feminist theory presentation

Feminist Theory

Jo Ann Arinder

Feminist theory falls under the umbrella of critical theory, which in general have the purpose of destabilizing systems of power and oppression. Feminist theory will be discussed here as a theory with a lower case ‘t’, however this is not meant to imply that it is not a Theory or cannot be used as one, only to acknowledge that for some it may be a sub-genre of Critical Theory, while for others it stands alone. According to Egbert and Sanden (2020), some scholars see critical paradigms as extensions of the interpretivist, but there is also an emphasis on oppression and lived experience grounded in subjectivist epistemology.

The purpose of using a feminist lens is to enable the discovery of how people interact within systems and possibly offer solutions to confront and eradicate oppressive systems and structures. Feminist theory considers the lived experience of any person/people, not just women, with an emphasis on oppression.  While there may not be a consensus on where feminist theory fits as a theory or paradigm, disruption of oppression is a core tenant of feminist work. As hooks (2000) states, “Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression. I liked this definition because it does not imply that men were the enemy” (p. viii).

Previous Studies

Marxism and socialism are key components in the heritage.of feminist theory. The origins of feminist theory can be found in the 18th century with growth in the 1970s’ and 1980s’ equality movements. According to Burton (2014), feminist theory has its roots in Marxism but specifically looks to Engles’ (1884) work as one possible starting point. Burton (2014) notes that, “Origin of the Family and commentaries on it were central texts to the feminist movement in its early years because of the felt need to understand the origins and subsequent development of the subordination of the female sex” (p. 2). Work in feminist theory, including research regarding gender equality, is ongoing.

Gender equality continues to be an issue today, and research into gender equality in education is still moving feminist theory forward. For example, Pincock’s (2017) study discusses the impact of repressive norms on the education of girls in Tanzania. The author states that, “…considerations of what empowerment looks like in relation to one’s sexuality are particularly important in relation to schooling for teenage girls as a route to expanding their agency” (p. 909). This consideration can be extended to any oppressed group within an educational setting and is not an area of inquiry relegated to the oppression of only female students. For example, non-binary students face oppression within educational systems and even male students can face barriers, and students are often still led towards what are considered “gender appropriate” studies. This creates a system of oppression that requires active work to disrupt.

Looking at representation in the literature used in education is another area of inquiry in feminist research. For example, Earles (2017) focused on physical educational settings to explore relationships “between gendered literary characters and stories and the normative and marginal responses produced by children” (p. 369). In this research, Earles found evidence to support that a contradiction between the literature and children’s lived experiences exists. The author suggests that educators can help to continue the reduction of oppressive gender norms through careful selection of literature and spaces to allow learners opportunities for appropriate discussions about these inconsistencies.

In another study, Mackie (1999) explored incorporating feminist theory into evaluation research. Mackie was evaluating curriculum created for English language learners that recognized the dual realities of some students, also known as the intersectionality of identity, and concluded that this recognition empowered students. Mackie noted that valuing experience and identity created a potential for change on an individual and community level and “Feminist and other types of critical teaching and research provide needed balance to TESL and applied linguistics” (p. 571).Further, Bierema and Cseh (2003) used a feminist research framework to examine previously ignored structural inequalities that affect the lives of women working in the field of human resources.

Model of Feminist Theory

Figure 1 presents a model of feminist theory that begins with the belief that systems exist that oppress and work against individuals. The model then shows that oppression is based on intersecting identities that can create discrimination and exclusion. The model indicates the idea that, through knowledge and action, oppressive systems can be disrupted to support change and understanding.

The core concepts in feminist theory are sex, gender, race, discrimination, equality, difference, and choice. There are systems and structures in place that work against individuals based on these qualities and against equality and equity. Research in critical paradigms requires the belief that, through the exploration of these existing conditions in the current social order, truths can be revealed. More important, however, this exploration can simultaneously build awareness of oppressive systems and create spaces for diverse voices to speak for themselves (Egbert & Sanden, 2019).

Constructs 

Feminism is concerned with the constructs of intersectionality, dimensions of social life, social inequality, and social transformation. Through feminist research, lasting contributions have been made to understanding the complexities and changes in the gendered division of labor. Men and women should be politically, economically, and socially equal and this theory does not subscribe to differences or similarities between men, nor does it refer to excluding men or only furthering women’s causes. Feminist theory works to support change and understanding through acknowledging and disrupting power and oppression.

Proposition 

Feminist theory proposes that when power and oppression are acknowledged and disrupted, understanding, advocacy, and change can occur.

Using the Model

There are many potential ways to utilize this model in research and practice. First, teachers and students can consider what systems of power exist in their classroom, school, or district. They can question how these systems are working to create discrimination and exclusion. By considering existing social structures, they can acknowledge barriers and issues inherit to the system. Once these issues are acknowledged, they can be disrupted so that change and understanding can begin. This may manifest, for example, as considering how past colonialism has oppressed learners of English as a second or foreign language.

The use of feminist theory in the classroom can ensure that the classroom is created, in advance, to consider barriers to learning faced by learners due to sex, gender, difference, race, or ability. This can help to reduce oppression created by systemic issues. In the case of the English language classroom, learners may be facing oppression based on their native language or country of origin. Facing these barriers in and out of the classroom can affect learners’ access to education. Considering these barriers in planning and including efforts to mitigate the issues and barriers faced by learners is a use of feminist theory.

Feminist research is interested in disrupting systems of oppression or barriers created from these systems with a goal of creating change. All research can include feminist theory when the research adds to efforts to work against and advocate to eliminate the power and oppression that exists within systems or structures that, in particular, oppress women. An examination of education in general could be useful since education is a field typically dominated by women; however, women are not often in leadership roles in the field. In the same way, using feminist theory for an examination into the lack of people of color and male teachers represented in education might also be useful. Action research is another area that can use feminist theory. Action research is often conducted in the pursuit of establishing changes that are discovered during a project. Feminism and action research are both concerned with creating change, which makes them a natural pairing.

Pre-existing beliefs about what feminism means can make including it in classroom practice or research challenging. Understanding that feminism is about reducing oppression for everyone and sharing that definition can reduce this challenge. hooks (2000) said that, “A male who has divested of male privilege, who has embraced feminist politics, is a worthy comrade in struggle, in no way a threat to feminism, whereas a female who remains wedded to sexist thinking and behavior infiltrating feminist movement is a dangerous threat”(p. 12). As Angela Davis noted during a speech at Western Washington University in 2017, “Everything is a feminist issue.” Feminist theory is about questioning existing structures and whether they are creating barriers for anyone. An interest in the reduction of barriers is feminist. Anyone can believe in the need to eliminate oppression and work as teachers or researchers to actively to disrupt systems of oppression.

Bierema, L. L., & Cseh, M. (2003). Evaluating AHRD research using a feminist research framework.  Human Resource Development Quarterly ,  14 (1), 5–26.

Burton, C. (2014).   Subordination: Feminism and social theory . Routledge.

Earles, J. (2017). Reading gender: A feminist, queer approach to children’s literature and children’s discursive agency.  Gender and Education, 29 (3), 369–388.

Egbert, J., & Sanden, S. (2019).  Foundations of education research: Understanding theoretical components . Taylor & Francis.

Hooks, B. (2000). Feminism is for everybody: Passionate politics . South End Press.

Mackie, A. (1999). Possibilities for feminism in ESL education and research.  TESOL  Quarterly, 33 (3), 566-573.

Pincock, K. (2018). School, sexuality and problematic girlhoods: Reframing ‘empowerment’ discourse.  Third World Quarterly, 39 (5), 906-919.

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Feminist Theory in Sociology

An Overview of Key Ideas and Issues

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Feminist theory is a major branch within sociology that shifts its assumptions, analytic lens, and topical focus away from the male viewpoint and experience toward that of women.

In doing so, feminist theory shines a light on social problems, trends, and issues that are otherwise overlooked or misidentified by the historically dominant male perspective within social theory .

Key Takeaways

Key areas of focus within feminist theory include:

• discrimination and exclusion on the basis of sex and gender
• objectification
• structural and economic inequality
• power and oppression
• gender roles and stereotypes

Many people incorrectly believe that feminist theory focuses exclusively on girls and women and that it has an inherent goal of promoting the superiority of women over men.

In reality, feminist theory has always been about viewing the social world in a way that illuminates the forces that create and support inequality, oppression, and injustice, and in doing so, promotes the pursuit of equality and justice.

That said, since the experiences and perspectives of women and girls were historically excluded for years from social theory and social science, much feminist theory has focused on their interactions and experiences within society to ensure that half the world's population is not left out of how we see and understand social forces, relations, and problems.

While most feminist theorists throughout history have been women, people of all genders can be found working in the discipline today. By shifting the focus of social theory away from the perspectives and experiences of men, feminist theorists have created social theories that are more inclusive and creative than those that assume the social actor to always be a man.

Part of what makes feminist theory creative and inclusive is that it often considers how systems of power and oppression interact , which is to say it does not just focus on gendered power and oppression, but on how this might intersect with systemic racism, a hierarchical class system, sexuality, nationality, and (dis)ability, among other things.

Gender Differences

Some feminist theory provides an analytic framework for understanding how women's location in and experience of social situations differ from men's.

For example, cultural feminists look at the different values associated with womanhood and femininity as a reason for why men and women experience the social world differently.   Other feminist theorists believe that the different roles assigned to women and men within institutions better explain gender differences, including the sexual division of labor in the household .  

Existential and phenomenological feminists focus on how women have been marginalized and defined as  “other”  in patriarchal societies . Some feminist theorists focus specifically on how masculinity is developed through socialization, and how its development interacts with the process of developing femininity in girls.

Gender Inequality

Feminist theories that focus on gender inequality recognize that women's location in and experience of social situations are not only different but also unequal to men's.

Liberal feminists argue that women have the same capacity as men for moral reasoning and agency, but that patriarchy , particularly the sexist division of labor, has historically denied women the opportunity to express and practice this reasoning.  

These dynamics serve to shove women into the  private sphere  of the household and to exclude them from full participation in public life. Liberal feminists point out that gender inequality exists for women in a heterosexual marriage and that women do not benefit from being married.  

Indeed, these feminist theorists claim, married women have higher levels of stress than unmarried women and married men.   Therefore, the sexual division of labor in both the public and private spheres needs to be altered for women to achieve equality in marriage.

Gender Oppression

Theories of gender oppression go further than theories of gender difference and gender inequality by arguing that not only are women different from or unequal to men, but that they are actively oppressed, subordinated, and even abused by men .  

Power is the key variable in the two main theories of gender oppression: psychoanalytic feminism and  radical feminism .

