Women of color

Women of color (singular: woman of color, sometimes abbreviated as WOC) is a phrase used to describe female persons of color. The term is used to represent all women of non-white heritage, often with regard to oppression, systemic racism or racial bias. It relates worldwide to all female persons of color.

Although similar to the term “person of color,” the history of the term women of color has political roots, as explained by Loretta Ross. During the 1977 National Women’s Conference, a group of African American women created the Black Women’s Agenda to work with the conference. They aimed to substitute the proposed “Minority Women’s Plank”, which included in the documentation for the conference. When other minority women wanted to be included in the agenda, negotiations to rename the group lead to the creation of the term “women of color”, therefore encompassing all minority women. Although it seems to have biological connotations, the term "women of color" is a unifying term that also addresses the political and social issues.

Michelle Obama was the United States’ First Lady from 2009 to 2017. "Obama is considered a role model for women and is an advocate for poverty awareness, nutrition, physical activity, and healthy eating". While in school at Princeton, she ran a literacy program for local neighborhood children. She also wrote her senior sociology thesis on "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community". Obama also protested the institution's lack of minority students and professors when she attended Harvard Law School. After law school, she practiced law at the Chicago offices of the law firm, Sidley Austin, and then worked as the vice president of Community Relations for the University of Chicago Hospitals, before becoming the First Lady of the United States.

The first wave of the feminist movement, primarily between 1960 and 1980, did not deal with the issues that women of color faced. This wave used the term "universal woman", attempting to speak for the overall oppression faced by all women. Many involved in the first wave of feminism spoke from the white middle class female perspective and concluded that gender was the main site of their oppression. Nevertheless, feminism slowly began to address cultural inequalities, especially after the influence of the civil rights movement. Women of color, noting the range of economic, social, and political differences between women, thus sought to address the unique experiences of non-white women, generally excluded from the term "feminism". In the 1980s Africana Womanism was created to practice Afrocentricism due to the fact that in America, many things were from a Eurocentric stand point. The mujerista movement also came about during this time to battle the issues that Latina women were facing. The term is derived from the Spanish word mujer, or “woman” in English; it was a name for oppressed colored women who did not find their issues were being addressed within the white feminist movement.

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