Feminist Epistemology: An Interpretation and a Defense

Abstract

Feminist epistemology has often been understood as the study of feminine “ways of knowing.” But feminist epistemology is better understood as the branch of naturalized, social epistemology that studies the various influences of norms and conceptions of gender and gendered interests and experiences on the production of knowledge. This understanding avoids dubious claims about feminine cognitive differences and enables feminist research in various disciplines to pose deep internal critiques of mainstream research.

Increasing the number of feminist scientists: why feminist aims are not served by the Underdetermination Thesis

“…That is, feminist values should determine which background assumptions should be adopted, or how observations should be interpreted, or what characteristics of theories should be relied upon in accepting a theory over its competitors (Longino 1990(Longino , 1995Nelson 1990;Anderson 1995Anderson , 2004Kourany 2003). …”

“…Several feminist philosophers, including Elizabeth Anderson (1995Anderson ( , 2004, Helen Longino (1990Longino ( , 1995Longino ( , 1996, and Janet Kourany (2003), have argued that feminist values can help increase the objectivity and rationality of scientific reasoning, including decisions about which theories to accept or reject. On this view, increasing the number of feminist scientists (or scientists who hold feminist values) is not only an important public policy goal for achieving equality for women; it is necessary for achieving objective and rational science.…”

Intersecting epistemologies: first-year students’ knowledge discourses in a Political Science module

“…The context is a historically 'white' South African university and the participants in this study are from traditionally disempowered communities: all are beginner students from under-resourced economic and educational backgrounds and all use English as an additional language in a context where English is the language of teaching and learning. This study identifies elements of the participants' 'social epistemologies' (Anderson 1995;Goldman 2001). Because all share a home language (isiZulu), a cultural heritage, and are from similar kinds of school, community, religious and family backgrounds it seemed possible to map out some shared epistemological frames and relate these to whatever prior experiences, histories, philosophies, institutions, discourses, texts or environments may have formed them.…”

The Limited Effectiveness of Prestige as an Intervention on the Health of Medical Journal Publications

“…Arguably, such studies do not provide sufcient ethical justication for involving human subjects and should be blocked by research ethics committees (Garattini et al 2003). 13 All of these critiques are predicated on the rejection of a value-free notion of objectivity in academic medicine: they take for granted that moral and social values dictating what constitute signicant clinical outcomes provide the proper grounds for evaluating the proper domain of research questions to pursue (Longino 1990: 90-2), types of analyses and endpoints to study (Longino 1990: 86;Anderson 1995), and the necessary selection of sample sizes and statistical margins according to which a hypothesis is to be accepted (Rudner 1953: 3;Douglas 2000: 565). For more on how contextual values can inuence methodological and evidential standards in biomedical research, see Intemann and de Melo-Martin (2010).…”