Psychoanalytic feminists attempt to explain power relations between men and women by reformulating Sigmund Freud's theories of human emotions, childhood development, and the workings of the subconscious and unconscious. They believe that conscious calculation cannot fully explain the production and reproduction of patriarchy.  

Radical feminists argue that being a woman is a positive thing in and of itself, but that this is not acknowledged in  patriarchal societies  where women are oppressed. They identify physical violence as being at the base of patriarchy, but they think that patriarchy can be defeated if women recognize their own value and strength, establish a sisterhood of trust with other women, confront oppression critically, and form female-based separatist networks in the private and public spheres.  

Structural Oppression

Structural oppression theories posit that women's oppression and inequality are a result of capitalism , patriarchy, and racism .

Socialist feminists agree with  Karl Marx  and Freidrich Engels that the working class is exploited as a consequence of capitalism, but they seek to extend this exploitation not just to class but also to gender.  

Intersectionality theorists seek to explain oppression and inequality across a variety of variables, including class, gender, race, ethnicity, and age. They offer the important insight that not all women experience oppression in the same way, and that the same forces that work to oppress women and girls also oppress people of color and other marginalized groups.  

One way structural oppression of women, specifically the economic kind, manifests in society is in the gender wage gap , which shows that men routinely earn more for the same work than women.

An intersectional view of this situation shows that women of color, and men of color, too, are even further penalized relative to the earnings of white men.  

In the late 20th century, this strain of feminist theory was extended to account for the globalization of capitalism and how its methods of production and of accumulating wealth center on the exploitation of women workers around the world.

Kachel, Sven, et al. "Traditional Masculinity and Femininity: Validation of a New Scale Assessing Gender Roles." Frontiers in Psychology , vol. 7, 5 July 2016, doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00956

Zosuls, Kristina M., et al. "Gender Development Research in  Sex Roles : Historical Trends and Future Directions." Sex Roles , vol. 64, no. 11-12, June 2011, pp. 826-842., doi:10.1007/s11199-010-9902-3

Norlock, Kathryn. "Feminist Ethics." Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . 27 May 2019.

Liu, Huijun, et al. "Gender in Marriage and Life Satisfaction Under Gender Imbalance in China: The Role of Intergenerational Support and SES." Social Indicators Research , vol. 114, no. 3, Dec. 2013, pp. 915-933., doi:10.1007/s11205-012-0180-z

"Gender and Stress." American Psychological Association .

Stamarski, Cailin S., and Leanne S. Son Hing. "Gender Inequalities in the Workplace: The Effects of Organizational Structures, Processes, Practices, and Decision Makers’ Sexism." Frontiers in Psychology , 16 Sep. 2015, doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01400

Barone-Chapman, Maryann . " Gender Legacies of Jung and Freud as Epistemology in Emergent Feminist Research on Late Motherhood." Behavioral Sciences , vol. 4, no. 1, 8 Jan. 2014, pp. 14-30., doi:10.3390/bs4010014

Srivastava, Kalpana, et al. "Misogyny, Feminism, and Sexual Harassment." Industrial Psychiatry Journal , vol. 26, no. 2, July-Dec. 2017, pp. 111-113., doi:10.4103/ipj.ipj_32_18

Armstrong, Elisabeth. "Marxist and Socialist Feminism." Study of Women and Gender: Faculty Publications . Smith College, 2020.

Pittman, Chavella T. "Race and Gender Oppression in the Classroom: The Experiences of Women Faculty of Color with White Male Students." Teaching Sociology , vol. 38, no. 3, 20 July 2010, pp. 183-196., doi:10.1177/0092055X10370120

Blau, Francine D., and Lawrence M. Kahn. "The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations." Journal of Economic Literature , vol. 55, no. 3, 2017, pp. 789-865., doi:10.1257/jel.20160995

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Feminist Theory

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12.9: Feminist Movements and Feminist Theory

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Learning Outcomes

• Evaluate feminist movements in the U.S. and the strengths and weaknesses of each
• Describe feminist theory

The Feminist Movement

The feminist movement (also known as the women’s liberation movement, the women’s movement, or simply feminism) refers to a series of political campaigns for reform on a variety of issues that affect women’s quality of life. Although there have been feminist movements all over the world, this section will focus on the four eras of the feminist movement in the U.S.

First Wave Feminism (1848-1920)

The first women’s rights convention was held in Seneca Falls, New York (now known as the Seneca Falls Convention) from July 19-20, 1848, and advertised itself as “a convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman.” While ther e, 68 women and 32 men–100 out of some 300 attendees–signed the Declaration of Sentiments, also known as the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments, which was principally authored by Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

There was a notable connection between the movement to abolish slavery and the women’s rights movement. Frederick Douglass was heavily involved in both projects and believed it was essential for both groups to work together. As a fellow activistic the pursuit of equality and freedom from arbitrary discrimination, he was asked to speak at the Convention and to sign the Declaration of Sentiments. Despite this instance of movement kinship and intersectionality, it is important to note that no women of color attended the Seneca Convention.

In 1851, Lucy Gage led a women’s convention in Ohio where Sojourner Truth, who was born a slave and gave birth to five children in slavery, gave her famous “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech. Truth was born Isabella Bomfree in 1797 in New York, and was bought and sold four times during her lifetime. Her five-year-old son Peter was illegally sold into slavery in Alabama, though in 1827, with the help of an abolitionist family, she was able to buy her freedom and to successfully sue for the return of her son. [1] . She moved to New York City in 1828 and became part of the religious revivals then underway. Becoming an activist and speaker, in 1843 she renamed herself Sojourner Truth and dedicated her life to working toward the end of slavery and for women’s rights and temperance.

The 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, was unpopular with suffragists because it did not include women in its guarantee of the right to vote irrespective of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Suffragette Susan B. Anthony (in)famously said, “I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman,” but abolitionists and early Republicans were intent on prioritizing black men’s suffrage over that of women [2] . This further complicated the suffragist movement, as many prominent participants opposed the 15th amendment, which earned them unhelpful support from Reconstruction-era racists who opposed suffrage for black men.

The 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment is the biggest success of the first wave, and it took 72 years to get it passed. As you can see from the map above, the United States was far behind other countries in terms of suffrage. Charlotte Woodward, one of 100 signers of the 1948 Declaration of Sentiments, was the only signatory still alive when the Nineteenth Amendment passed; however, Woodward was not well enough to vote. Another leading feminist from this early period was Margaret Sanger, who advocated for free and available birth control.

The limitations of this wave were related to its lack of inclusion of women of color and poor women. The movement was led by educated white women and often willfully ignored pressing issues for the rest of the women in the United States.

Second Wave Feminism (1960s-1980s)

Whereas the first wave of feminism was generally propelled by middle class, western, cisgender, white women, the second phase drew in women of color and women from developing nations, seeking sisterhood and solidarity, and claiming “Women’s struggle is class struggle.” [3] Feminists spoke of women as a social class and coined phrases such as “the personal is political” and “identity politics” in an effort to demonstrate that race, class, and gender oppression are all related. They initiated a concentrated effort to rid society top-to-bottom of sexism, from children’s cartoons to the highest levels of government (Rampton 2015).

Margaret Sanger, birth control advocate from the first wave, lived to see the Food and Drug Administration approve the combined oral contraceptive pill in 1960, which was made available in 1961 (she died in 1966). President Kennedy made women’s rights a key issue of the New Frontier (a slate of ambitious domestic and foreign policy initiatives), and named women (such as Esther Peterson) to many high-ranking posts in his administration (1961-1963).

Like first wave feminists, second wave feminists were influenced by other contemporaneous social movements. During the 1960s, these included the civil rights movement, anti-war movement, environmental movement, student movement, gay rights movement, and the farm workers movement.

The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was proposed by first wave feminists in 1923, and was premised on legal equality of the sexes. It was ratified by Congress in 1972 but failed to achieve the three-fourths majority in the states required to make it the 23rd Amendment to the Constitution. [4] . Although this effort was not successful, other gains were made, including increased attention to domestic violence and marital rape issues, the establishment of rape crisis and battered women’s shelters, and changes in child custody and divorce law.

In 1963 Betty Friedan, influenced by Simone De Beauvoir’ s 1947 book The Second Sex , wrote the bestselling The Feminine Mystique , in which she objected to the m ainstream media depiction of women and argued that narrowly reducing women to the status of homemakers limited their potential and wasted their talent. The idealized nuclear family that was prominently marketed at the time, she wrote, did not reflect authentic happiness and was in fact often unsatisfying and degrading for women. Friedan’s book is considered one of the most important founding texts of second wave feminism.

Link to Learning

Watch this video clip to learn more about the success and impact of Friedan’s book .

Thus, the successes of the second wave included a more individualistic approach to feminism, a broadening of issues beyond voting and property rights, and greater awareness of timely feminist objectives through books and television. However, there were some impactful political disappointments, as the ERA was not ratified by the states, and second wave feminists were not able to create lasting coalitions with other social movements.

Third Wave Feminism (1990s-2008)

Third-wave feminism refers to several diverse strains of feminist activity and study, whose exact boundaries in the history of feminism are a subject of debate. The movement arose partially as a response to the perceived failures of and backlash against initiatives and movements created by second-wave feminism. Post-colonial and postmodern theory, which work, among other goals, toward the destabilization of social constructions of gender and sexuality, including the notion of “universal womanhood,” have also been important influences (Rampton 2015). This wave broadened the parameters of feminism to include a more diverse group of women and a more fluid range of sexual and gender identities.

Popular television shows like Sex in the City (1998-2004) elevated a type of third wave feminism that merged feminine imagery (i.e., lipstick, high heels, cleavage), which were previously associated with male oppression, with high powered careers and robust sex lives. The “grrls” of the third wave stepped onto the stage as strong and empowered, eschewing victimization and defining feminine beauty for themselves as subjects, not as objects of a sexist patriarchy; they developed a rhetoric of mimicry, which appropriated derogatory terms like “slut” and “bitch” in order to subvert sexist culture and deprive it of verbal weapons (Rampton 2015).

Third wave feminists effectively used mass media, particularly the web (“cybergrrls” and “netgrrls”), to create a feminism that is global, multicultural, and boundary-crossing. One important third wave sub-group was the Riot Grrrl movement, whose DIY (do it yourself) ethos produced a number of influential, independent feminist musicians, such as Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney.

Third wave feminism’s focus on identity and the blurring of boundaries, however, did not effectively address many persistent macrosociological issues such as sexual harassment and sexual assault.

Fourth Wave Feminism (2008-present)

Fourth wave feminism is shaped by technology and characterized by the #metoo and the #timesup movements. Considering that these hashtags were first introduced on Twitter in 2007, this movement has grown rapidly, as social media activism has spread interest in and awareness of feminism.

