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“Womanist is feminist as purple is lavender.” -- Alice Walker
Although both these terms seem to be somewhat similar, there is a difference between them. A feminist is a someone who supports feminism. Feminism is the idea that all genders should have equal rights and opportunities, but it emphasizes that obtainment particularly for women.
Womanism is the history and everyday experiences of black women. A womanist is also referred to as a black feminist or woman of colour. Womanism can be considered as the subset of feminism. A womanist is someone who believes in equal rights and opportunities for black women. So womanism is often incorporated with feminism.
Feminism focuses upon respecting genders of all diversities regardless of their origin, colour, race, ethnicity etc. to create economical, political and social balance for women in all fields so that everyone has equal access to all opportunities and rights. The term feminism is often misunderstood and substituted as an ideology promoting misandry. However, feminism is about establishing equality and not domination. Feminists believe that all genders should have equal rights and opportunities.
Throughout history, women are more confined to domestic chores and not much represented in the political and social spheres. Even during the times of the french revolution women were not given the right to vote and the right to education. Their rights were denied until women raised their voices and began participating in political and social activities and spreading their ideas through the press. The rights and opportunities of women are not as balanced with that of men.
A womanist opposes racism in the feminist community. While feminism focuses more on gender-based discrimination, womanism focuses on areas like race and ethnicity. The feminist movement in the late 1960s bought the women’s liberation movement which was put forward by the women of colour. That was when womanists came to put forward their views on equality.
The word womanist was invented by Alice Walker who was an author and an activist. She used this word in her 1982s publication: “In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose. Along with the womanist movement which was to put focus upon violence, lower representation of black women in media, gender pay gap they ran 2 more movements parallelly. One was the Black Lives Matter and the other was the Me too movement. These movements were also formed. Black lives matter was formed by 4 black women. Through these movements, they put forward the concerns and consequences.”
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