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SECTION EIGHT
Reimagining Women and Leadership: Strategies, Allies, and Critical Hope
The final section of this text, Reimagining Women and Leadership: Strategies, Allies, and Critical Hope, includes more modules than the preceding sections, because hope combined with strategy is the key to students’ long-term leadership development and leadership resilience. The conversations can evolve to address topics such as ally development, how to deal with nonfeminist others, how to avoid activist burnout, and how to maintain critical hope. The modules frequently reference Love’s (2013) idea of liberatory consciousness and Harro’s (2000) cycle of liberation.
Key Ideas
• Liberatory consciousness
• Cycle of liberation
• Tiny changes
• Social movements
• Forms of civic engagement
References
Harro, B. (2000). The cycle of liberation. In M. Adams, W. J. Blumenfeld, R. Castañeda, H. W. Hackman, M. L. Peters, & X. Zúñiga (Eds.), Readings for diversity and social justice (pp. 618–625). Routledge.
Love, B. J. (2013). Developing a liberatory consciousness. In M. Adams, W. J. Blumenfeld, R. Castañeda, H. W. Hackman, M. L. Peters, & X. Zúñiga (Eds.), Readings for diversity and social justice (3rd ed., pp. 601–605). Routledge.
MODULE 8.1
Developing a Liberatory Consciousness
Michaela Daystar
• Group size: Open to any size
• Time: 50–60 minutes. Facilitators can reduce the time needed for this activity by assigning the written reflection component (#2 in the Directions) prior to gathering in person
• Methods: Group discussion, self-reflection, partner work
• Materials: Create a handout that lists the four elements of liberatory consciousness and includes the following excerpted quotes. This handout serves as a journal for the session’s activities
Overview
Participants will explore the four elements to developing a liberatory consciousness (Love, 2013) and the small and large ways in which opportunities to apply these elements show up repeatedly in our daily lives. Participants will identify their learning edges with respect to the four elements of a liberatory consciousness, and practice skills to enact the four elements in daily life.
Learning Outcomes
• Understand the way in which a liberatory consciousness disrupts systems of oppression through everyday awareness and action
• Examine the four elements of a liberatory consciousness in the context of lived examples
• Design and commit to a small action each participant can take to build a liberatory consciousness
• Connect the notion of liberatory consciousness to the exercise of leadership
Directions
1. Review Concepts (5 minutes). Review the definition and four elements of liberatory consciousness: Awareness, Analysis, Action, Accountability. Write major concepts on the board or butcher paper.
a. Emphasize the following:
All humans now living have internalized the attitudes, understandings, and patterns of thoughts that allow them to function in and collaborate with these systems of oppression, whether they benefit from them or are placed at a disadvantage by them. (Love, 2013, p. 599)
2. Individual Reflection & Sharing (15 minutes). Pass out the handout. Participants take 2–3 minutes for a freewrite reflection about what comes up for them when they consider the four elements. Encourage them to include the feelings that arise for them, to go deeper than their academic understanding of the concepts presented. Then ask them to further reflect for another 1–2 minutes on the following quote, followed by inviting a few members to share their reflection:
The development and practice of a liberatory consciousness is neither mysterious nor difficult, static nor fixed, or something that some people have and others do not. It is to be continually practiced event by event, each time we are faced with a situation in which oppression or internalized oppression is evident. (Love, 2013, p. 600)
3. Applying the Four Elements, Part 1 (5 minutes). Facilitators can choose one of two options. The choice depends on the level of maturity of participants, and the level of trust and connection within the group.
a. Option 1: Ask participants to think of one or more situations they have witnessed or experienced that are emblematic of oppression or internalized oppression. Participants should choose everyday examples such as biased comments or jokes, microaggressions, assumptions made about people based on an identity, movies that portray oppressive situations with humor, and so on.
b. Option 2: Provide several hypothetical examples for participants. The facilitator will need to generate these examples in advance.
4. Applying the Four Elements, Part 2 (10 minutes). Participants then work in pairs to explore how the four elements could apply. This is a good place to reiterate the importance of maintaining curiosity and nonjudgment. See Facilitator Notes for more insight. For example, if the scenario is that you overhear sexist comments in a workplace setting, the students could ask themselves:
a. What does awareness mean here?
b. What analysis can I bring to the situation?
c. What actions could be taken by different people in this scenario?
d. What would accountability and allyship look like here?
5. Making Tiny Changes (10 minutes). See Facilitator Notes for guidance about tiny changes. After individual reflection, ask students to share in pairs their change commitments. Set up a time in a future session when the pairs will check in about their tiny change experiment. If a future session is not occurring, set up a way for pairs to check in independently.
6. Debrief (15–20 minutes). To support participants to thrive inside their vulnerability, lead participants in discussing how they feel about applying the four elements of liberatory consciousness to their lives, and what support they might need to do so. Facilitators can also encourage or assign participants to commit to a small action to put this into practice (described as follows). Consider the following debrief questions:
a. What becomes possible when we choose to apply the four elements of a liberatory consciousness in our daily lives?
b. What feelings arise when you consider applying them, and what kind of support might you need in order to do so?
c. Which of these elements feel the most natural to you, and which feel the most challenging?
d. Social change is most often the result of numerous small changes and actions made over time by many people. What small action or tiny change can you commit to taking in the next 1–2 weeks to support you in building confidence in the areas that feel challenging?
Facilitator Notes
The central purpose of this activity is for participants to apply the concept of liberatory consciousness to their daily lives. This requires participants to look with curiosity and nonjudgment at situations where socialized oppressive behavior shows up in themselves and others, where greater awareness is needed in order to cultivate a liberatory consciousness. Because many p...