Waves of accusations against men in powerful positions—from Hollywood directors, to Supreme Court justices, to the President of the United States, have catalyzed feminists in a way that appears to be fundamentally different compared to previous iterations.

As Rampton (2015) states, “The emerging fourth wavers are not just reincarnations of their second wave grandmothers; they bring to the discussion important perspectives taught by third wave feminism; they speak in terms of intersectionality whereby women’s suppression can only fully be understood in a context of the marginalization of other groups and genders—feminism is part of a larger consciousness of oppression along with racism, ageism, classism, ableism, and sexual orientation (no “ism” to go with that).”

Successes of fourth wave feminists include the proliferation of social media tags that promote inclusion and more effectively dismantle the gender and sexual binaries that have fragmented the movement. Female farm workers are demanding to have sexual harassment in the fields addressed alongside Hollywood actors.

The unprecedented number of women who were elected to Congress in the 2018 midterm elections is another sign of success for fourth wave feminists. Specifically, we can see that women of color, whose intersectional commitments also extend to environmental issues and income inequality, are represented in substantial numbers in both chambers.

https://assessments.lumenlearning.co...essments/13442

Watch this video for an overview of gender in sociology. The video begins with an explanation of Harriet Martineau and her important contributions to sociology, then examines gender-conflict theory and three of the four waves of feminism.

An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: http://pb.libretexts.org/its/?p=338

Feminist Theory

Feminist theory is a type of conflict theory that examines inequalities in gender-related issues. It uses the conflict approach to examine the maintenance of gender roles and uneven power relations. Radical feminism, in particular, considers the role of the family in perpetuating male dominance (note that “radical” means “at the root”). In patriarchal societies, men’s contributions are seen as more valuable than those of women. Patriarchal perspectives and arrangements are widespread and taken for granted. As a result, women’s viewpoints tend to be silenced or marginalized to the point of being discredited or considered invalid. Peggy Reeves Sanday’s study of the Indonesian Minangkabau (2004) revealed that in societies considered to be matriarchies (where women comprise the dominant group), women and men tend to work cooperatively rather than competitively, regardless of whether a job would be gendered as feminine by U.S. standards. The men, however, do not experience the sense of bifurcated (i.e., divided into two parts) consciousness under this social structure that modern U.S. females encounter (Sanday 2004).

Patriarchy refers to a set of institutional structures (like property rights, access to positions of power, relationship to sources of income) that are based on the belief that men and women are dichotomous and unequal categories of being. The key to patriarchy is what might be called the dominant gender ideology toward sexual differences: the assumption that physiological sex differences between males and females are related to differences in their character, behavior, and ability (i.e., their gender). These differences are used to justify a gendered division of social roles and inequality in access to rewards, positions of power, and privilege. The question that feminists ask therefore is: How does this distinction between male and female, and the attribution of different qualities to each, serve to organize our institutions (e.g., the family, law, the occupational structure, religious institutions, the division between public and private) and to perpetuate inequality between the sexes?

One of the influential sociological insights that emerged within second wave feminism is that “the personal is political.” This is a way of acknowledging that the challenges and personal crises that emerge in one’s day-to-day lived experience are symptomatic of larger systemic political issues, and that the solutions to such problems must be collectively pursued. As Friedan and others showed, these personal dissatisfactions often originated in previously unquestioned, stubbornly gendered discrepancies.

Standpoint Theory

Many of the most immediate and fundamental experiences of social life—from childbirth to who washes the dishes to the experience of sexual violence—had simply been invisible or regarded as unimportant politically or socially. Dorothy Smith’s development of standpoint theory was a key innovation in sociology that enabled these issues to be seen and addressed in a systematic way by examining one’s position in life (Smith 1977). She recognized from the consciousness-raising exercises and encounter groups initiated by feminists in the 1960s and 1970s that many of the immediate concerns expressed by women about their personal lives had a commonality of themes.

Smith argued that instead of beginning sociological analysis from the abstract point of view of institutions or systems, women’s lives could be more effectively examined if one began from the “actualities” of their lived experience in the immediate local settings of “everyday/ everynight” life. She asked, “What are the common features of women’s everyday lives?” From this standpoint, Smith observed that women’s position in modern society is acutely divided by the experience of dual consciousness (recall W.E.B. DuBois’ double consciousness ). Every day women crossed a tangible dividing line when they went from the “particularizing work in relation to children, spouse, and household” to the institutional world of text-mediated, abstract concerns at work, or in their dealings with schools, medical systems, or government bureaucracies. In the abstract world of institutional life, the actualities of local consciousness and lived life are “obliterated” (Smith 1977). Note again that Smith’s argument is in keeping with the second wave feminist idea that “the personal” (child-rearing, housekeeping) complicates and illuminates one’s relationship to “the political” (work life, government bureaucracies).

Intersectional Theory

Recall that intersectional theory examines multiple, overlapping identities and social contexts (black, Latina, Asian, gay, trans, working class, poor, single parent, working, stay-at-home, immigrant, undocumented, etc.) and the unique, various lived experiences within these spaces. Intersectional theory combines critical race theory, gender conflict theory, and critical components of Marx’s class theory. Kimberlé Crenshaw describes it as a “prism for understanding certain kinds of problems.”

How does the convergence or racial or gender stereotypes play out in classrooms? How does this influence the opportunity for equal education? Consider these issues as you watch this short clip from Kimberlé Crenshaw.

https://assessments.lumenlearning.co...essments/13443

[glossary-page] [glossary-term]dominant gender ideology:[/glossary-term] [glossary-definition]the assumption that physiological sex differences between males and females are related to differences in their character, behavior, and ability (i.e., their gender)[/glossary-definition] [glossary-term]heterosexism:[/glossary-term] [glossary-definition]is a system of attitudes, bias, and discrimination that favor male-female sexuality and relationships[/glossary-definition] [glossary-term]feminist:[/glossary-term] [glossary-definition]one who believes that females should be equal to males[/glossary-definition] [glossary-term]feminist movement:[/glossary-term] [glossary-definition]a series of political campaigns for reforms on issues such as reproductive rights, domestic violence, maternity leave, equal pay, women’s suffrage, sexual harassment, and sexual violence, all of which fall under the label of feminism and the feminist movement[/glossary-definition] [glossary-term]feminist theory:[/glossary-term] [glossary-definition]the critical analysis of the way gender affects societal structures, power, and inequality[/glossary-definition] [glossary-term]intersectional theory:[/glossary-term] [glossary-definition]utilizes multiple identities of females (i.e. such as race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, class, etc.) as important to understanding inequality [/glossary-definition] [glossary-term]patriarchy:[/glossary-term] [glossary-definition] a set of institutional structures (like property rights, access to positions of power, relationship to sources of income) that are based on the belief that males (patri means “father”) are dominant [/glossary-definition] [glossary-term]standpoint theory:[/glossary-term] [glossary-definition]theory that feminist social science should be practiced from the standpoint of women[/glossary-definition] [/glossary-page]

• Michals, D. "Soujourner Truth." National Women's History Museum. https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/sojourner-truth . ↵
• Ford, S. 2017. "How racism split the suffrage movement. Bust Magazine. https://bust.com/feminism/19147-equal-means-equal.html . ↵
• Rampton, M. (2015). "Four waves of feminism." Pacific University Oregon. https://www.pacificu.edu/about/media/four-waves-feminism . ↵
• "Equal Rights Amendment." This Day in History. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/equal-rights-amendment-passed-by-congress . ↵
• Revision, Modification, and Original Content. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Feminist Movement. Provided by : Wikipedia. Located at : https://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_movement . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• First-wave feminism. Provided by : Wikipedia. Located at : https://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/First-wave_feminism#United_States . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
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• Seneca Falls Convention. Provided by : Wikipedia. Located at : https://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_Falls_Convention#Remembrances . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• The Women's Rights Movement. Authored by : Boundless. Located at : https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-politicalscience/ . Project : Political Science. License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Women's Movement USA - 1950s-60s. Authored by : International School History. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amZD8XxTsjQ . License : Other . License Terms : Standard YouTube License
• Kimberlee Crenshaw: What is Intersectionality?. Authored by : National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS). Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViDtnfQ9FHc . License : Other . License Terms : Standard YouTube License
• We Can Do It! Poster. Authored by : J. Howard Miller from Westinghouse. Provided by : Wikipedia. Located at : https://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_movement#/media/File:We_Can_Do_It!.jpg . License : CC0: No Rights Reserved
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Feminist Philosophy

This entry provides an introduction to the feminist philosophy section of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP). Overseen by a board of feminist philosophers, this section primarily takes up feminist philosophy of the twentieth and twenty-first century. It has three subsections of entries (as can be seen in Table of Contents under “feminist philosophy”): (1) approaches to feminist philosophy, (2) feminist interventions in philosophy, and (3) feminist philosophical topics. By “approaches to feminist philosophy” we mean the main philosophical approaches such as analytic, continental, psychoanalytic, pragmatist, and various intersections. We see these as methodologies that can be fruitfully employed to engage philosophically isssues of feminist concern. The second group of entries, feminist interventions in philosophy, includes entries on how feminist philosophers have intervened in and begun to transform traditional philosopical areas such as aesthetics, ethics, the history of philosophy, metaphysics, and political philosophy. Entries in the third group, feminist philosophical topics, take up concepts and matters that traditional philosophy has either overlooked or undertheorized, including autonomy, the body, objectification, sex and gender, and reproduction. In short, this third group of entries shows how feminist philosophers have rendered philosophical previously un-problematized topics, such as the body, class and work, disability, the family, human trafficking, reproduction, the self, sex work, and sexuality. Entries in this third group also show how a particularly feminist lens refashions issues of globalization, human rights, popular culture, race and racism, and science. Following a brief overview of feminism as a political and intellectual movement, we provide an overview of these three parts of the feminist section of the SEP.

In addition to the feminist philosophy section of the SEP, there are also a number of entries on women in the history of philosophy, for example, on Mary Wollstonecraft , Mary Astell , Jane Addams , Rosa Luxemburg , Simone de Beauvoir , Iris Murdoch , and others. Additionally, dozens of other entries throughout the SEP discuss facets of feminist philosophy, including, to name just a handful, the entries on global justice , respect , contemporary Africana philosophy , multiculturalism , privacy , and Latinx philosophy .

• 1. Introduction
• 2. What is Feminism?

3. Approaches to Feminism

4. interventions in philosophy, 5. topics in feminism, other internet resources, related entries, 1. what is feminism.

