Feminist Epistemologies

nwsa Journal, 2002

This article focuses on the often-lamented distinction between Women's Studies as an academic entity and feminism as a social movement. Whereas many feminist scholars urge us to return to social movement to counter the forces of institutionalization, I question the assumption that the political future of Women's Studies as a fi eld can be guaranteed by repairing the distinction between academic institutionalization and feminism as a world changing social force. Indeed, I worry more about the implications for Women's Studies of refusing altogether the distinction between the academy and activism than about the diffi culty of repairing the distinction between them.

Sociological Bulletin, 2000

The past couple of decades have seen a profusion of feminist work in the academia, a great part of such work being in the humanities and social sciences. Many subjects, such as literature and art, have been influenced and even transformed by feminist writings. The blooming of feminist theory has been accompanied by the emergence of another field, that of Women's Studies, which may take the form of an exclusive department, or topics related to women may be included in different course curricula. Whatever its form, Women's Studies is an integral part of the feminist project, and the presence of the doctrine of feminism and feminist theory within the university education system is an established fact. However, in this write-up, I would like to allude to some problems regarding the theoretical framework(s) related to feminism as also the actual everyday grounded behaviour of those engaged in this pursuit. Is feminism truly a success story? Are the feminist academics fighting against the conservative forces, and side by side, becoming the authors of reform? Or is it all a fantasy, a falsehood, and above all, wishful thinking aimed at deluding ourselves? I have tried to look at these questions by taking up two issues. First, what is the state of feminist studies today and second, what are the feminist academics actually doing. The first I shall deal with by taking recourse to secondary sources, while the second is examined from my own experiences as a professional in higher education. Feminism and Feminist Theory Let's begin with feminism itself. There is always a problem explicating terms like feminism. Simply put, feminism can be defined as the doctrine advancing the view that women are systematically disadvantaged and are

South African journal of higher education, 2010

Fielding questions and curiosity about your research prompts you to consider how it is being read and understood. As a reader of research my inquisitiveness is about what its relationship is with other research, why the research is designed in a particular way and how researchers arrive at their findings. In other words, one looks for conceptual coherence in the arguments that are raised during the process of doing research. This article represents a reflexive account of my engagement with empirical research as a feminist researcher. I present supporting epistemological arguments to challenge the hegemony of a ‘universal’ knowledge that continues to make knowledges that are produced through feminist methodologies, suspect; thus undermining the value of such knowledges. My stance is that knowledge that is produced through research is always situated and thus never universal. Furthermore, the situatedness of the knowledge of the participant as well as the located knowledge of the researcher contributes to the research product (Haraway 1991; Stanley and Wise, 1993).

Šolsko polje, 2020

The aim of this article is to gain insights into how feminist principles, content and practices persist in higher education in times of neoliberal ideology, post-feminism and the intensification of extreme-right wing politics. The main issue the article seeks to address is the state of gender-related and feminist topics in higher education. Their state should be addressed at the intersections of: 1) social context; 2) institutional settings (formalised and officialised gender-related curricula); and 3) intra-institutional practices, such as backlashes to and sanctions against feminist practices. In order to achieve this, we start by briefly sketching the beginnings of women’s studies worldwide, and the ambivalences of institutionalising feminist knowledge. We proceed by focusing our discussion on the contemporary social situation, significantly marked by right-wing politics and neoliberal ideology, aiming to constitute feminism as irrelevant on the grounds of an individualised ‘brav...

Affilia, 2013

This article reports on the ways in which feminism has led to and influenced the unfolding of our three separate doctoral research journeys. In writing about this choice, we suggest that the epistemology of feminism is compatible with qualitative methods, as well as with the social work discipline, within which we all practice. The article reports on the impact of feminism on this journey from the perspective of three different stages of doctoral research, beginning, middle, and ending.

Left Feminisms: Conversations on the personal and the political, 2023

Speaking of feminism Jo Littler This book brings together a series of interviews I have conducted with feminist academics on the left over the past decade. It features a spread of people, ranging from their twenties to their eighties, from political scientists to psychologists, from Bristol to Buenos Aires. All the interviewees have very different experiences, opinions, and interests in relation to feminism. But they are all concerned, in some way or another, with relating gender to economic inequality; and they are all involved with political, creative or activist projects outside, as well as inside, universities.

Maria do Mar Pereira's book can be seen as several different books all very cogently rolled into one. It manages to be, at once, a book about the role of feminism in academia, about the dynamics of Women's, Gender and Feminist Studies (WGFS) as an academic activity, about feminist critiques of scientific epistemology, about the situatedness (geographical and temporal) of knowledge production within a very anglo-centric academic ecosystem, about the neoliberalisation of academia, about the embodied experience (and harm) of academic work, and about the self-reflexiveness of writing an academic book about people who write academic books. At no point are all these layers confused or confusing, and they flow consistently and methodically, demonstrating a superb command of the literature involved, both in depth and in breadth – as many references are from outside the anglosphere of most-cited authors. From here, it follows that this book has several target audiences – people focusing on WGFS, on mental health, on academic praxis, on epistemology, on postcolonial studies, on guides for self-reflexive writing, on cultural studies, on ethnography, on neoliberalism and precarious work, among others, will find here plenty of interesting material, and an absolutely impressive literature review from which to draw. The author is quite aware that this, too, is a way for her to perform academic status – that she is not outside of the dynamics that she is studying – and it shows how familiar she is with the field of sociology and WGFS. The main idea behind the book is that, in order to understand the processes of power and knowledge at work in academia, an ethnographic analysis is necessary – one that combines structural aspects (funding, politics, marketing) with situated events, even those that are often seen as unremarkable, such as 'corridor talk', or back-and-forth conversations in classes. To do this, Maria do Mar Pereira creates a new conceptual tool-a feminist theory of epistemic status: the degree to which, and the terms in which, a knowledge claim, or entire field, is recognized as fulfilling the requisite criteria to be considered credible and relevant knowledge, however those criteria are defined in specific spaces, communities and moments (p. 1). This concept was created through the interweaving of three perspectives on the relationship between power and knowledge: Foucault, Code and Gieryn. From Foucault, the idea of the " production of effects of scientificity requires examining the episteme " (p. 48) of that context, which means considering which discourses are validated and productive in that context; from Code, Maria do Mar Pereira focuses on the everyday life of academia, the spaces and territories where discourses are uttered,

Ann N Y Acad Sci, 1996

O ver the past 10 years of teaching courses on research methods and feminist approaches to methodologies and epistemologies, a recurring question from our students concerns the distinctiveness of feminist approaches to methods, methodologies, and epistemologies. This key question is posed in different ways: Is there a specifically feminist method? Are there feminist methodologies and epistemologies, or simply feminist approaches to these? Given diversity and debates in feminist theory, how can there be a consensus on what constitutes "feminist" methodologies and epistemologies?