Nesha Z. Haniff, Select Department | 2019-2020
The Gender Consciousness Project (GCP) began in 2015 with three groups of students predominantly African American girls, in high schools within the vicinity of the University of Michigan. GCP is a grassroots program that builds awareness of the complexities of gender discrimination faced by young
women simply because they are female. By understanding the societal forces of race, gender, culture, we build their agency to create a foundation for the struggle against the injustice they will face. Utilizing the principle of consciousness raising—that women themselves must understand their own oppression and how they participate in it themselves. The students in my class on race and gender are then assigned to these high schools and the gcp high school students who are admitted to Michigan then take the same class and become owners of the intellectual underpinnings of the process and lead now in their own high schools.