1960s consciousness-raising meeting

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:

    • 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)

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Who’s Afraid of the Lower Birth Rate? (from Organizing Upgrade)

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