Conceptualizing Black Feminist Womanist Gerontology: Applying a Critical Framework for Research on Black Women in Menopause

Abstract

Recent scholarship has questioned the lack of culturally responsive, theory-guided research addressing the connections between aging, minority communities, and what is needed to advance health equity. Models that utilize traditional theories of aging often do not account for cultural context that undergirds the aging experience, and this is especially the case for older Black women. To understand the ways in which Black women thrive, we must consider various approaches that define their well-being. Dichotomizing aging into concrete categories as healthy/unhealthy may unintentionally isolate this group where aging successfully presents as a contradiction, thus perpetuating further marginalization. It is important that scholarship and intervention projects reflect cultural humility in dissemination. Therefore, we propose Black-Feminist-Womanist Gerontology, a curation of thought that creates a foundation by which Black women survive, live, and age, despite the ‘gold standard’ of aging being dominated by white ethnocentric context that pathologizes older Black women’s lived experiences. In this forum article, we summarize the principles of Black Feminist-Womanist Gerontology, a culturally relevant model for studying Black women’s health as they age. Factors of the model and recommendations of its use will be discussed and applied to the study of Black women in menopause.