

"Africana Womanism" is a term coined in the late 1980s by Clenora Hudson-Weems intended as an ideology applicable to all women of African descent. It is grounded in African culture and Afrocentrism and focuses on the experiences, struggles, needs, and desires of Africana women of the African diaspora. It distinguishes itself from feminism, or Alice Walker's womanism. Africana womanism pays more attention to and gives more focus on the realities and the injustices in society in regard to race. Such realities include the diverse struggles and experiences, and needs of Africana women.

The Africana Womanism Society lists 18 characteristics of The Africana womanist, including self-naming, self-defining, family-centered, flexible and desiring positive male companionship.

Clenora Hudson-Weems, Professor of English, University of Missouri, author of Africana Womanism: Reclaiming Ourselves, coined the concept Africana Womanism in the late 1980s (Africana is the feminine form of the Latin Africanus, meaning Of Africa, and appears to be preferred by the movement over African). Hudson-Weems argues that "Africana Womanism is not an addendum to feminism, Black feminism, African feminism or Alice Walker's womanism" According to Patricia Hill Collins, "Although some Africana women may support the very ideas on which feminism rests, however, many of them reject the term “feminism” because of what they perceive as its association with white women’s cause. They see feminism as operating exclusively within the terms white and American and perceive its opposite as being Black and American." Further many African men and women do not accept the ideology of feminism. According to Hudson-Weems, she states that "there is a general consensus in the Africana community that the feminist movement, by and large, is the White woman's movement for two reason. First, the Africana woman does not see the man as her primary enemy as does the White feminist, who is carrying out an age-old battle with her White male counterpart for subjugating her as his property. Africana men have never had the same institutionalized power to oppress Africana women as White men have had to oppress White women."

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