Chapter 2: Mentoring in Middle School: Fostering Awareness and Empowerment in Early Adolescent Girls

My service-learning course had been tucked safely in my mind for some time and, in all probability, in phases of development since I was an adolescent girl struggling to survive in an androcentric culture. This psychological struggle, somewhat deconstructed by an undergraduate introductory course in the philosophy of feminism I completed my sophomore year in college, served to provoke my awareness and interest in gender equality and the concept of feminism.

Many years later, the motivation to bring structure to my service-learning course was awakened when I became reacquainted with a questionnaire I had used for my dissertation research that measured “feminist identity development” (Downing & Roush, 1985). The authors propose a stage theory of personal evolution towards feminism, which includes five progressive stages: gender inequity acceptance, gender inequity awareness, feminist identity exploration, feminist identity development, and, finally, the most advanced stage: feminist identity consolidation. Feminist identity consolidation primarily refers to individual participation in feminist activism. While feminism is commonly defined as the advocacy of the political, social, and economic equality of women and men (Frieze & McHugh, 1998), feminist activism points more directly to individual commitment to meaningful action to create a non-sexist world. Moreover, as defined by Downing and Roush (1985), individual actions in support of activism are “personalized and rational.”