Broadly understood, feminism is both an intellectual commitment and a political movement that seeks an end to gender-based oppression. Motivated by the quest for social justice, feminist inquiry provides a wide range of perspectives on cultural, economic, social, and political phenomena. It identifies and evaluates the many ways that some norms have been used to exclude, marginalize, and oppress people on the basis of gender, as well as how gendered identities have been shaped to conform and uphold the norms of a patriarchal society. In so doing, it tries to understand the roots of a system that has been prevalent in nearly all known places and times. It also explores what a just society would look like.

While less frequently than one would think, throughout history women have rebelled against repressive structures. It was not until the late 19th century that feminism coalesced into a movement. In the mid-1800s the term feminism was still used to refer to “the qualities of females.” After the First International Women’s Conference in Paris in 1892, the term feminism , following the French term féministe , was used regularly in English for a belief in and advocacy of equal rights for women based on the idea of the equality of the sexes. Hence the term feminism in English is rooted in the mobilization for women’s suffrage in Europe and the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

As a term, feminism has many different uses and its meanings are often contested. For example, some writers use the term to refer to a historically specific political movement in the United States and Europe; other writers use it to refer to the belief that there are injustices against women, though there is no consensus on the exact list of these injustices. Some have found it useful, if controversial, to think of the women’s movement in the United States as occurring in “waves.” The wave model has some virtues, but it also tends to overlook a great deal of heterogeneity of thought in any given moment. It works well enough for what is thought of as the first wave, identified as the period from the mid-nineteenth century until the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. This first wave focused on the struggle to achieve basic political rights. According to the wave model, feminism in the United States waned after women achieved voting rights, to be revived in the late 1960s and early 1970s as “second wave” feminism. In this second wave, the model holds, feminists pushed beyond the early quest for political rights to fight for greater equality across the board, e.g., in education, the workplace, and at home. But in actuality, many feminists during this time were focusing on more than equality. Like the first wave, many of the leaders of the second wave of feminism were white women seeking equal rights. But also, as in the first wave, other voices emerged, broadening the movement. The second wave came to include women of different identities, ethnicities, and orientations. In addition to calling for equal political rights, they called for greater equality across the board, e.g., in education, the workplace, and at home. Transformations of feminism beginning in the 1990s have resulted in a “third wave.” Third Wave feminists often critique earlier feminists for their lack of attention to the differences among women due to class, ethnicity, nationality, religion, and race (see Breines 2002; Springer 2002), and emphasize “identity” as a site of gender struggle. (For more information on the “wave” model and each of the “waves,” see the subsection on Waves of Feminism in the Other Internet Resources section.)

Some feminist scholars object to identifying feminism in terms of waves on the grounds that doing so eclipses differences within each wave as well as continuity of feminist resistance to male domination throughout history and across cultures. In other words, feminism is not confined to a few (white) women in the West over the past century or so. Moreover, even considering only relatively recent efforts to resist male domination in Europe and the United States, the emphasis on “First” and “Second” Wave feminism ignores the ongoing resistance to male domination between the 1920s and 1960s and the resistance outside mainstream politics, particularly by women of color and working class women (Cott 1987). The wave model also cannot account for theoretical work taking place between waves, for example, of the tremendous work done by Simone de Beauvoir in her groundbreaking book of 1949, The Second Sex . Because of these many limitiations of the wave model, the feminist section of the SEP makes little use of it.

Although the term feminism has a history in English linked with women’s activism from the late nineteenth century to the present, it is useful to distinguish feminist ideas or beliefs from feminist political movements, for even in periods where there has been no significant political activism around women’s subordination, individuals have been concerned with and theorized about justice for women. So, for example, it makes sense to ask whether Plato was a feminist, given his view that some women should be trained to rule ( Republic , Book V), even though he was an exception in his historical context (see, e.g., Tuana 1994). Overall, feminism can be understood as not only a social movement but also a set of beliefs, concepts, and theories that seek to analyze, diagnose, and identify solutions to the manifold injustices that people suffer on account of gendered norms. Broadly understood, this is feminism as a intellectual movement. The SEP feminist section aims to chronicle and explain the various theories, concepts, and philosophical tools that feminist philosophers have developed.

Much has been made of the methodological differences or “divides” between various philosophical traditions, namely analytic and continental, but also pragmatist and psychoanalytic. But throughout these entries the reader will find a continuity of descriptions on the meaning of feminism, even with the heterogeneity of the philosophical methodologies these entries’ authors employ. The entry on feminist ethics, written by the analytic feminist philosopher Kathryn Norlock, describes that field in a way that is agreeable to almost any feminist philosopher:

Feminist Ethics aims “to understand, criticize, and correct” how gender operates within our moral beliefs and practices (Lindemann 2005, 11) and our methodological approaches to ethical theory. More specifically, feminist ethicists aim to understand, criticize, and correct: (1) the binary view of gender, (2) the privilege historically available to men, and/or (3) the ways that views about gender maintain oppressive social orders or practices that harm others, especially girls and women who historically have been subordinated along gendered dimensions including sexuality and gender-identity. (entry on feminist ethics , introduction)

Likewise, the entry on feminist perspectives on power, written by the critical theorist Amy Allen, proposes the idea that “although any general definition of feminism would no doubt be controversial, it seems undeniable that much work in feminist theory is devoted to the tasks of critiquing gender subordination, analyzing its intersections with other forms of subordination such as racism, heterosexism, and class oppression, and envisioning prospects for individual and collective resistance and emancipation.” (entry on feminist perspectives on power , introduction)

Even with general overall shared commitments about the meaning of feminism, numerous differences among feminist philosophers do show up in the array of arenas outlined in this section of the SEP. Some of these may be due to different methodological approaches (whether, for example, continental or analytic), but others show up because of different ontological commitments (such as the category of woman) and beliefs about what kind of political and moral remedies should be sought.

Nonetheless, over the decades there has been a lot of frustration, perhaps because as philosophers these feminist theorists often want to get to the (one) truth of the matter, for example, what is “a woman”? What is freedom? What is autonomy? Yet so far any search for a unified or unifying theory of feminism has yet to bear fruit. Consider the seemingly unproblematic claim that feminism is a commitment to women’s equal rights. Perhaps it is, but framing it this way comes with its own presuppositions. The first is that feminism is committed to a liberal model of politics. Although most feminists would probably agree that there is some sense of rights on which achieving equal rights for women is a necessary condition for feminism to succeed, most would also argue that this would not be sufficient. This is because women’s oppression under male domination rarely if ever consists solely in depriving women of political and legal rights, but also extends into the structure of our society and the content of our culture, and the workings of languages and how they shape perceptions and permeate our consciousness (e.g., Bartky 1988, Postl 2017). A second presupposition is that there is some clear and universal definition of what it is to be a woman. The SEP entry, Feminist Perspectives on Sex and Gender, gives a rich overview of what is problematic about this supposition. Any attempt to define “woman,” according to Judith Butler, is also an attempt to exclude some from that category. More recently this debate shows up in discussions about nonbinary and trans people. Previously, it showed up in suppositions that the typical subject of feminism was white and middle class. While feminism would be easier to theorize if it were clear who its subject is, any attempt to define it runs into trouble. (see the entry on feminist perspectives on trans issues )

Is there any point, then, in asking what feminism is? Rather than looking for a unified field theory of feminism, perhaps feminism can be identified as an engagement precisely where there are contradictions over questions of freedom, identity, and agency. These contradictions are not just logical ones but also historical ones. For example, the question of women’s political equality to men arose precisely at those historical moments when “all men” came to be deemed as equal (McAfee 2021). During the French Revolution, the French settled the matter by saying that “men” meant men and not women. In the American Revolution, “men” was not so clearly gendered but it was certainly raced as white. Equality becomes an issue precisely where there is a disjunct between what seems to be the case normatively and what is happening empirically. Questions about the category of women arise in the context of political diversity and biological malleability, where peoples of many cultures mingle and sexual or gender identity can be altered. Feminist debates over pornography and sex work become heated in the context, respectively, of a free press and economic precarity. In short, feminist inquiry arises in the context of disagreement and contradiction and it produces new ways of approaching issues and asking questions. Thus, that it lacks a cohesive set of answers may be beside the point.

In sum, “feminism” is an umbrella term for a range of views about injustices against women. There are disagreements among feminists about the nature of justice in general and the nature of sexism, in particular, the specific kinds of injustice or wrong women suffer; and the group who should be the primary focus of feminist efforts. Nonetheless, feminists are committed to bringing about social change to end injustice against women, in particular, injustice against women as women.

2. Feminist Scholarship

Contemporary feminist philosophical scholarship emerged in the 1970s as more women began careers in higher education, including philosophy. As they did so, they also began taking up matters from their own experience for philosophical scrutiny. These scholars were influenced both by feminist movements in their midst as well as by their philosophical training, which generally was anything but feminist. Until about the 1990s, one could not go to graduate school to study “feminist philosophy.” While students and scholars could turn to the writings of Simone de Beauvoir or look back historically to the writings of “first wave” feminists like Mary Wollstonecraft, most of the philosophers writing in the first decades of the emergence of feminist philosophy brought their particular training and expertise to bear on analyzing issues raised by the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s, such as abortion, affirmative action, equal opportunity, the institutions of marriage, sexuality, and love. Additionally, feminist philosophical scholarship increasingly focused on the very same types of issues taken up by mainstream philosophers.

Feminist philosophical scholarship begins with attention to women, and to limitations on their roles and locations and the ways they were valued or devalued. It developed further by considering gender in less binary terms as well as recognizing that gender is only one fact of the complex interactions among class, race, ability, and sexuality. Feminist scholarship asks how attention to these might transform feminist philosophy itself. From here we move to the realm of the symbolic and how it constructs “the feminine.” How is the feminine instantiated and constructed within the texts of philosophy? What role does it play in forming, either through its absence or its presence, the central concepts of philosophy?

Feminist philosophers brought their philosophical tools to bear on these questions. Since these feminist philosophers employed the philosophical tools they knew best and found most promising, feminist philosophy began to emerge from all the traditions of Western philosophy prevalent at the end of the twentieth century, including analytic, continental, and classical American philosophy. While the thematic focus of their work was often influenced by the topics and questions highlighted by these traditions, the larger shared feminist concerns often create as much commonality as difference. Hence, a given question could be taken up and addressed from an array of views in ways that are sometimes divergent and at other times complementary.

