For years white women have primarily occupied the most powerful leadership roles in the gender-based violence (GBV) movement. As a result, white women’s perspectives, standpoints, and experiences become the primary drivers that shape local, state, and national movement agendas. The overt lack of diversity reflects an enduring racialized systematic erasure of women of color. Over the past 30 years, practitioners and scholars of scholar have proposed numerous recommendations, created interventions, and led initiatives to address the isolation , tokenism , silencing , and other cultural practices that hindered women of color’s advancement into positions of leadership within the gender-based violence movement. Yet, despite these efforts, the overrepresentation of white women in leadership positions persists and the number of women of color remains stubbornly low.
