Our feminism began around fires, in fields, and in kitchens – the intimate, sacred spaces where women of the global majority have always led, healed, resisted and nurtured life. It was practised by our grandmothers and great-grandmothers, a powerful, lived philosophy long before it was branded, theorised, or declared a “Sustainable Development Goal.”
The dominant narrative would have us believe feminism is a Western export, a late arrival to our shores. This is a colonial erasure of centuries of knowledge, resistance, and community-building practised by women across Africa, Asia, Latin America and Indigenous worlds. Our foremothers were not waiting for a manifesto; they were writing one with their lives.
The deep roots of decolonial care
The core of our practice has always been mutual aid and collective care. This is the ultimate decolonial act in the face of systems designed to break our spirits and our communities.
In Sudan, amidst a devastating war, grassroots women’s groups have become lifelines. They organise to provide medical care, sanitary products and psychological support to the displaced and survivors of sexual violence. This is not a new NGO strategy. It is the modern manifestation of an ancient practice of communal solidarity, a refusal to let each other fall.
Similarly, in rural South Africa, women facing food insecurity revive and rely on traditional networks of mutual aid, sharing seeds, harvests and agricultural knowledge. These acts of sharing are not merely about sustenance; they are a quiet, powerful rebellion against the logic of capitalist scarcity and a testament to resilient community-building that predates any Western feminist framework.
A lineage of unyielding resistance
Our feminism has never been separate from the fight against colonialism and patriarchy – twin forces that sought to dismantle our societies and subordinate our women.
Consider Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti of Nigeria, who in the 1940s and 50s led thousands of women in anti-tax protests, challenging both the British colonial administration and the patriarchal Native Authority. She famously declared her fearlessness in the face of power, her activism a blueprint for intersectional struggle. “As for the charges against me, I am not afraid of anything they can do to me. I am ready to face any charge.”
In Mozambique, Josina Machel wove feminist principles directly into the fabric of the anti-colonial liberation struggle, understanding that freedom for the nation was inextricably linked to the freedom of its women. In Kenya, Wambui Otieno carried this torch, mobilising women against colonial rule and then fighting landmark legal battles in independent Kenya to secure women’s rights against patriarchal traditions.
This is not a past-tense history. As scholar Patricia McFadden reminds us, feminism is an ancient consciousness:“Feminism is not an event that is just emerging now. It is embedded in the oldest memories of human consciousness about freedom.”
Today, this legacy fuels a powerful South-South feminist internationalism. We are building on the work of our ancestors to challenge the interconnected systems of authoritarianism, capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy. Our strategies are multifaceted, working within, against, and beyond the state to build radical alternatives.
We see this in the bold declarations of women like Ayarit Rojas of the Venezuelan women-led Antímano Ecosocialist Revolutionary Infantry (Infantería Revolucionaria Ecosocialista por Hábitat y Vivienda Antímano), who embodies the spirit of a sovereignty that is both fiercely independent and deeply communal: “They say we are an unusual threat, and it is true. We are an unusual threat because we are politically educated, because we are conscious, because we don’t want to keep being [the US’s] backyard, and because we want to continue being free, sovereign, and independent.”
This is the feminism the world needs now: one rooted not in saviour complexes but in solidarity, not in theory alone but in the gritty, beautiful practice of community care and decolonial love.
Honouring the legacy in our own Stories
The world needs to learn from our example. But first, we must remember it ourselves.
Let us look to our own lineages. What is the story of strength, wisdom, or quiet rebellion passed down through the women in your family or culture? Was it your grandmother’s knowledge of healing herbs? Her leadership in a village savings group? The way she held her community together with stories and food? The song she sang that held a coded message of resistance?
Share one story in the comments below. Let us weave a tapestry of our collective, ancestral wisdom and show the world that our feminism has always been here—tending, teaching, and transforming.
#FeministLegacies #GlobalSouth #DecoloniseFeminism #AncestralWisdom
Sources for further learning
- Just Associates (JASS) on Feminist Movement Building: https://justassociates.org/en
- Tricontinental Institute for Social Research: https://thetricontinental.org/
- The New Humanitarian on Sudan’s Women-Led Aid Networks: https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/africa
