For decades, African women have participated in the Black feminist struggle for women’s rights and racial, social, economic, and political justice (Collins 2017; Tamale 2020). In the 1950s, during the fight for independence across the continent, a radical and transnational feminist movement emerged with African women’s protests to “crack the norms of gender and colonial order” (Ndengue 2016) in both urban and rural postcolonial contexts (Falola and Paddock 2011; Mougoué 2019; Nchoji Nkwi 1985; Ndengue 2018). Protests have transnational effects (Johnson-Odim 2009; Terretta 2013). Today, transnationalism relies on social media platforms as sites of calls to action. They constitute alternative public spaces for expression and activism in constrained political environments (Ngono 2018) and platforms that facilitate informal transnational connections. These transnational connections are accompanied by explicit and assertive claims of feminism by a growing number of (young) women.

In 2020, Asian Americans were the least descriptively represented at all levels of elected office compared to whites, Blacks, and Latinos (Sedique, Bhojwani, and Lee 2020). In this context, Asian women lagged behind Asian men in holding local-level positions, yet they surpassed Asian men in holding federal and statewide offices, and they led 81% of state- and local-level Asian civil rights organizations (AAPI Power Fund 2020; Reflective Democracy Campaign 2021). Do gender disparities in Asian American political representation arise because Asian women are less likely to run for office than Asian men, or because they are less likely to win elections? Do these disparities vary across levels of office? And are they unique to Asian Americans?