Why is Shea Butter Called "Women's Gold"?

Early morning, before the African midday sun starts burning all it looks upon, a group of women starts their miles-long walk to the Shea nut trees. This tradition has been going on since the 14th century with origins in today's Burkina Faso, and Shea butter is now the third most important export after cotton and livestock.

For hardworking Shea (aka karite butter) producers, not much has changed in the way of production. Proud Shea nut trees - scattered over the savannah and grassy thin forests of Africa - hold a deeply personal, economic, and cultural significance for over 3 million African women (by the estimate of the UN Development Programme (UNDP)) who depend on the production of unrefined Shea butter as their main or only source of income. The rich butter's central role in women's economic liberation allows them to feed, clothe, and educate their children, lifting them out of poverty and giving them more opportunities than the mothers themselves ever had. These facts are why Shea butter is endearingly called "Women's Gold" on the African continent, reflecting a deep appreciation and value that this seemingly humble nut holds for the future of millions of families.

What is Shea Butter?

Exquisitely rich African Shea butter is traditionally made by rural women through a labor-intensive process of the Shea tree nuts. Vitellaria paradoxa by its full fancy Latin name, the tree thrives in the dry savannah regions of Africa. The process of Shea butter production has been traditionally transferred from mother to daughter or grandmother to granddaughter for the past 700 hundred years, wrapping the tree and the female bloodline skill transfer in an air of magic and mysticism. The Shea tree, with its versatile and useful fruits, has been considered sacred in many African cultures.

Bonded to the heritage, community, and ancestral skills, from its origins in the endless savannahs of West and Central Africa to its widespread use in beauty, health, and food, Shea symbolizes resilience, tradition, and economic empowerment. It signifies freedom of choice and pride in taking care of your family as a skilled, strong, and capable woman.

Chemically, Shea butter combines five primary fatty acids: palmitic, stearic, oleic, linoleic, and arachidic, with stearic and oleic acids taking up 85–90% of the content. In Africa, it has been used in cooking for a long time. Still, in the last couple of decades, the world has fallen in love with Shea butter, sometimes also called karite butter. Its use is ever-growing in cosmetics, chocolates (as a substitute for cocoa butter), pharmaceutical applications, and soaps that protect the skin barrier, as about 15% of the oils do not saponify and remain as protection from over-drying the skin.

How is Shea Butter Made?

To start making the Shea butter, women first need to go out and pick the nuts. Only the ripe nuts that have naturally fallen from the tree are picked from the ground, ideally from the end of June to the beginning of September. This is dangerous and tiring work in every aspect. Women go in groups to avoid being robbed or to be able to help one another if the grass where they are picking hides a snake, startled by the rustling. The road back to the village is long, especially carrying around 25kg of nuts on your head. Still, the time and the arduous walk pass faster with the songs and conversations with your colleagues. The women are very vocal about never going to pick alone and teach this to the young women interested in joining the production. It is a group effort, just as the continuation of this 20-ish step process of transforming this batch of nuts into valuable unrefined Shea butter.

Once back at the village, the nuts are thoroughly washed in large bowls and spread out into direct sun to dry for a week. Natural sun drying is the best way to dry nuts. Fire and smoke on these raw nuts would speed up the process but could contaminate the butter with hydrocarbons. 

The women test if the nuts are dry enough by shaking them. If a nut rattles against the shell, it's time for the next step, which is going through thousands and thousands of nuts to asses which ones are worthy of going into the butter. The subpar nuts are used as food, fertilizer on the farm, mosquito repellent, or fuel. The careful picking of only the best nuts weeds out the nuts that are a bit off. This makes the hand-made female African Shea butter higher quality than the industrially made one as the industry throws in all of the nuts together, often getting a second-grade product in comparison.

The nuts that have made the cut are coarsely crushed with a rock or a brick and roasted over an open fire with constant stirring. Once the sweet, nutty aroma fills the air, nuts have released their precious oils and are ready to be ground into fine dust. Traditionally, this would be done by hand in between two rocks. Still, some larger operations have gotten a grinder to produce faster and compete with large industrial producers. The women mix the dust by hand for about an hour, and it takes three women to one pot to thoroughly stir it up. Often left with aches and pains in their muscle after this exhausting task, the women still do it by hand and are rewarded with gorgeous skin. Have you seen a woman in her 50s working with Shea butter? She looks 30, as daily exposure to hours of handling Shea butter keeps the skin young, moisturized, taut, and glowing.

After the hour of relentless mixing has passed, water is gradually added, and the butter separates from the water and is collected from the top. This butter needs to be purified from bits and pieces by melting it in a cauldron over an open fire where impurities get removed from the golden chocolate-colored oil. As it cools, the oil hardens into unrefined Shea butter. Burkina Faso's Shea butter has a higher stearic acid percentage and is somewhat harder than the butter from other West African regions.

