We’re done waiting for society to approve our hair as worthy. No more hiding under wigs just to be seen as professional or feminine. At Enable Women Africa, we’re inspiring hair freedom so black women and girls can wear their natural hair without stigma or fear. Because our hair is not the problem to fix, racism is.
Gloria started Enable Women Africa after a life-changing experience on a trip to Ghana in 2023. It wasn’t just a holiday, it was a homecoming, a revelation, and a reckoning all at once.
For years, Gloria had worked at the intersection of antiracism, inclusion, and identity, often speaking truth to power in boardrooms and at conferences. She is a respected researcher, a TEDx speaker, and an organisational justice specialist. But nothing could have prepared her for what unfolded in the village of Kwabeng, nestled in Ghana’s Eastern Region.
There, amidst red earth and regal women walking tall in their natural crowns, braided, wrapped, coiled or free, Gloria witnessed something she had never truly seen before: unapologetic hair freedom. No stares. No snide remarks. No performance. Just the quiet dignity of women who wore their hair without shame.
“No stares. No snide remarks. Just the quiet dignity of women who wore their hair without shame.”
It was a moment that stirred something deep. A little girl in the village looked up at her with radiant confidence, untouched by the racialised beauty expectations Gloria had fought for decades. And it broke her open.
But the deeper reckoning came in the city, where Gloria saw Black girls, barely in their teens, already covering their natural hair with wigs. Not as play, but as protection. As performance. As pressure. It stopped her cold.
Because she saw herself in them. And realised: she, too, had still been hiding.
Her own wig, packed in her suitcase, symbolised the armour she’d worn through life in Australia at work, at events, even in sport. A career built on empowering others, yet a woman still negotiating her own visibility. That moment became her catalyst. She returned home in Australia, stood before a mirror, and made a vow: never again. No more wigs out of fear. No more hiding. No more compromise.
That singular act of personal liberation birthed a broader mission: to create Enable Women Africa—a movement rooted in the belief that when a woman reclaims her image, she reclaims her power.
Now, through Enable Women Africa, Gloria champions hair freedom and identity restoration for Black women and girls, especially across the African continent and its diaspora. Not to tell them what to do, but to stand beside them as they unlearn shame, remember their worth, and choose their own version of freedom.
Because once you’ve felt the sun on your scalp and the dignity of being seen as you are, there’s no going back.