I want to tell you about a morning in northern Ghana.
It is still dark when they leave. Before the sun has risen, before their children are awake, before the heat of the day makes the long walk into the savannah parklands unbearable they go. In groups, because the journey is long and the path is not always safe. Carrying baskets and sometimes whistles, which they use to signal for help if they become separated, or if someone threatens them on the way.
They walk miles to reach the shea trees. Trees that are not planted but simply grow wild and ancient, rooted in the same soil where their mothers and grandmothers walked before them. And when they arrive, they begin the work. Picking the fallen fruits from the ground. Cracking the shells. Beginning the long, labor-intensive process of turning a simple nut into one of the most powerful natural skincare ingredients in the world.
These are the women I want you to meet today. Whoever you are. Wherever you are from. Because their story belongs in the conversation that every woman who cares about what she puts on her skin deserves to hear.
Their names are Habiba, Faustina, Miriam. And sixteen million others like them, spread across the shea belt of West Africa from Nigeria and Ghana through Burkina Faso, Mali, Benin, and beyond. Women who have been the backbone of a multi-hundred-million-dollar global industry for generations, while receiving only a fraction of its rewards. Women who carry ancient knowledge in their hands. Women who, when I traveled to meet them, changed how I understood the purpose of everything I had built.
"These women are not the supporting cast of the beauty industry. They are its foundation."
What They Do That the World Never Sees
The process of making shea butter is not simple. It never has been. It begins with the collection those pre-dawn walks into the parklands, gathering the fallen shea fruits from the ground by hand. Then comes the separation of the pulp from the nut, the washing, the boiling or sun-drying, the cracking of the hardened shells. Then the roasting. The milling. The kneading. The slow, muscle-demanding work of extracting the fat from the kernel, adding water gradually, working it with both hands until the oil separates and the butter forms.
In many communities, this entire process is done communally. Women gather together in cooperatives, sharing the labor and the knowledge, dividing the work according to skill and experience. The older women teach the younger ones the precise pressure needed in the kneading, the right color of the roasted nut, the moment when the butter is ready.
"This is not assembly-line production. It is craft. It is science. It is centuries of accumulated wisdom being passed from one set of hands to another."
A jar of quality shea butter on a shelf in New York or London carries no trace of those dawn walks, those communal processing sessions, those generations of knowledge. The industry that benefits most from shea — global cosmetics brands worth billions — often sources it as a commodity, at the lowest possible price, from middlemen who are several steps removed from the women who actually produced it.
For too long, the woman who spent an entire day producing that butter received as little as a dollar or two for her work. That gap is one of the defining injustices of the global beauty supply chain. And it is something I have thought about, wrestled with, and committed myself to addressing imperfectly, but persistently since the day I understood it.
The beautiful irony is this: when you center the needs of the most overlooked women in the supply chain, you end up creating something excellent for every woman. Shea butter produced with care and integrity works magnificently on every skin type — Black, white, Asian, every complexion, every climate. The difference a fair, direct supply chain makes is not just ethical. It is tangible. You feel it in the texture. You see it in the results. That is what it means to build from the root up.
Why It's Called Women's Gold
Shea butter has been called Women's Gold for as long as anyone can remember. The name is partly literal the butter itself, in its most natural unrefined form, carries a deep golden warmth that has been used for centuries to nourish skin, heal wounds, protect against the sun, soothe newborns, and ease the aches of aging bodies. It is food and medicine and beauty and ritual, all in one ingredient.
But the name is also about what shea represents for the women who produce it: economic agency. For women in rural northern Ghana, Nigeria, and across the shea belt, the shea season is a source of income that exists outside of and independent from their husbands, their fathers, their families. It is income that is theirs. Income that allows them to pay school fees, buy medicine, invest in small businesses, build something for themselves and their children.
"When a woman earns her own money — real money, from real skilled labor — the dynamics of her life can shift."
The cooperative model women working collectively, sharing resources, training together, negotiating together is itself a profound form of community building. It mirrors something that has always been true about African women's lives: that strength has never been individual. It has always been communal.
What I Saw When I Went to Meet Them
When Shola and I first traveled to the shea parklands following the supply chain back to its origin I was not fully prepared for what I would find. I was prepared to be moved. I was not prepared to feel so immediately known. And I was not prepared for what happened when I began sharing these stories with women who had no African heritage at all women who had never heard of a shea cooperative, who had grown up in entirely different worlds. They were moved too. Because at its core, this is a story about women's work being undervalued, women's knowledge being overlooked, and women choosing despite everything to build something anyway. That story crosses every cultural boundary. It speaks to every woman who has ever been told her contribution does not count.
"They were not waiting for someone to value their work. They already knew its value. What they needed were partners."
Through our sourcing partnerships in Ghana and Nigeria, we work directly with women-led cooperatives. We provide pre-financing so cooperatives can purchase equipment before the season begins. We have supported training programs to help women access international markets that will pay them what their work is actually worth. And through our 1,000 Women initiative, we have worked to extend cleaner, safer working conditions — including clean cooking stoves because the traditional method of boiling shea nuts over open fires is a genuine health hazard. Every woman who cooks over a cleaner flame is a woman whose lungs are less compromised, whose children breathe cleaner air.
What Happens When You Buy a Jar of Shea
I want you to think about something the next time you open a product from Shea Radiance. Think about Habiba, who rises before dawn in northern Ghana and walks miles into the parklands to collect the shea fruits that will eventually reach your hands. Think about Faustina, who has spent decades perfecting the kneading technique that produces butter of exceptional quality a skill she learned from her mother, and her mother from hers. Think about Miriam, who manages a cooperative of dozens of women, negotiates with buyers, keeps records, advocates for her members.
These women are entrepreneurs. They are scientists and craftspeople. They are community leaders and economic agents. They are, in every meaningful sense, the originators of what the beauty industry now calls natural skincare. And they are largely uncelebrated.
"Every brand that chooses direct sourcing over commodity trading is choosing to see these women."
We are not a perfect company. No company is. But this is our commitment: to keep showing up, to keep asking how we can do better, and to keep centering the women who make this work possible in every story we tell. Including this one.
If you have ever held a jar of our shea butter whether you are a longtime customer or brand new to Shea Radiance I hope this post has changed what that moment feels like. Because behind that product is not a supply chain. It is a community of women who chose to trust us with their labor, their knowledge, and their story. And by holding that jar, you are already part of the village.
We do not take that lightly.
With gratitude, đź’› Funlayo Co-Founder & CEO, Shea Radiance
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This article is Part 2 in a 5-part Series. Additional Articles are:
- Before 'Clean Beauty' Was a Category, It Was Culture
- K-Beauty and J-Beauty Changed How the World Thinks About Skincare. A-Beauty Is Next. (publish date: 3/16/2026)
- Breaking Into Beauty: Women Who Refused to Be Overlooked (publish date: 3/23/2026)
- Glow Forward: How We Honor the Past by Living It Forward (publish date: 3/30/2026)
