Feminist Epistemology
Feminist epistemology emerges from reflection on feminist inquiry. Core themes in feminist epistemology can be understood by considering a prima facie tension between two distinct strands of feminist research, one critical and one constructive. The critical strand aims to expose male bias in research while the positive strand aims to construct theories that are avowedly feminist and that bring women's experiences and interests to the center of inquiry. Most disciplines have come under critical scrutiny for male bias. Forms of bias identified include:
(1) Marginalizing women or women's interests. For example, economic theory is charged with making women's economic contributions invisible, political theory with overlooking power relations in the family, and evolutionary theory and anthropology with privileging male activities.
(2) Producing theories that naturalize and thus reinforce oppressive gender relations. Primatology and sociobiology are among the disciplines that have been charged with such bias.
(3) Embedding gendered metaphors that bias theory selection.
(4) Presupposing cognitive styles that arise from male psychosocial development. This charge is laid against philosophy, scientific method, and theories of moral development.
A puzzle immediately arises, however: If such research is bad because biased, then how can the constructive strand of feminist research escape a similar charge of bias and hence of epistemic fault? The puzzle deepens still further: Epistemic norms, including norms of objectivity, have themselves been charged with male bias.
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