Definition of "womanist" []

• Having or expressing a belief in or respect for women and their talents and abilities beyond the boundaries of race and class: "Womanist ... tradition assumes, because of our experiences during slavery, that black women already are capable” ( Alice Walker). (adjective)
• One whose beliefs or actions are informed by womanist ideals. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "This attitude pisses many black feminists off, and has resulted in the refusal for some to use the feminist and instead adopt the term womanist which is designed to more inclusive."
• "When we look at labels to describe activism by women we commonly use the term womanist, or feminist."
• "The writer Alice Walker, one of Steinem’s closest friends, coined the term womanist as an alternative for women of color in search of a way to indicate that their feminist perspectives and goals were more expansive than the word had come to suggest."