Dr Lulu Gwagwa | Supporting young black women is a clear path to meaningful transformation

A few years ago, a young woman, a geographer, wrote a post on social media about the psychological impact that space and place have on black people.

She reflected on how even as apartheid has been abolished, spaces that are still white dominated create a sense of alienation for black people and communicate a silent message that they do not belong.

I immediately understood what this meant, for, as a black woman who qualified as a town planner in South Africa in the early 1980s, I have an appreciation of the socio-spatial dialectic that shapes how people interact with space. But to read this from a young person who was born in the democratic dispensation was revealing and has been a point of reflection for me in the work that I do as the founder of Traversing Liminality.

The pan-African platform aims to provide a safe space tailored specifically for young black women, aiming to unlock their full potential. We facilitate interactions and mutual learning while encouraging contributions to the community.

When young black women are equipped earlier in life to work on mastering who they are, they can understand the source of their beliefs and recognise how their past experiences continue to influence their present.

Through the difficult and confronting work that we do with these young women, I have developed a deep appreciation of how limiting beliefs rooted in structural constructs that include (but are not limited to) unacknowledged generational trauma in the black community impede on black women’s capacity to lift themselves above horizons, and to show up in the world in their full humanness.

The shared history of African people on the continent and diaspora, which has informed layered forms of disenfranchisement and exclusion, has cemented the idea that a certain class of black people is divorced from the lived reality of what Zimbabwean writer, Tsitsi Dangarembga, refers to in Nervous Conditions as "the condition of native".

She describes this as a nervous condition and goes on to deconstruct its particularities for black women. The idea that professional black women, in particular, are now a success story, while true in some instances, has set parameters for the invisibility of their ongoing struggles. By certifying them as having made it, black women, particularly in the corporate space, are not provided the necessary support to navigate the liminal space between their past and present.

In this way, they endure in silence, confronted with challenges such as imposter syndrome and chronic burnout. Another real challenge that young black women professionals are confronted with is the internalised conditioning that struggle gives identity and validation. The stories of successful black women are often rooted in struggle, and this has come to define how the world expects black women to show up.

Linked to this is the persistent guilt for having more, which results in staying small to stay accepted, even when they crave expansion. This particular struggle also informs why black women in particular battle with establishing necessary boundaries when it comes to issues related to black tax and familial responsibilities.

These are real struggles that young black professional women face in the workplace, often without much institutional support. But because such women are not permitted to show up in their full humanness, little attention is paid to the need to meaningfully develop and empower them outside their official work.

The need to embrace a sense of compassion and understanding of the implications of the complex intersection of young black women’s lives. It is crucial that this intersectionality is understood. Black women are both black and female. The result is that they are subject to discrimination on the basis of both race and gender.

In a heteronormative society, black women are at the receiving end of economic, political and social exclusion on the basis of other prejudices directed towards them, many of which are rooted in cultural and religious practices. This intersectionality of race, gender, age, culture and even religion, has far-reaching implications for the beliefs and experiences of black women and for the roles and responsibilities that they are ascribed.

While representation no doubt matters, even more important is ensuring that black women are provided with the necessary tools and support to thrive holistically.

What we want to achieve, ultimately, is to influence a new thinking informed by an understanding of the complexity of the lived realities of black women who must negotiate life with an albatross of intersectional identities around their necks. It is only with such a sociological that transformation can translate into a higher civilisation for black women.

The corporate sector needs to do more for young black women. It needs to give practical demonstration to the idea of women’s empowerment, recognising that professional advancement alone is inadequate if it does not factor in the mental, emotional and psychological support of these women.

If we are serious about transformation, this is where we must begin – in supporting the next generation of black women.