ABSTRACT
The term "gender" was originally used to describe grammatical categories. Gender as it is understood – as a relation between differently situated humans and as a socially variable role – goes back to long debates in the context of feminist practices and studies. Feminism has a long history in the Americas, which has started long before the term came into use in the 1890s. In the 1970s and 1980s, feminist theorists and activists were also highlighting the overlapping influences between racism and sexism. Contemporary Black feminism originates in the historical reality of African American and Afro-descendant women who have been resisting racist and sexist violence from early on. A specific dimension of discourse on gender and gender relations in the Americas is the extreme structural violence and homicide against women which goes back to a long history of structurally gendered violence.
