Lionheart Gals Facing the Dragon: The Human Rights of Inter/National Black Women in the United States

This article focuses on Jamaican-American women. Part I discusses key aspects of the historical and sociological context in which the migration of Jamaican women to the New York City area has occurred. Part II describes and analyzes significant survival strategies used by working class Jamaican-American women to escape from, reshape, or resist the exploitative conditions they face. Part III discusses the limitations of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) to address the violations experienced by Jamaican-American women. Part IV identifies opportunities for critical race feminist scholarship to shed light on the race- and ethnicity-based subordination of black women immigrants in the United States. The author concludes that human rights analyses must extend beyond state boundaries if it is to take full account of the needs of black women.