As an historically male discipline, many of the leading philosophical journals and societies did not recognize much feminist scholarship as properly philosophical. In response, feminist scholars began founding their own journals and organizations. The first leading feminist journal, Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy , was founded in 1982 as a venue for feminist philosophical scholarship. It embraced a diversity of methodological approaches in feminist philosophy, publishing work from a variety of traditions. Feminist scholarship in each of these traditions is also advanced and supported though scholarly exchange at various professional societies, including the Society for Women in Philosophy, founded in the United States in 1972. Additionally, the Society for Analytical Feminism, founded in 1991, promotes the study of issues in feminism by methods broadly construed as analytic, to examine the use of analytic methods as applied to feminist issues, and to provide a means by which those interested in analytical feminism can meet and exchange ideas. The journal philo SOPHIA was established in 2005 to promote continental feminist scholarly and pedagogical development. The Society for the Study of Women Philosophers was established in 1987 to promote the study of the contributions of women to the history of philosophy. Similar organizations and journals on many continents continue to advance scholarship in feminist philosophy. Often a feminist philosophical society will publish its own journal, just as the International Network on Feminist Approaches to Bioethics publishes the International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics. While the discipline of philosophy in the West remains predominantly white and male, feminist journals and scholarship continues to proliferate.

Important feminist philosophical work has emerged from all the current major philosophical traditions, including analytic philosophy, continental philosophy, and American pragmatist philosophy. It is also emerging from other new areas of inquiry, such as Latin American thought, which arises out of the context of colonialism. Entries in the SEP under the heading “approaches to feminism” discuss the impact of these traditions and constellations of thought on feminist scholarship. The subsection also addresses how some work, such as psychoanalytic feminism, bridges two or more traditions. The editors of the feminist section of the SEP see these different traditions as a rich array of methodologies rather than “continental divides.” The array reflects a variety of beliefs about what kinds of philosophy are both fruitful and meaningful. The different methodologies bring their own ways of asking and answering questions, along with constructive and critical dialogue with mainstream philosophical views and methods and new topics of inquiry.

As the SEP continues to grow, we anticipate that this subsection on approaches to feminism will expand to address other traditions, including Black feminism. But for now, here are links to entries in this subsection:

• analytic feminism
• continental feminism
• Latin American feminism
• pragmatist feminism
• intersections between pragmatist and continental feminism
• intersections between analytic and continental feminism
• psychoanalytic feminism

Though not included along with these in the table of contents, another relevant approach can be found in the entry on gender in Confucian philosophy .

All these approaches share a set of feminist commitments and an overarching criticism of institutions, presuppositions, and practices that have historically favored men over women. They also share a general critique of claims to universality and objectivity that ignore male-dominated theories’ own particularity and specificity. Feminist philosophies of almost any philosophical orientation will be much more perspectival, historical, contextual, and focused on lived experience than their non-feminist counterparts. Unlike mainstream philosophers who can seriously consider the philosophical conundrums of brains in a vat, feminist philosophers always start by seeing people as embodied. Feminists have also argued for the reconfiguration of accepted structures and problems of philosophy. For example, feminists have not only rejected the privileging of epistemological concerns over moral and political concerns common to much of philosophy, they have argued that these two areas of concern are inextricably intertwined. Part 2 of the entry on analytic feminism lays out other areas of commonality across these various approaches. For one, feminist philosophers generally agree that philosophy is a powerful tool for, as Ann Garry states in that entry, “understanding ourselves and our relations to each other, to our communities, and to the state; to appreciate the extent to which we are counted as knowers and moral agents; [and] to uncover the assumptions and methods of various bodies of knowledge.” As such, philosophy is also a powerful tool for understanding how gender itself has been constructed, that is, why and to whose benefit it is to construct some people as lesser and less capable than others. Along these lines, feminist philosophers are keenly attuned to male biases at work in the history of philosophy, such as those regarding “the nature of woman” and supposed value neutrality, which on inspection is hardly neutral at all. Claims to universality, feminist philosophers have found, are usually made from a very specific and particular point of view, contrary to their manifest assertions. Another orientation that feminist philosophers generally share is a commitment to normativity and social change; they are never content to analyze things just as they are but instead look for ways to overcome oppressive practices and institutions.

Such questioning of the problems of mainstream approaches to philosophy has often led to feminists using methods and approaches from more than one philosophical tradition. As Ann Garry notes in Part 3 of the entry on analytic feminism (2017), it is not uncommon to find analytic feminists drawing on non-analytic figures such as Beauvoir, Foucault, or Butler; and because of their motivation to communicate with other feminists, they are more motivated than other philosophers “to search for methodological cross-fertilization.” Moreover, feminist philosophers are generally inclined to incorporate the perspectives of all those who have been oppressed.

Even with their common and overlapping orientations, the differences between the various philosophical approaches to feminism are significant, especially in terms of styles of writing, influences, and overall expectations about what philosophy can and should achieve. Analytic feminist philosophy tends to value analysis and argumentation, though anyone trained in philosophy does so as well. Continental feminist theory puts more emphasis on interpretation and deconstruction, and pragmatist feminism values lived experience and exploration. Coming out of a post-Hegelian tradition, both continental and pragmatist philosophers usually suspect that “truth,” whatever that is, emerges and develops historically. They tend to share with Nietzsche the view that truth claims often mask power plays. Yet where continental and pragmatist philosophers are generally wary about notions of truth, analytic feminists tend to argue that the way to “counter sexism and androcentrism is through forming a clear conception of and pursuing truth, logical consistency, objectivity, rationality, justice, and the good.” (Cudd 1996: 20).

These differences and intersections play out in the ways that various feminists engage topics of common concern. One key area of intersection, noted by Georgia Warnke, is the appropriation of psychoanalytic theory, with Anglo-American feminists generally adopting object-relations theories and continental feminists drawing more on Lacan and contemporary French psychoanalytic theory, though this is already beginning to change as it becomes clearer that continental psychoanalytic theory is also interested, via Julia Kristeva and Melanie Klein, in object-relations theory (see the entry on intersections between analytic and continental feminism ). The importance of psychoanalytic approaches is also underscored in Shannon Sullivan’s entry on intersections between pragmatist and continental feminism . Given the importance of psychoanalytic feminism for all three traditions, a separate essay on this approach to feminist theory is included in this section.

No topic is more central to feminist philosophy than sex and gender, but even here many variations on the theme flourish. Where analytic feminism, with its critique of essentialism, holds the sex/gender distinction practically as an article of faith (see the entry on feminist perspectives on sex and gender and Chanter 2009), continental feminists tend to suspect either (1) that even the supposedly purely biological category of sex is itself socially constituted (Butler 1990 and 1993) or (2) that sexual difference itself needs to be valued and theorized (see especially Cixous 1976 and Irigaray 1974).

Despite the variety of different approaches, styles, societies, and orientations, feminist philosophers’ commonalities are greater than their differences. Many will borrow freely from each other and find that other orientations contribute to their own work. Even the differences over sex and gender add to a larger conversation about the impact of culture and society on bodies, experience, and pathways for change.

Philosophers who are feminists have, in their work in traditional fields of study, begun to change those very fields. The Encyclopedia includes a range of entries on how feminist philosophies have intervened in conventional areas of philosophical research, areas in which philosophers often tend to argue that they are operating from a neutral, universal point of view (notable exceptions are pragmatism, poststructuralism, and some phenomenology). Historically, philosophy has claimed that the norm is universal and the feminine is abnormal, that universality is not gendered, but that all things feminine are not universal. Not surprisingly, feminists have pointed out how in fact these supposed neutral enterprises are in fact quite gendered, namely, male gendered. For example, feminists working on environmental philosophy have uncovered how practices disproportionately affect women, children, and people of color. Liberal feminism has shown how supposed universal truths of liberalism are in fact quite biased and particular. Feminist epistemologists have called out “epistemologies of ignorance” that traffic in not knowing. Across the board, in fact, feminist philosophers are uncovering male biases and also pointing to the value of particularity, in general rejecting universality as a norm or goal.

Entries under the heading of feminist interventions include the following:

• feminist aesthetics
• feminist bioethics
• feminist environmental philosophy
• feminist epistemology and philosophy of science
• feminist ethics
• feminist history of philosophy
• liberal feminism
• feminist metaphysics
• feminist moral psychology
• feminist philosophy of biology
• feminist philosophy of language
• feminist philosophy of law
• feminist philosophy of religion
• feminist political philosophy
• feminist social epistemology

Feminist critical attention to philosophical practices has revealed the inadequacy of dominant philosophical tropes as well as the need to turn philosophical attention to things that had previously gone unattended. For example, feminists working from the perspective of women’s lives have been influential in bringing philosophical attention to the phenomenon of care and care-giving (Ruddick 1989; Held 1995, 2007; Hamington 2006), dependency (Kittay 1999), disability (Wilkerson 2002; Carlson 2009), women’s labor (Waring 1999; Delphy 1984; Harley 2007), the devaluation of women’s testimonies (see the entry on feminist epistemology and philosophy of science ), and scientific bias and objectivity (Longino 1990). In doing so they have revealed weaknesses in existing ethical, political, and epistemological theories. More generally, feminists have called for inquiry into what are typically considered “private” practices and personal concerns, such as the family, sexuality, and the body, in order to balance what has seemed to be a masculine pre-occupation with “public” and impersonal matters. Philosophy presupposes interpretive tools for understanding our everyday lives; feminist work in articulating additional dimensions of experience and aspects of our practices is invaluable in demonstrating the bias in existing tools, and in the search for better ones.

Feminist explanations of sexism and accounts of sexist practices also raise issues that are within the domain of traditional philosophical inquiry. For example, in thinking about care, feminists have asked questions about the nature of the self; in thinking about gender, feminists have asked what the relationship is between the natural and the social; in thinking about sexism in science, feminists have asked what should count as knowledge. In some such cases, mainstream philosophical accounts provide useful tools; in other cases, alternative proposals have seemed more promising.

In the sub-entries included under “feminism (topics)” in the Table of Contents to this Encyclopedia , authors survey some of the recent feminist work on a topic, highlighting the issues that are of particular relevance to philosophy. These entries are:

• feminist perspectives on argumentation
• feminist perspectives on autonomy
• feminist perspectives on class and work
• feminist perspectives on disability
• feminist perspectives on globalization
• feminist perspectives on objectification
• feminist perspectives on power
• feminist perspectives on rape
• feminist perspectives on reproduction and the family
• feminist perspectives on science
• feminist perspectives on sex and gender
• feminist perspectives on sex markets
• feminist perspectives on the body
• feminist perspectives on the self
• feminist perspectives on trans issues

See also the entries in the Related Entries section below.

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• Zophy, Angela Howard, 1990, “Feminism”, in The Handbook of American Women’s History , Angela Howard Zophy and Frances M. Kavenik (eds), New York: Routledge (Garland Reference Library of the Humanities).

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

Resources listed below have been chosen to provide only a springboard into the huge amount of feminist material available on the web. The emphasis here is on general resources useful for doing research in feminist philosophy or interdisciplinary feminist theory, e.g., the links connect to bibliographies and meta-sites, and resources concerning inclusion, exclusion, and feminist diversity. The list is incomplete and will be regularly revised and expanded. Further resources on topics in feminism such as popular culture, reproductive rights, sex work, are available within each sub-entry on that topic.

