Feminist Analysis

Feminist analysis is grounded in an understanding of fundamental power differentials between women and men. Beginning in the 1980s, authors such as Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Cheris Kramarae started to carve out a space to examine gendered power relations in the communications field. In the 1990s, in quick succession, three generative articles showed the radical trajectory of feminist analysis in the communications field. First, in 1994, Carole Blair, Julie R. Brown, and Leslie A. Baxter’s expose of sexist journal review practices gave notice of the professional abuse feminist scholars faced. In 1995, Sonya K. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin’s “Beyond Persuasion: A Proposal for Invitational Rhetoric” challenged normative and traditional understandings of rhetoric as necessarily engaging in persuasion. Instead of encouraging the dominance of one ...