Merin Kind's Shea Butter Series, Part 2 of 4
Quick Answer
Shea butter has been made using the same hand-crafted process for centuries, passed down from mother to daughter across generations in West Africa. An estimated 16 million women across the region collect and process shea today, often organized into cooperatives that give them fairer pricing, shared equipment, and direct access to international buyers. This tradition has long been called "women's gold" — both for its color and for the economic independence it provides millions of women who might otherwise have none.
A trade older than the countries that now export it
Long before shea butter appeared on ingredient labels in Paris or New York, it was already a fixture of daily life across the Sahel and savanna belt of West Africa — used in cooking, in traditional medicine, and as a skin and hair balm passed down as household knowledge, not written instruction. There is no textbook for how to make shea butter. There is only a mother teaching a daughter, who will one day teach her own.
The process itself hasn't fundamentally changed in generations. Shea nuts are harvested by hand from wild trees, cracked from their shells, roasted over open fires, and ground into a paste using mortars and pestles. That paste is then kneaded by hand — for hours — while water is worked in, a physically demanding step that separates the oil from the solids. The oil is skimmed, boiled to purify it, and left to cool and solidify into the butter you'd recognize. Depending on volume, the entire cycle from nut to finished butter can take weeks.
It is, by any modern standard, an extraordinary amount of labor for a jar of butter. And it is knowledge that lives almost entirely in the hands and memory of women — learned by doing, standing beside a mother or grandmother, not from a manual.
"Women's gold," and what that phrase actually means
Across the shea belt, this butter has long carried a nickname: women's gold. Partly that's about color — raw shea can range from ivory to a deep, warm gold depending on region and processing. But mostly, it's about what shea income represents for the women who make it. In many rural communities, shea is one of the only sources of independent income available to women, separate from farm labor controlled by male household heads. It funds school fees, medical costs, and household needs that would otherwise go unmet.
That's why the shift toward cooperatives matters so much. Working alone, an individual shea processor has almost no negotiating power — she sells to whoever shows up, at whatever price is offered. Organized into a cooperative, women share processing equipment, pool their output for better pricing, and — increasingly — get access to organizations and buyers who deal directly with the cooperative rather than through layers of middlemen. Some cooperatives have also begun investing in improved presses and processing centers that cut down the physical toll of traditional methods without abandoning the underlying craft.
Who Merin Kind works with
Merin Kind's shea butter comes from a women's cooperative in Ibadan, Nigeria. We buy directly from the cooperative rather than through a chain of exporters and brokers — which means more of what you pay for a jar actually reaches the women who harvested and processed it, and none of it depends on us knowing, or caring, less about where it came from.
This is also why our whipped shea butter collection is made in small batches. We're not trying to industrialize a process that has survived for centuries precisely because it hasn't been industrialized. We'd rather sell out and restock than mass-produce our way past the people who make this possible.
Why this is bigger than skincare
It's easy to talk about shea butter purely in terms of what it does for skin. But every jar carries a labor story that most beauty brands never mention: a tradition held almost entirely by women, sustaining household economies across an entire region, now navigating a moment where trade policy, climate pressure, and global demand are all shifting at once. Buying shea butter that's honest about its sourcing is a small way of supporting the people actually holding that tradition together — not the intermediaries who've historically profited most from it.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is traditional shea butter made?
Shea nuts are hand-harvested, cracked, roasted, ground into a paste, and kneaded by hand with water to separate the oil, which is then boiled, purified, and cooled into butter — a process that can take weeks and is typically passed down from mother to daughter.
Why is shea butter called "women's gold"?
Because it has long been one of the few sources of independent income available to women in shea-producing regions, and because raw shea butter often has a natural golden color.
How many women work in the shea industry?
An estimated 16 million women across West Africa collect and process shea, many organized into cooperatives for better pricing and market access.
Where does Merin Kind's shea butter come from?
A women's cooperative in Ibadan, Nigeria, purchased directly rather than through intermediaries.
Sources referenced: UN Africa Renewal, Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Journal of Agricultural Extension, and field reporting on West African shea cooperatives, 2026.
