Women of color
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Women of color Women of color (singular: woman of color, sometimes abbreviated as WOC) is a phrase used to describe female people of color. The political term "women of color" surfaced in the violence against women movement. In the late seventies it unified all women experiencing multiple layers of marginalization with race or ethnicity as a common issue.
History
Although similar to the term "person of color," the history of the term women of color has political roots, as explained by the women's rights leader 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 was included in the documentation for the conference. When other minority women wanted to be included in the agenda, negotiations to rename the group led to the creation of the term "women of color", encompassing all minority women. Although it seems to have a biological connotations, the term "women of color" is a unifying term that also addresses the political and social issues.
