Measuring Feminist Consciousness

The concept of group consciousness has proven useful in the analysis of political and social groups, and has clear utility in the study of feminism. Although sophisticated measures of feminist consciousness have been proposed to enable scholars to operationalize the concept in the American National Election Studies, these measures have problems with continuity, or have conceptual problems. This paper proposes a measure that can be used in all American National Election Studies since the rise of the feminist movement, and provides data that suggest the measure has external validity.