• Feminist Theory Website
• Women and Social Movements in the US: 1600–2000
• The Path of the Women’s Rights Movement: Detailed Timeline 1848–1997
• Documents from the Women’s Liberation Movement (Duke Univ. Archives)
• Documenting Difference: An Illustrated & Annotated Anthology of Documents on Race, Class, Gender & Ethnicity in the United States
• Race, Gender, and Affirmative Action Resource Page

Associations

• The Society for Women in Philosophy (SWIP)
• Association for Feminist Ethics and Social Theory (FEAST)
• Feminist Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Science Studies (FEMMSS) http://femmss.org/
• Feminist Theory Website (Introduction)
• philoSOPHIA: A Feminist Society
• Society for Analytical Feminism
• The Society for the Study of Women Philosophers

“Waves” of Feminism

• “Waves of Feminism” by Jo Freeman (1996).
• Winning the Vote (Western NY Suffragists).
• Amendments to the US Constitution: 13th, 14th, 15th, 18th, 19th, 21st
• NOW’s 1966 Statement of Purpose
• “The Women’s Liberation Movement: Its Origins, Structures, and Ideals” by Jo Freeman (1971).

Feminism and Class

Marxist, socialist, and materialist feminisms.

• WMST-L discussion of how to define “Marxist feminism” Aug 1994)
• Marxist/Materialist Feminism (Feminist Theory Website)
• A Marxist Feminist Critique

Feminist Economics

• Feminist Economics (Feminist Theory Website)
• International Association for Feminist Economics
• International Center for Research on Women

Women and Labor

• Rights for Working Women
• United States Department of Labor
• United States Department of Labor: Audience – Women , a shortcut to information and services the Department of Labor (DOL) offers for women.

Feminism and Disability

• Center for Research on Women with Disabilities (CROWD)

Feminism, Human Rights, Global Feminism, and Human Trafficking

• Global Feminism (Feminist Majority Foundation)
• NOW and Global Feminism
• Sisterhood is Global Institute
• Polaris Project
• Not For Sale Campaign
• Human Trafficking Search website

Feminism and Race/Ethnicity

General resources.

• Office of the Gender and Women’s Studies Librarian (U. Wisconsin)
• Women of Color Web Sites (WMST-L)

African-American/Black Feminisms and Womanism

• Feminism and Black Womanist Identity Bibliography (Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library)
• Black Feminist/Womanist Works: A Beginning List (WMST-L)

Asian-American and Asian Feminisms

• American Women’s History: A Research Guide (Asian-American Women)
• South Asian Women’s Studies Bibliography (UC Berkeley)
• Journal of South Asia Women’s Studies

Chicana/Latina Feminisms

• Chicano/a Latino/a Movimientos

American Indian, Native, Indigenous Feminisms

• Native American Studies Program (Dartmouth College)

Feminism, Sex, Sexuality, Transgender, and Intersex

• Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture (Duke Special Collections)

affirmative action | communitarianism | contractarianism | discrimination | egalitarianism | equality | equality: of opportunity | exploitation | feminist philosophy, approaches: Latin American feminism | feminist philosophy, interventions: epistemology and philosophy of science | feminist philosophy, interventions: ethics | feminist philosophy, interventions: history of philosophy | globalization | homosexuality | identity politics | justice: as a virtue | justice: distributive | legal rights | liberalism | Mill, Harriet Taylor | Mill, John Stuart | multiculturalism | parenthood and procreation | race

Acknowledgments

Over many revisions, thanks go to Ann Garry, Heidi Grasswick, Elizabeth Harman, Elizabeth Hackett, Serene Khader, Ishani Maitra, Ásta Sveinsdóttir, Leslee Mahoney, and Anita Superson.

Copyright © 2023 by Noëlle McAfee < noelle . c . mcafee @ emory . edu > Ann Garry Anita Superson Heidi Grasswick Serene Khader

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The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory

Lisa Disch is Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Michigan.

Mary Hawkesworth, Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Women's and Gender Studies, Rutgers University.

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The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory provides an overview of the analytical frameworks and theoretical concepts feminist theorists have developed to challenge established knowledge. Leading feminist theorists, from around the globe, provide in-depth explorations of a diverse array of subject areas, capturing a plurality of approaches. The Handbook raises new questions, brings new evidence, and poses significant challenges across the spectrum of academic disciplines, demonstrating the interdisciplinary nature of feminist theory. The chapters offer innovative analyses of the central topics in social and political science (e.g. civilization, development, divisions of labor, economies, institutions, markets, migration, militarization, prisons, policy, politics, representation, the state/nation, the transnational, violence); cultural studies and the humanities (e.g. affect, agency, experience, identity, intersectionality, jurisprudence, narrative, performativity, popular culture, posthumanism, religion, representation, standpoint, temporality, visual culture); and discourses in medicine and science (e.g. cyborgs, health, intersexuality, nature, pregnancy, reproduction, science studies, sex/gender, sexuality, transsexuality) and contemporary critical theory that have been transformed through feminist theorization (e.g. biopolitics, coloniality, diaspora, the microphysics of power, norms/normalization, postcoloniality, race/racialization, subjectivity/subjectivation). The Handbook identifies the limitations of key epistemic assumptions that inform traditional scholarship and shows how theorizing from women’s and men’s lives has profound effects on the conceptualization of central categories, whether the field of analysis is aesthetics, biology, cultural studies, development, economics, film studies, health, history, literature, politics, religion, science studies, sexualities, violence, or war.

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Feminist Theory Archive

How to use this guide, about the feminist theory archive, the pembroke center, plan a visit, donating physical items to the feminist theory archive, search tools.

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Nancy L. Buc '65 Pembroke Center Archivist

On the Home tab, you can learn about the Feminist Theory Archive and the Pembroke Center, as well as how to get access to the archive's collections, how to donate physical items, and how to conduct further research.

The Collections by Scholar tab contains a list of all collections available for research arranged by the scholars last name. The list includes a description of each scholar and what you can find in their papers, as well as a link to the finding aid.

The Collections by Subject tab contains a list of key subjects arranged alphabetically with links to relevant finding aids.

The Related Collections tab highlights other collections at Brown University that have connections to those in the Feminist Theory Archive.   

*Photograph of Feminist Theory Archive donor, Hortense J. Spillers

Feminist theory  is discourse that attempts to explain the systemic causes and effects of inequality among the sexes including how factors such as race, class and sexuality affect these inequalities. Feminist theory arises from many domains of knowledge including the humanities, social and natural sciences. Key areas of focus within feminist theory include discrimination and exclusion, objectification, power and oppression, and the social construction of identity.

Established in 2003, the Feminist Theory Archive documents the work of influential feminist theorists and scholars of difference who have examined sex and gender at the center of theoretical study. Through their research, writing, teaching, and activism, these pioneering scholars have introduced questions about women and gender to a range of disciplines, and in doing so, have transformed and diversified the very meaning of “feminist” research. 

The Feminist Theory Archive gathers, catalogs, and preserves evidence of this groundbreaking work in order to make it accessible to future scholars and students at the  John Hay Library . 

Over 140 prominent feminist scholars have pledged their materials to this archive.  Click here for a list of donors who have already given material or have indicated their intent to donate in the future.   Click here for the Feminist Theory Archive finding aid .

The Feminist Theory Archive was established at Brown University in 2003 by Elizabeth Weed, Director of the Pembroke Center from 2000-2010. She, along with Joan Wallach Scott, Founding Director of the Pembroke Center from 1981-1985, and other supportive colleagues moved to document the work of influential feminist theorists who had transformed the landscape of higher education through their writing, teaching, institution building, and activism. Scholars such as Naomi  Schor , the Benjamin F. Barge Professor of French at Yale University, whose papers served as the seed collection for the archive, were first in their fields to approach their research through the lens of gender. As an example, Schor's academic background was in French Literature but she focused her research on subjects such as female fetishism, deconstruction in literature, the concept of details/ornamentation as gendered, and universalism in an era of identity politics and difference. Beginning in the 1960s,  Schor  then taught courses on these subjects and along with other groundbreaking feminist theorists, such as Judith Butler, Hortense Spillers, and Anne Fausto-Sterling, caused a paradigm shift in the way scholars and students studied all fields of higher education including English, History, Anthropology, and Biology, placing sex and gender at the center of theorectical study.

Upon Naomi Schor's untimely death in 2001, Elizabeth Weed, other leadership from the Pembroke Center, and Schor's family realized that  Schor  would have wanted her papers to go to Brown, where she had been the Nancy Duke Lewis Professor (1985-1989) - a position designated for a senior scholar in any discipline with significant scholarly interest in women’s studies. As a result, Weed and others conceptualized the idea to develop an archive for Schor's papers and for the papers of other feminist theorists at the Pembroke Center and to house the collections and provide access to them through the John Hay special collections library at Brown University.

Since 2003, the collection has grown and now includes the papers of theorists across disciplines including feminist theorists and other scholars of difference with specializations in queer theory, Black feminist theory, global feminisms and affect theory related to gender and sexuality studies.

The Feminist Theory Archive is curated by the Nancy L. Buc '65, Pembroke Center Archivist, who works in close collaboration with the Director of the Pembroke Center, the Pembroke Center Faculty Board, and colleagues from the John Hay Library to select appropriate collections for inclusion. The principles that guide curatorial decision making for the Feminist Theory Archive are that scholars be senior in their fields or on a trajectory towards senior leadership and are groundbreakers -- theorists who have transformed and diversified the very meaning of "feminist" research through their lives and scholarship.

As of 2017, the Feminist Theory Archive continues to grow and places special collecting focus on first generation feminist theorists and on the next generation of feminist theorists who studied under the "founding mothers" of the field.

The Pembroke Center at Brown University is an interdisciplinary research center that fosters critical scholarship on questions of gender and difference, broadly defined, in national and transnational contexts.  At the heart of the Center's research agenda is a questioning of what counts as foundational knowledge in a given discipline. This questioning of the production of knowledge is related, in turn, to the challenges that studies of "difference" present to the academy--gender studies; studies of race, ethnicity, multiculturalism; cross-cultural and postcolonial studies.

For more information, please visit our website .

Researchers can access collections of the Feminist Theory Archive by visiting the  John Hay Library , reviewing collections available for research , or by using the  Finding Aid  for the archive. Researchers can also search the Brown University Library catalog using the term: “Feminist Theory Archive.” 

