Black Women Policymakers and Black Feminist Approaches in United States Gender-Based Violence Policies: Analyzing Policy Making, Institutional, and Social Media Discourse through the Narrative Policy Framework

Author

Gugu Selela, Clemson UniversityFollow

Date of Award

8-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Policy Studies

Committee Chair/Advisor

Diane Perpich

Committee Member

Lori Dickes

Committee Member

Jenny Presgraves

Committee Member

Natallia Sianko

Committee Member

William Terry

Abstract

This research study examines how gender-based violence (GBV) policy in the United States marginalizes Black women through race-neutral language and punitive frameworks. Despite facing disproportionate violence, Black women are often excluded from policy narratives, debates, and institutional priorities. Grounded in Black Feminist Thought and the Narrative Policy Framework, this study investigates how exclusion operates across legislative, digital, and institutional domains, and how Black women in public service resist and reshape GBV policy through care-centered, survivor-informed practices. Focusing on the U.S. South, the study uses a qualitative, multi-method design. It analyzes ninety-three Senate committee transcripts from South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee (2020–2024), over 20,000 GBV-related tweets from five Southern states, and interviews with seven Black women public servants in South Carolina. Legislative findings reveal that GBV discourse is framed through abstract and race-neutral categories that erase structural inequalities. Black women’s perspectives, even when presented through testimony, are routinely sidelined. Digital data show that although GBV gains visibility online, dominant narratives remain individualistic and elite driven. Black feminist voices are minimal, and structural causes of violence are rarely addressed. In contrast, interview data highlight how Black women public servants actively reframe policy in their daily practice. Their work prioritizes survivor dignity, relational accountability, and cultural competence. They reject traditional success metrics in favor 4 of approaches that emphasize care, trust, and equity. Across all three data sites, this study finds that policy narratives shape not only public understanding but institutional responses. Black women’s exclusion is not incidental but systematically maintained through narrative structures that define whose harm is acknowledged and whose knowledge is valued. This research contributes to policy studies and feminist scholarship by demonstrating how narrative operates as a mechanism of both exclusion and resistance. By integrating Black Feminist Thought with the Narrative Policy Framework, the study offers a methodological and theoretical approach for analyzing the role of race and gender in policy discourse. It argues that transformative GBV policy must be rooted not only in representation but in structural change. Black women’s narratives, insights, and presence are essential to creating just, accountable, and survivor-centered public policy.

Recommended Citation

Selela, Gugu, "Black Women Policymakers and Black Feminist Approaches in United States Gender-Based Violence Policies: Analyzing Policy Making, Institutional, and Social Media Discourse through the Narrative Policy Framework" (2025). All Dissertations. 4038.
https://open.clemson.edu/all_dissertations/4038

Author ORCID Identifier

0009-0003-1826-7395