A womanist perspective for social work with African American women

Abstract

This article articulates a womanist perspective for social work in an effort to address the void of theoretical literature in this field that combines gender and race as analytic frameworks (Nichols‐Casebolt, Krysik, & Hamilton, 1994). Womanism is an emergent theoretical perspective that reforms and expands mainstream feminist theory to incorporate racial and cultural differences, with a particular focus on African American women (Sanders, 1995; Williams, 1987). This article fuses womanist constructs with constructs from the Life Model of Social Work (Germain & Gitterman, 1996) to emphasize the significance of African American women's social environments and selected adaptation strategies they employ to achieve psychosocial well‐being, including gender role identity, religion, and social support.

Keywords:

• African American
• diversity
• feminism
• gender
• women
• womanist