Black Girls Matter

Black girls are an understudied segment of the population, and traditional approaches to researching Black girls have focused on risks more than strengths. Moreover, much of the research on Black girls has failed to adequately account for the cultural, social, political, and economic context in which they live. This chapter provides a culturally relevant framework for studying Black girls based on womanism and ecological systems theory. A womanist approach to Black girlhood studies captures the phenomenological dimensions of Black girls’ everyday lives and can help researchers to understand the meaning of their experiences. Because womanism is inherently ecological in orientation, it also adds value to other ecological approaches in social science and suggests methodological innovations (e.g., bricolage) that better reflect Black girls’ realities and resilience.