Feminist Epistemology

An Overview of Feminist Theories

There are many feminist theories. Although there are similarities and points of conflict among them, they all arose out of the fact that feminism as a historical and social movement was intended to challenge women's oppression. There generally has been an assumption that most people have been socialized into sexist ideology and often into particular gender roles and ways of thinking that usually give males more institutional, social, and economic power and access to resources. Feminism assumes that the problem in gender relations is not men, but sexism and the forces of patriarchy that lead to sexism. Feminism seeks to challenge sexism and sexist ways of thinking and living that limit both men and women. As feminist cultural critic bell hooks has discussed, everyone has something to gain from the feminist movement, as its purpose is to create more equitable relations for all people—both women and men.

Over the course of history, in response to the gender climate in society at any given era as well as the academic disciplines that inform scholarship, feminism has taken on different forms and emphases. For example, up until the late 1970s or early 1980s, the feminist movement was intended to address the needs of women in general; however, it in fact focused on the experience and needs of White, middle-class women and did not adequately take into account the impact of race and class. Thus, from the late 1980s and on into the new millennium, there has been much development in research and scholarship by and about women of [Page 332]color and in scholarship that focuses on differences among women. More recently, much work in feminist theory has foregrounded the effects of globalization. The remainder of this section focuses on the different strands of feminist theory broken down broadly into three areas. In each section, there is a particular emphasis on the major epistemological focus of these strands, as well as a consideration of how these theoretical threads deal with differences among women.

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