ABSTRACT
Women’s Studies aimed to change the classroom and believed it would change the university—often as a prelude to changing the world though knowledge. This chapter looks at the classroom, its practices, and their relationship to citizenship. The feminist classroom should lead to reflection and if possible dismantle some of the “controlling images” that segment us by race, ethnicity, class, religion, and gender. The rights of citizenship are important in our world, and Women’s Studies scholars across the globe examine the nature of women’s citizenship. The challenges to women’s citizenship are present almost everywhere in the form of legal restrictions on their participation, overwork that absorbs all their time and energy, and automatic assumptions about women’s lower intelligence. The idea of consciousness-raising involves talking about the issues involved in being a sexed, raced, queer or otherwise identified individual. Class and race privilege and the normative status of the able-bodied are conditions that also become visible during consciousness-raising.