Shea Butter beyond beauty

The benefits of Shea butter go way beyond its skin-softening, moisturizing, and anti-aging properties, which gained it a worldwide reputation. Rich in vitamins A, E, and F, Shea body butter is an apparent natural moisturizer that soothes dry skin, but it can also do wonders on scar tissue and even help heal wounds with an anti-inflammatory action while also occluding the exposed wounds to outside contaminants, bacteria, and contaminants. It is also used for a wide variety of common skin conditions such as eczema, psoriasis, and other skin irritations, calming and relieving the symptoms of irritation.

Beyond the beauty benefits of using Shea butter for skin, African culture has also used it for cooking for centuries due to its high smoke point and nutty flavor that adds an exquisite note to African cuisine. Shea butter also plays a part in rituals and ceremonies, sometimes used in offerings or to soothe the skin after exposure to the sun and the elements. An essential part of daily life in many African communities, the uses of Shea butter are both practical and symbolic, representing the harmonious relationship between people of the region and their appreciation of nature's bounty.

Women's Gold for female freedom and empowerment

Each woman can produce about 40kg of Shea butter a day, earning from 18-30€, which is good money for the rural regions. In addition to the vital money, women also get a sense of entrepreneurship and community while producing this precious commodity. In villages, women often form cooperative groups that produce and sell their Shea butter as a single business entity, dividing the income amongst all the included women. The dream of these entrepreneurs is very much to have more control over production, such as owning their own trees, which are now wild-grown and far away, and having adequate storage and processing spaces for the nuts and butter. They want what we all want - to grow, develop, and be more successful without destroying the heart of the project. They are just like us (only with way healthier skin), working hard for a better life. They are intelligent and resourceful and want the best for their families and sisters.

By gaining financial independence and autonomy, women can improve their social standing and lift others by reinvesting in the community. That's what women do - multiply everything you give them - so you better not give them grief.

Industrialization vs. Tradition of "Women's Gold"

In the past few decades, the demand for African Shea butter has skyrocketed globally, increasing exports by up to 600% and ending up in everything from lip balms, soaps, shampoos, and medicine to food products. The significant uptick in demand should logically result in more resources going toward the women who produce it. Still, as it goes with profit-driven economies, the quality has become less important than the quantity of the raw material the continent can produce.

This market demand sparked the appearance of large-scale companies that produce Shea butter faster, threatening the traditional way of small-scale farmers and women's communes that carried the production for centuries. Just for comparison - the amount of Shea butter that women can produce in a month, a factory can produce in just three days. There is also the burning problem of rapid deforestation, where millions of trees are cut down each year to make room for farmland or to be made into coal (even though fuel can be obtained from the discarded byproducts of butter production as something called oilcake or Shea cakes which burn as firewood). Still, large international buyers demand more significant amounts to be available quickly to meet their production deadlines and, therefore, choose to source from companies that can produce them. Rising demand makes it harder for traditional female Shea butter producers to get their foot in the door and get their piece of the (Shea) cake of the market they've created with their labor.

The good news is that Africa has recognized the problem of deforestation robbing women of their livelihood and has started to fight by planting 7000 new Shea trees to repopulate the parklands, and more planting is to come. As the world recognizes the remarkable benefits of this natural substance, the stories of the women who produce it have also gained prominence.

After an initial mindless boom, ever more educated consumers are also building a world increasingly conscious of ethical sourcing and sustainability of the products they use, giving the women producers of Africa a louder international voice and letting the world hear their stories. At the same time, organizations and companies focused on fair trade and ethical practices are lobbying for the women involved in the Shea butter industry to be fairly paid so that they can ensure a better life for their families and communities. For now, the raw Shea butter bought from the producer still holds half or one-third of the price of the same Shea butter resold in the international trading market, where intermediaries make more than the producers.

Conclusion

Shea butter's story is about so much more than what the surface suggests through its versatile, utilitarian industry uses. It's inextricably linked with people's ingenuity, beliefs, work ethic, resilience, community, and the women who have turned a natural resource into a means of empowering and freeing themselves economically. For 7 centuries, African women have nurtured and perfected the art of Shea butter production, and today, their role continues to under somewhat changed demands and circumstances of the increasing global demand for an interconnected capitalistic global economy.

As the world continues to embrace and exploit this "Women's Gold," it's important to remember the women who stand behind this positive the word implies. At the heart of every jar of Shea body butter and entangled in all products containing Shea butter is a story of these women not afraid of hard work, fighting for fair prices, and wanting better for future generations.

In the end, the title "Women's Gold" isn't just a nod to a possession valued as gold but a wider recognition of the invaluable role that African women play in shaping the future of a coveted natural resource. As the great Mr. Shakespeare put it nicely."All that glitters is not gold," we can flip it around and say that not all gold glitters. Sometimes, it's a humble-looking, hard, whitish paste that is aurated by changing lives and destinies.

Apart from the cultural, economic, and personal significance of Shea butter explored in this article, we encourage you to learn more about Shea butter benefits, cosmetics, and products here: "Shea Butter: From Cellulite and Stretch Marks to Anti-Aging".