Consciousness-Raising (C-R) is a tool that the Women's Liberation Movement adopted from the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, where it was called “telling it like it is.” In C-R, women answer a question using examples from their personal lives, then the group uses these personal testimonies to draw conclusions about the political root of women's so-called “personal” problems.
History and details can be found in our Consciousness-raising toolkit. More Examples of questions can be found in our Birth Strike Study Guide. For A history of Consciousness-raising, read “Consciousness-Raising a Radical Weapon” from Redstockings' book Feminist Revolution.
C-R is used to:
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- Collect and analyze data (e.g. women's life experiences)
- Get to the root of sexism–figure out who benefits and who pays
- Understand that the pain and struggles in our lives are not our individual problems and we cannot solve them on our own
- Take action (using C-R conclusions as the basis for our theory and strategy)
What Women Really Want for the Holidays flyer
This flyer was written by the Gainesville Women’s Liberation community education class, “Women’s Liberation: Where…
C-R Testimony about beauty and weight
Written by an organizer in Gainesville Women's Liberation for a GWL Consciousness-Raising Study Group in…
