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Feminist Consciousness-Raising in the 1970S and 1980S: West Yorkshire Women's Groups and Their Impact on Women's Lives

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Feminist Consciousness-Raising in the 1970S and 1980S: West Yorkshire Women's Groups and Their Impact on Women's Lives Feminist consciousness-raising in the 1970s and 1980s: West Yorkshire women's groups and their impact on women's lives Anna E. Rogers Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of Sociology and Social Policy March, 2010 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. Acknowledgements For her inspirational '"no messing" approach to life and work, lowe a great deal of thanks to my late aunt, Enid Walker LRAM FRCO MBE. I also wish to express my gratitude to other family members: Mary Moore, Marily11 Rogers, Stephen Rogers. Peter Rogers. Isabelle Rogers and Nicholas Rogers. I could not have done this without the intellectual and emotional stimulation of m v wonderful friends, but I won't try to mention them all. Of note for their especially supportive and motivational impacts at particular moments over the past few years are James Hall, Katy Tew, Una Minetta Morris, Katherine Ludwin. Kate Bordwell and Julie Keller. Special thanks go to Zoe Thompson and Dario Llinares for egging me on over the last few months. and for being immensely helpful during the final week. I feel fortunate to have lived at 5 Nursery Mount for the duration of my work on the thesis. Thank you to all who have shared this house with me. including, most recently. Mildred and Steph. For early academic nurturing, I would like to thank Veronique Mottier and Ben Crewe. Throughout the course of my doctoral study I have been fortunate to have had generous support from my supervisors: Sasha Roseneil, Ruth Holliday and Cinnamon Bennett. I would like to express my unending gratitude to them. I would also like to thank the staff and students of the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds where I have taught for the last four years. The Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies - in particular Natalia Gerodetti, Matthew Wilkinson. and Fiona Philip - has been a supportive and nurturing home-from-home. This research could not have been carried out without the financial assistance of the Economic and Social Research Council's 1+ 3 Studentship and I am very fortunate to have had this opportunity. I was also lucky enough to be granted funding from the WUN which enabled me to spend two months at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I am especially grateful to Myra Marx Ferree for her support whilst in the US. The Feminist Archive North at the University of Leeds has been an invaluable resource for my research and I would like to thank the women volunteers who staff it for their encouragement. Perhaps most importantly, I would like to thank all the women whose candidly shared stories are the substance of this thesis. Finally. I'd like to thank Mae Tang at thc Women's Counselling and Therapy Service and three snoozing felines: Captain, Bode and Noah. Abstract This thesis considers feminist consciousness-raising in the 1970s and 1980s in \Vest Yorkshire, England. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to the women's mo\ement. my analysis is based on data collected from intervie\\·s \\·ith 20 women \\ho ,,·ere involved in women's groups in West Yorkshire during this period. The political dimensions of women's experiences were articulated through the women's movement slogan (first documented by Hanisch, 1970). "the personal is political". This statement is emblematic of how c-r changed women's understandings of themseh·es and their collective situation. This thesis interrogates some of the dominant stories that ha\·e been told about consciousness-raising in literature from and about the women's movement. As well, I demonstrate that transformations occurred \\·ithin these collective contexts, through the reshaping of women's relationships with ideas, with each other, and with themselves. Through exploring the groups' theorising practices, I demonstrate that women engaged intellectually in ways that shifted their relationship to the realm of ideas. I also argue that friendships formed in these contexts supported subversive ways of being at this time. Opposing the tendency to frame the effects of social movements in terms of benefits to future generations, I argue that women's groups effected personal-political changes in the lives of the women who participated in them. I suggest that, by describing changes in the feminist movement in ways that take account of the life course of participants in the movement. it is possible to avoid overly emphasising the input of future generations. ~1timately, the thesis c\·idences the personal-political effects of West Yorkshire women's groups on participants' lives in a way that shows c-r to be compatible with shifts in feminist thought after the influence of poststructuralism. Contents .. Acknowledgements 11 Abstract 111 Contents lY Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Conclusion 8 Chapter 2: The C-R Group Process as described by Original Proponents 9 Spreading the word about consciousness-raising 10 Intended outcomes: the aims of consciousness-raising 1 1 Group size, "closing" groups, and facilitating the formation of new groups 12 Organising meetings: attendance, location and structure 13 Topics 15 The personal is political 16 Opening up/voicing experience 18 Analysis: transforming understandings, producing new interpretations 20 Collective identity formation versus individuality and heterogeneity The development of the group: What came after c-r? Should it lead to political action? 