Personal Growth and Women's Groups

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Some people feel that they might be more inclined to initiate an exploration of their inner self, and to persist with it, if they had some support from a group. In particular the last couple of decades have seen a rise in a number of what are known as personal growth societies, which are in many ways a later form of the consciousness-raising groups popular in the 1970s.

Such societies often attract people who feel that they have not achieved what they should have achieved in life. They feel stunted in some way or feel that they have taken a wrong direction somewhere along the path of their lives. The members of such societies, in their efforts to achieve their aims, often begin with an attempt to get to know their true selves and to find out how they have become what they are. Until they do so they feel that they cannot come to terms with themselves or maximize their potential by finding out their true capabilities.

There are groups, other than personal growth societies, that people join in order to find out more about themselves. We have seen in the previous section that many people join self-help groups, but these tend to be people who have a particular problem for which they seek the help of group-members. Other people, for example, might join a women's group.

Such groups became very popular in the later decades of the 20th century with the rise of feminism and the interest in the Women's Movement. The initial aim of a women's group is not specifically to enable the members to explore their inner selves. Many are formed with the aim of discussing issues that are important to women which are many and varied. They include such issues as equal opportunities in the workplace, equal pay, health issues, such as screening for breast cancer, childcare and domestic violence. Several such groups were formed initially simply to discuss women's literature.

Although women's groups were not necessarily started with the intention of leading their members to explore their inner consciousness, they often have this effect. When women begin to discuss the role of women in society and how it has changed in recent years, it often leads them to begin to think about their own individual roles in society and within the family, and to reassess themselves, their achievements and aspirations. They have, in fact, begun a journey to find their inner selves, although the original journey was designed to explore the standing and potential of women in the world.

For hundreds of years women were totally underestimated, and the struggle to assert themselves and to establish even a relatively fair position for themselves in society has been an extremely hard one. The fact that they had to put up a joint fight in order to achieve this, however, brought them together in a spirit of sisterhood and raised their consciousness of what it means to be a woman and the problems that this can bring. This encouraged the habit of joint discussion over women's issues.