'Hood Feminism' and the YWCA Dayton mission

YWCA Dayton's summer book club, Revolutionary Reads, kicked off in June with a book that we keep coming back to over and over again: Hood Feminism. This electrifying book by Mikki Kendall calls for feminism to be rooted in the livelihood of everyday women. It calls for readers to see the fights against hunger, homelessness, poverty, and domestic violence as feminist fights. This call to focus on the basic needs of all women -- instead of increasing privileges for the few -- is a call that resonates deeply with the team at YWCA Dayton.Our mission is eliminating racism and empowering women. And we live out that mission by serving and advocating for women fleeing violence, experiencing homelessness, and struggling for basic resources, and by recognizing the discrimination that puts women of color at an outsized risk in all these areas. The modern white feminist movement often fails to focus on the basic needs of women and the racism that puts some women at more risk than others. Sometimes this misguided approach to feminism can turn off women who don't call themselves feminists, even when they are out serving and advocating for women's basic needs.At YWCA Dayton, we know that:

• Gun violence is a feminist issue. Nearly 1 million women alive today have reported being shot or shot at by intimate partners, and over 4.5 million women have reported being threatened with a gun by an intimate partner. Black women are three times more likely to be fatally shot by an intimate partner compared to white women.
• Homelessness is a feminist issue. Homelessness experienced by women is made unique by their disproportionate experiences of gender-based violence including domestic violence, dating violence, stalking, human trafficking, and sexual assault -- and African Americans and Indigenous people experience homelessness at higher rates than whites.
• Domestic violence is a feminist issue. With physical abuse alone, 1 in 3 women have experienced some form of physical violence by an intimate partner. 

Even if you missed our June book club, we'd encourage you to read Hood Feminism and join the movement to fight for all women to be safe, housed and advocated for."This book is a call to identify social justice issues as feminism issues -- it's a view deeply aligned with how we live our mission," said Barbara Ward, Associate Director of Advocacy & Outreach at YWCA Dayton.