There are no restrictions on access, except for specifically noted material within individual collections. Feminist Theory Archive collections can only be seen by prior appointment. Some materials may be stored off-site and cannot be produced on the same day on which they are requested. Researchers should contact [email protected] or  [email protected] to request items in advance of their visit. 

View the policies for using special collections at the John Hay Library.

The Pembroke Center is grateful to the many generous donors who contribute items to the Feminist Theory Archive. The archive has a distinct mission, scope, and policy. Please see the files listed below to learn more.

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Department of English

Graduate course offerings, summer 2024.

If you have any questions about the Literature, Creative Writing, or Linguistics courses, please contact the graduate advisor . For all Technical Communication courses, please contact the Director of Graduate Studies .

The English/Philosophy building can be found on the Campus Map .

We also have a listing of past graduate course offerings .

Click an Option to Show Courses by Focus

Engl 5067 methods of teaching college composition (ma & phd).

This course is designed as a practicum for GPTI teaching first-year writing at Texas Tech University. This course will introduce teachers to methods and practices of teaching writing and provide scaffolding for their first three semesters teaching first-year writing. We will use class time to discuss teaching activities, to introduce you to theories of learning, writing, and rhetoric, to solve problems related to teaching and learning, and to help you build your teaching philosophy.

ENGL 5000, Portfolio

ENGL 5000 is an MATC portfolio seminar that fulfills MATC student's capstone requirement. MATC students pursuing the Portfolio option for their degree will develop their portfolio in this course under the direction of TTU TCR faculty. MATC students should take this course in the semester before the semester they graduate. (e.g., if you are graduating in the spring, take it in the fall).

IMPORTANT: This is a “variable credit” course and will require you to assign the number of credit hours you need when you register. This course should count for 3cr. hours. Instructions for changing variable credit hours: Changing Variable Credit Course Hours .

Note: Your portfolio will be reviewed a second time by TTU TCR faculty in your final semester before graduation. While there is no examination, your portfolio fulfills the "comprehensive exam" requirement.

ENGL 5067, Methods of Teaching College Composition

5067 sections are required for onsite GPTIs . Enroll in the section based on your program/year.

Note: Online students/non-GPTIs are not permitted to enroll in these courses. These sections are integrally linked to the work GPTIs do in our First-Year Writing

IMPORTANT: This is a “variable credit” course and will require you to assign the number of credit hours you need when you register. This course should count for 1 credit hour each.

ENGL 5067 (MA & PhD 2nd Year)

This course is designed as a practicum for GPTI teaching first-year writing at Texas Tech University. This section will be specifically focused on preparing you to teach writing in asynchronous online classes. This section will introduce teachers to methods and practices of teaching writing online and provide scaffolding for your first time teaching asynchronously in our program. We will use digital spaces through Blackboard to discuss teaching activities, to introduce you to theories of online learning, writing, and rhetoric, to solve problems related to teaching and learning, and to help you build your online teaching philosophy.

ENGL 5309, Studies in Nineteenth-Century British Literature: Recentering the Influences of The Arabian Nights

This course will explore the influence of The Arabian Nights on Victorian Literature. Using Hussain Haddawy's Norton Critical Edition of The Arabian Nights , we will read the frame story of female storyteller Shahrazad and despotic ruler Sultan Shahrayar, in addition to a selection of intertwined tales like “The Story of the Merchant and the Demon,” “The Story of the Fisherman and the Demon,” and “The Story of the Three Apples.” After identifying key elements in this collection of stories, we will then examine their impact on British canonical nineteenth-century novels such as Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1847) and Edith Nesbit's The Story of the Amulet (1906). When analyzing these texts, we will pay close attention to the intersections of race, class, gender, and national identity in the larger context of the British Empire. We will also engage with theoretical materials to gain a deeper understanding of the assigned texts, bringing to the forefront “othered” characters and voices that have been overlooked or ignored. Assignments include a conference-length paper, discussion leading, an oral presentation, and an annotated bibliography.

Requirement Fulfilled: British Literature; Later Period; Genre (Fiction)

ENGL 5324, Studies in Twentieth-Century American Literature: Literatures of the American Southwest

This course introduces students to a variety of twentieth and twenty-first century texts from the region currently referred to as the American Southwest. We will explore the Southwest through award-winning westerns by Cormac McCarthy and Percival Everett, a 1903 collection of non-fiction essays from Mary Hunter Austin, foundational Native American texts by Leslie Marmon Silko and Tommy Orange, a canonical Mexican American coming-of-age novel, and the 2016 film Hell or High Water (screenplay by Taylor Sheridan), among other texts. We'll also read multiple scholarly essays about the region and its history. Some questions we will consider as we read include: What common themes run through these works? How do different cultures describe the landscape of the Southwest? The relationship they feel exists between themselves and this region's history? Between themselves and the other cultures of this region? We will attempt to answer these questions through lectures, class discussions, a series of short Summary & Synthesis assignments which put our scholarship in conversation with the texts, and a seminar paper.

Requirement Fulfilled: American Literature; Later Period; Genre (Fiction); Literature, Social Justice and Environmental Studies (LSJE)

ENGL 5327, Studies in Multicultural American Literature: The Borderlands of Visionary Fiction

Recent years have seen an impressive outpouring of speculative fiction by women and people of color that falls under the neologism, “visionary fiction.” In this course, we will study genres that often overlap—science fiction, apocalyptic/post-apoc, and utopian/dystopian forms—from a Borderlands perspective. To conceive a Borderlands position broadly means that we approach spaces, places, and even bodies in terms of peripheries and edges rather than centers. Visionary fiction is radical, highly imaginative, and often calls for a paradigm shift in consciousness; its aims are egalitarian and aimed at social and environmental justice. Some questions that will focus our discussion include: how and why have speculative forms so radically transformed in recent decades? How do people of color engage speculative forms to re-imagine genocidal campaigns and modern, colonialist enterprises? How do the articulations of feminist theory, third space theory, and environmental philosophy bring into conversation the territorial, ideological, and metaphorical intersections between the U.S. and other countries with the goal of illuminating how individual subjectivities negotiate local, national, and global borders (transfronteras) of experience? Some of the authors we'll read include Gloria Anzaldúa, Octavia E. Butler, Ursula K. LeGuin, Daniel Quinn, and Nnedi Okorafor.

ENGL 5340, Research Methods

This seminar introduces students either beginning or near the start of their graduate work to a range of research methods and methodologies utilized in humanities-based studies, including the vast array of digital, material, and archival resources available to researchers. The course focuses on the process of research to better prepare students for the kind of work expected at the graduate level. Students will develop a significant research project in their selected area of specialization that will include a book review, annotated bibliography, conference-length presentation, and research paper. This section is reserved primarily for new distance/online MA students in English, but is open (based on enrollment availability) to graduate students across the humanities.

Requirements Fulfilled: Foundation Course (English MA)

ENGL 5355, Studies in Comparative Literature: Global Vietnam War Literature and Culture

This course investigates the representation of the American War in Vietnam through diverse theoretical, cultural, and historical perspectives. We begin by scrutinizing Graham Green's The Quiet American and screening the French film Indochine with special attention to the differences between the traditional European colonial powers and the US-centered global order, which Donald Pease theorizes as the “global state of exception.” We then examine Joan Didion's Democracy and Norman Mailer's Armies of the Night in relation to the impact of the military-industrial complex and in light of the blurry boundary between history and fiction. We then direct our critical interest to Philip Caputo's A Rumor of War , Tim O'Brien's Going after Cacciato , and Lynda De Devanter's Home before Morning , which would invoke senses of “being there,” of “a hyperreality,” as well as of “the return of the repressed.” Meanwhile, we also try to get a glimpse of the war from both the North and South Vietnamese perspectives and explore Bao Nin's Sorrow of War in terms of what Shu-Mei Shih dubs “the exceptional particular.” We conclude by reading Le Ly Hayslip's When Heaven and Earth Changed Places , Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer , and Thi Bui's The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir , and by rethinking the ecological consequences of the war upon the land and the people.

Requirement Fulfilled: Comparative Literature; Genre (fiction)

ENGL 5365, Writing Studies & Well-Being

In this class, we will explore questions and problems related to rhetoric and writing about wellbeing, wellness, and similar concepts through questions such as the following: What, exactly, does it take to find a sense of wellness today and what role might writing and rhetorical practice, research, and theory play? How, for whom, and under what conditions might people experience writing for wellness—and how might we leverage such insight for the public good more broadly? What are the relationships among discourses and practices of wellbeing, wellness, gratitude, healing, contemplation, and democracy? To explore these questions, we will read work from writing and rhetoric studies, education, psychology, disability studies, and other areas. Assignments will include autoethnographic or other forms of selfstudy research, a book review, discussion questions, and in-class writing.

Readings will include articles as well as all or parts of the following books: Rhetorical Healing: The Reeducation of Contemporary Black Womanhood by Tamika L. Carey; The Art of Gratitude by Jeremy David Engels; Unwell Writing Centers: Searching for Wellness in Neoliberal Educational Institutions and Beyond by Genie Nicole Giaimo; Composition Studies special issue on Writing and Well-being edited by Susan Miller-Cochran and Stacey Cochran; Yoga Minds, Writing Bodies: Contemplative Writing Pedagogy by Christy I. Wenger; and Writing as a Way of Healing by Louise DeSalvo. Carey, Engels, and Giaimo are available as e-books through the TTU library; Miller-Cochran and Cochran and Wenger are open access.

ENGL 5377, Rhetoric of Entrepreneurialism and Innovation

This course explores the intersection of entrepreneurship, innovation, and the writing and communication practices that constitute these areas of activity. First, this class will delve into theories of management, entrepreneurship, and critical entrepreneurship studies to provide necessary background information. We will explore such questions as what is entrepreneurship? Who counts as an entrepreneur? and Why is entrepreneurship a central societal innovation? Next, we will systematically engage with the types of writing and communication most important to these professionals. We will cover such popular topics as the business pitch, business plan, and business model canvas, but we will also explore the use of entrepreneurial storytelling, the formation of entrepreneurial ecosystems, and other important topics. The content of this class will be useful to any aspiring innovator or business owner but will mainly give students a foundation that they could use to begin publishing in the small cross-disciplinary field sometimes called entrepreneurship communication.

ENGL 5377, Risk Communication

The field of risk communication examines the relationship between information sharing and people's assessment and responses to possible harms. This course surveys research in risk communication that helps us understand how individuals and communities perceive and manage risks to their health, safety, and environment, as well as best practices for communicating risk information to community audiences. Throughout the semester students will read and discuss theoretical and applied literature on risk communication and apply best practices to design risk communication plans and messages that effectively address targeted audiences.

