Feminist Consciousness: Perspectives on Women's Experience

Research on feminist consciousness has often relied on feminist self-identification as an indicator of women's group consciousness. In this study, several measures of group consciousness including group evaluations, political beliefs about gender relations, and sensitivity to sexism were used to predict women's self-identification as feminist. This set of variables was also used to predict four stages of feminist identity: passive acceptance, revelation, embeddedness/emanation, and synthesis. Findings emphasize the importance of not relying simply on self-identification in research on feminist consciousness. A view of feminist consciousness that goes beyond a dichotomous approach is recommended, as is further work on assessments of the phenomenology of consciousness.