25 Personal-political change 26 Conclusion and further comments 27 Chapter 3: Social Scientists' Reluctance to Theorise Consciousness-Raising as a Political Practice 29 The personal becomes political (and then goes back to being personal again) 30 Social science approaches to theorising consciousness-raising 34 Social movement theory 38 Chapter summary and further comments 44 Chapter 4: Feminist Theory since the Second Wave 48 Women's experience; feminist knowledge 50 The discursi ve construction of \\·omen 's experience 53 The category "woman" 5 5 Power. truth, self 59 Truth-telling 64 Feminism, retlexiyity and the discursin? construction of feminist consciousncss 66 Chapter summary and further comments 70 Chapter 5: 'Iethods 73 Unde'11innings and objectives 73 Myself as researcher: reflecting on my own experience of the research process 78 The research relationship: feminist generations 81 Sampling 85 Data collection 88 Data analysis 97 Ethical considerations/anonymity/confidentiality 100 The Interviewees 100 Chapter 6: Feminist Consciousness-Raising in West Yorkshire Women's Groups 102 West Yorkshire 102 The group process: rules, leadership, location, expectations, membership 105 Example 1 Lee, 1969-1974: Leeds Women's Liberation (Town) Group 108 Timeframe 109 Example 2 1983-1986: Long-term Lesbian Relationships Group 110 Multiple Groups 110 Example 3 Freda, 1982-1985: Sowerby Bridge Women's Health Group 111 Entering women's groups 111 A note on activism 116 Example 4 Kathleen, 1975-1977: Bradford Women's Liberation Group 117 Homogeneity within women's groups 118 Example 5 Carol, 1974-1982-ongoing: Bradford-based women's group 121 Taking turns, followed by "picking up common threads" 122 Example 6 Helen, 1979-1981: Leeds-based c-r group 124 What experiences were articulated/analysed in West Yorkshire women's groups? 124 Therapy, memory, and the politics (and limitations) of truth-telling 132 Conclusion and further comments 137 Chapter 7: Women and Ideas: Theorising as a Feminist Practice 140 Ideas and identity 144 Ambivalence around theorising 145 Theorising as a feminist practice: three case studies 152 (i) Feminine appearance: from personal horror to political issue 153 (ii) Reading "The Women's Room": What am I doing here? This isn't right! 156 (iii) Choosing lesbianism as a feminist practice 160 Conclusion and further comments 165 Chapter 8: Friendships between \Yomen in \Yest Yorkshire \Yomen"s Groups 170 Sisterhood and the cultivation of new ways of relating to one another 174 Gossip: creating a compass in 'no woman's land' IS2 The limits of feminist friendships: social inequality and social control IS4 Friendships, or some other kind of relation? 188 Ideological or incidentaVinevitable? 191 Conclusion and further comments 192 Chapter 9: "Second-Wave" Feminists' Presents: Critically Exploring Generations, Conflict and the Future 197 Theoretical accounts of the second and third waves of feminist politics 198 Mothers, daughters, and unruet expectations 210 Being stuck in a generation 214 Intergenerational feminist consciousness 215 Feminists' life courses 221 Second-wave feminists' presents 224 Can second-wavers become third-wavers? 226 Conclusion and further comments 231 Chapter 10: Conclusion 234 List of References 244 Appendix I: Topics/Lines of Questioning Appendix II: Table of Interviewees' Characteristics Appendix III: Pen Portraits Appendix IV: Call for Participants Poster 1 Chapter One: Introduction Consciousness-raising (c-r) groups were pivotal to the informally organised movement that transformed the lives of many women during the 1970s. From a sociological perspective, c-r groups have been seen as 'probably the most valuable contribution by the women's liberation movement to the tools for social change' (Freeman 1975a:451). Springing up all around the USA and Britain towards the end of the 1960s and during the early '70s, such groups - also known as ''women's liberation groups" or simply "small groups" - have been the subject of individuals' reflections on second-wave feminism (e.g. Brownmiller 1999), and have featured in historical accounts of the movement (Carden 1974; Banks 1981; Ryan 1992). McWilliams (1974:162) notes that c-r has been depicted as a preliminary to 'concerted group action.' My thesis challenges the idea of c-r as a precursor to political action by exploring the impact of West Yorkshire women's groups of the 1970s and 1980s on the lives of their members.
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