ENGL 5385, Ethics in TCR

This class offers an introductory overview of major Western and non-Western ethical frameworks that past and present technical communication and rhetoric scholarship has drawn on. Major western frameworks include virtue ethics, consequentialism (utilitarianism), and deontology. We will also cover introductory concepts such as metaethics to ask: What are values? How do ethical frameworks produce different values? Which ethical frameworks should I use in some situations but not others? Students will read work by some of the major ethical philosophers who contributed to these movements, such as Immanuel Kant, Alasdair Mcintrye, and Aristotle, but they will also learn how to apply ancient frameworks to contemporary causes such as the resurgent interest in “effective altruism” (a modified form of utilitarianism) in Open AI discourses. Students will also study the ways in which 20th century scholars have critiqued and extended these positions to include frameworks on indigenous virtue ethics, feminist ethics of care, black feminist ethics of care, and non-western virtue ethics (Confucianism; Ubuntu). We'll read about Lisa Tessman's efforts to update virtue ethics through diversity and social justice alongside Martha Nussbaum's ideas on feminist generosity and Margaret McLaren's work on feminist virtues such as feistiness and playfulness.

In this class, we will not only read about ethics, but we will discuss how to think about applying past and present Western and non-Western frameworks ethically through our unique positionalities. Students will be encouraged to apply an ethical framework of their choice to a wide range of academic, industry or pedagogical ends for a final project.

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Feminist Literary Theory

Jul 25, 2014

2.35k likes | 6.13k Views

Feminist Literary Theory. ENG 4U. Diversity. Feminist literary theory is difficult to define because feminism itself is difficult to define.

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• traditional gender roles
• birdcage analogy
• feminist literary theory
• unchanging essence
• better leaders

Presentation Transcript

Feminist Literary Theory ENG 4U

Diversity • Feminist literary theory is difficult to define because feminism itself is difficult to define. • The term “feminism” does not claim to account for all women’s experiences in exactly the same way because women have different experiences based on race, religion, sexual orientation, class, age, heritage, geographic location, physical appearance, etc. There is great diversity within feminism.

Feminism • However, feminists do agree that women, as a group, have historically been oppressed on the basis of their sex. Feminists, whether male or female, advocate for women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men.

The Feminist Lens Critics who apply the lens of feminist theory to literature are concerned with the myriad ways that gender can be “read.” They examine: 1. Women’s Representation a) Archetypes (Stereotypes) b) Oppression and Internalized Oppression c) From Object to Subject 2. Women Writers and the Literary Canon 3. Women’s Language 4. Women’s Reading

Representation How are women represented in literature and film?

1. Archetypes

+++Positive Archetypes+++Women as Sources of Life and Bounty • The Earth Goddess Gaia • The Virgin Mary • The Earth Mother

+++Positive Archetypes+++The Platonic Ideal Laura (Petrarch) Beatrice (Dante) • The Muse Calliope

- - - Negative Archetypes - - -The Femme Fatale

- - - Negative Archetypes - - -The “Career Girl”

Patriarchy • Any culture that privileges men by promoting traditional gender roles, and penalizing women when they stray from those roles.

Traditional Gender Roles MEN • Thinkers • Strong • Providers • Protective • Assertive WOMEN • Feelers • Weak • Caregivers • Nurturing • Submissive

Traditional Gender Roles • The belief that gender roles are natural has been traditionally used to justify: •Why women shouldn’t own property •Why women shouldn’t get an education •Why women shouldn’t work outside the home •Why women shouldn’t vote •Why women shouldn’t hold the same positions as men •Why women shouldn’t earn the same wage as men

Biological Essentialism • Belief that women are born inferior • Based on biological differences between the sexes that are part of our unchanging essence as men and women

Biological Essentialism • Feminists don’t deny biological differences • However, they disagree that differences in physical size, shape, and body chemistry make men naturally superior to women • more intelligent • more logical • better leaders

Sex and Gender • SEX: biological constitution as female or male • •”between the legs” • GENDER: our cultural programming as feminine or masculine • •”between the ears”

2. Oppression • The root of the word "oppression" is the element "press." The press of the crowd; pressed into military service; to press a pair of pants; printing press; press the button. • Presses are used to mold things or flatten them or reduce them in bulk, sometimes to reduce them by squeezing out the gases or liquids in them. • Something pressed is something caught between or among forces and barriers which are so related to each other that jointly they restrain, restrict or prevent the thing’s motion or mobility. Mold. Immobilize. Reduce. (Marilyn Frye)

The Birdcage Analogy Consider a birdcage. If you look very closely at just one wire in the cage, you cannot see the other wires. If your conception of what is before you is determined by this myopic focus, you could look at that one wire, up and down the length of it, and be unable to see why a bird would not just fly around the wire any time it wanted to go somewhere…It is only when you step back…you can see that the bird is surrounded by a network of systematically related barriers, no one of which would be the least hindrance to its flight, but which, by their relations to each other, are as confining as the solid walls of a dungeon.

Sexism is systemic. It consists of all the wires of a birdcage, not just one.

3. Internalized Oppression • Occurs when women begin to believe what dominant society tells them about themselves (i.e. that women are ‘naturally’ less intelligent than men, that their worth is measured by their looks, that their only value in life is as a wife and mother) • Internalized sexism is when women take up arms against each other and themselves. It is self-hatred.

Women as Objects • Art historian John Berger introduced the concept of “The Gaze” in Ways of Seeing (1972): Women must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisioning herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually.”

Women’s Representations : The Gaze This act of surveillance, of men looking and women being seen, Berger insists, is intrinsic to relations between the sexes: Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women, but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of women in herself is male: the surveyed female. She turns herself into an object – and most particularly an object of vision: a sight. Thus, men gaze at women, and women begin to see themselves through men’s eyes. They internalize the gaze that turns them into objects.

Women Writers and the Literary Canon

The Literary Canon Definition: The literary canon is a canon of books that has been considered “the greatest literature of all time,” and the most influential in shaping Western culture. These works are considered the pinnacle of “high art” (that is, art of the highest and most noble merit).

Feminists Question the Literary Canon 1. Why has the literary canon consisted mainly of male writers (and here we should qualify, "of white, middle-class and upper middle-class male writers")? 2. What have been the standards by which the works of women (along with non-white males and the economically-disenfranchised) have been judged? Who created these standards and who benefits from them? 3. Can women, or minorities, or working-class writers be comfortably added to the canon? Does the conception of a literary canon change as such writers are introduced?

Feminists Question the Literary Canon 4. Does the existence of a literary canon serve any useful purpose? Does it serve the interests of women or other marginalized groups of people (minorities and homosexuals, for example?)? 5. To what extent does the notion of a literary canon marginalize women? 6. Is it inevitable that there be a literary canon, or does the attempt to canonize some writers and exclude others serve an often unacknowledged political purpose?

Feminist Literary Critics • Feminist literary critics assert that most of our literature presents a masculine-patriarchal view in which the role of women is negated or at best minimized. • Feminists ask: what is left out when women’s experiences are left out of written culture?Whose stories are told, and whose are ignored?

Feminist Literary Critics • Feminist literary critics show that writers of traditional literature have ignored women and have transmitted misguided and prejudiced views of them • Feminists ask: What happens when women’s only representations in literature are generated by men? When their own voices are silenced? When someone else “tells their story”? When they are turned into an “object” (one who is studied) rather than a “subject” (one who studies)?

Feminist Literary Critics • Feminist literary critics attempt to stimulate the creation of a critical environment that reflects a balanced view of women’s experiences and values • Feminists: look at all women’s stories, not only the wealthy and literate few; they look at stories in both the oral and written tradition; they value first-person testimony and subjectivity (traditionally “female”) rather than privilege logic and reason (traditionally “male”)

Feminist Literary Critics • Feminist literary critics: attempt to recover the works of women writers of past times and to encourage the publication of present women writers so that the literary canon may be expanded to recognize women as thinkers and artists

Feminist Literary Critics • Feminist literary critics: urge transformations in the language to eliminate inequities and inequalities that result from linguistic distortions.

Feminist Literary Critics Might Ask… • Is the author male or female? How does that shape the way you understand the characters? • Is the text narrated by a male or female? • What types of roles do women have in the text?

Feminist Literary Critics Might Ask… • Are the female characters the protagonists or secondary and minor characters? Are they static or dynamic? • Do any stereotypical characterizations of women appear? Do they challenge or reproduce stereotypes? • What are the attitudes toward women held by the male characters?

Feminist Literary Critics Might Ask… • What are women’s attitudes towards each other? Towards themselves? • What is the author’s attitude toward women in society? • How does the author’s culture influence his or her attitude? • Who holds power in the story? Who does not?

Feminist Literary Critics Might Ask… • What happens when women in the story challenge the status quo? What consequences or limitations do they face? • Is feminine imagery used? If so, what is the significance of such imagery? • Do the female characters speak differently than the male characters? Compare the frequency of speech for the male characters to the frequency of speech for the female characters.

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The potential impact of the mifepristone Supreme Court case

The United States Supreme Court building at dusk. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)  

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The Supreme Court will hear arguments over mifepristone on March 26. Mifepristone is a drug used in medication abortions and has been frequently challenged in courts across the country. Both the drug's FDA approval and regulations about who can prescribe and access the drug have been challenged. The Supreme Court will only consider mifepristone regulations, not the drug's overall approval. 

Jennifer Hendricks is a professor at Colorado Law and studies family law, regulation of pregnancy and feminist theory. She gives her take on the upcoming case. 

Professor Jennifer Hendricks

What is the Supreme Court considering in this case? 

The use of mifeprsitone was recently challenged by a group of primarily anti-abortion doctors. The group sought to question the FDA's initial approval of mifepristone, as well as the FDA's decision to relax requirements for obtaining the drug. And they won both those arguments in the lower courts. Eventually, an appeals court upheld the FDA's initial approval of medication abortion and mifepristone but struck down the relaxation of restrictions. And that's what is now before the Supreme Court—the FDA's decisions on how and when mifepristone can safely and effectively be used.

What are the potential outcomes here?  

If the Supreme Court upholds the FDA action, then nothing changes. All the lower court decisions are paused right now and the FDA hasn't had to change anything. 

If they decide to strike down and overrule the FDA's changes in regards to the drug, a few things could happen. The justices may make everything clear in their decision. Then the FDA would have marching orders on what to do next. Or the court might think something needs to be reconsidered and send it back to a lower court. 

What are pharmaceutical companies concerned about in this case? 

The FDA's approval of mifepristone stands. But the second guessing of medical expertise and the FDA's expertise about medications that the lower courts engaged in was off the charts. That's one of the reasons why this case has been so prominent. It raises all sorts of concerns about access to abortion. It also makes drug companies wonder about the approval process and what other approved drugs could potentially be questioned or revoked one day. 

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