Breaking Out Again

Feminist Ontology and Epistemology

Liz Stanley, Sue Wise

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134907519
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Medical Theory, Practice & Reference

Stanley is co-editor of the journal Sociology, published by the British Sociological Association

Chapter 1
Feminism and the social sciences

Feminism demonstrates, without any possibility of doubt, that the social sciences are sexist, biased, and rotten with patriarchal values. However, feminist social science can be truly scientific in its approach. Having eradicated sexism, we can see and research the world as it truly is. Feminism encapsulates a distinctive value position, but these are truly human values, not just those of a ‘women’s perspective’. And so these values should be those of all people.

Our response to this view is ‘well, perhaps’. We feel that such criticisms of the social sciences are justified—as far as they go. But we also argue that the basic assumptions about social reality which are present within sexist social science are also present within most feminist social science. These criticisms, we say, are not far-reaching enough, not radical enough, not feminist enough.

A necessary starting point in examining some of these ideas is what has been called the ‘female critique’ of the social sciences. Work produced within this critique has been pioneering in what it has said and what it has attempted to do. And because it has been pioneering in this way we, and all other feminist researchers and scholars, are deeply indebted to it. But although we see this work as a necessary starting point, we don’t think it should be treated as tablets of stone brought down from the feminist mountain top. We pick out various pieces of work as ‘standing for’ certain ideas we want to explore within this critique. In doing so we’ve not attempted to examine whole bodies of work but particular themes and ideas which seem important and interesting.

KEY THEMES IN THE FEMINIST CRITIQUE

‘The female critique’

The most simple and in many ways the most powerful criticism made of theory and practice within the social sciences is that, by and large, they omit or distort the experience of women. Perhaps the most fully developed of such criticisms is made in relation to sociology by Ann Oakley (1974), who argues that sociology is sexist because it is solely concerned with the activities and interests of men. The subject-areas sociology is concerned with are artificial constructs which distort human experience. One consequence of this is that women’s ‘social presence’ within these areas of life is high although their ‘sociological visibility’ is low. In other words, although women are frequently massively present within whatever is studied, we but rarely appear in the end products of this. This may be because women are simply not ‘seen’ by researchers, are ignored by them or else our experiences are distorted by them. Oakley goes on to examine some possible explanations for sexism in sociology. She argues that there are three main explanations. The first of these lies in the origins of sociology, more specifically in the sexist interests and personalities of its ‘founding fathers’. Second, it is a ‘male profession’, because a preponderance of the people within it are men; it is therefore bound to reflect their interests and views of reality. Oakley feels that the third, and the main, reason for sexism within sociology concerns the ‘ideology of gender’ which leads people to construe the world in sexually stereotyped ways. Such a world view not only focuses attention on some areas of social reality (those which concern men), it also focuses attention away from others (those which concern women). She hits the nail right on the head when she says that ‘a way of seeing is a way of not seeing’ (Oakley, 1974, p. 27).

This feminist criticism has cogently argued the point that much social science work quite simply ignores women’s presence within vast areas of social reality. But also where women’s presence isn’t ignored it is viewed and presented in distorted and sexist ways.

In the field of criminology Carol Smart suggests that, although women have been ‘a topic’ in existing literature, the quality of this work leaves much to be desired (Smart, 1976). She examines the two main forms that sexism takes in it. The first kind of research is based on fundamentally inadequate perceptions of women which rely heavily on a ‘determinate model’ of female behaviour. This model argues not only that women are fundamentally different from men, but also that female criminality derives primarily from women’s role within reproduction and from the physiological differences which it sees as underlying this. The second kind of research classifies female offenders along with juvenile delinquents and mentally abnormal offenders. These groups of people, it argues, behave criminally for quite different reasons than the ‘normal criminal’, and these reasons are primarily psychological or emotional.

Smart has discussed how theoretical presuppositions and assumptions lead to distortion in both theory and practice. Such an identification, although on a much broader scale, indeed formed one of the starting points for the feminist critique of the social sciences in the early 1960s. This is Betty Friedan’s critique of ‘functionalism’, a major theoretical conceptualization of the relationship between the individual and social structure. Functionalism, both then and now, is for many people a totally accurate and morally correct description of social life. Social stability is all important, people internalize the rules and norms of their society, men work the economy and women’s place is in the home rearing children, within functionalist theory.

Betty Friedan attacked functionalism as a ‘moral theory’ (1963), deeply sexist in its beliefs and assumptions, and primarily concerned to describe the world ‘as it should be’ rather than how it was or is. She points out that functionalism has accurately described the decline in importance of the housewife role, the serious strains resulting from current definitions of femininity, and the strains discernible within marriage, but sees this as entirely retrograde and ‘dysfunctional’. They still advocate a strict division of roles between males and females and the confinement of women to the domestic sphere as absolutely socially necessary.

Oakley, Smart and Friedan point out that not only is women’s experience often ignored, but also where it is noted it is distorted. Frequently this distortion occurs in a specific way, and this has been picked up by feminists from various disciplines. Starting out from ideas in the work of Oakley, one of the present authors has looked at sociological research articles in a content analysis of three major British sociology journals (Stanley, 1974). Substantive work reported in these journals is generally focused on men and boys, and that which focuses on women and girls or on mixed groups of people is in a small minority. An extension of sexist thinking leads to most of this research seeing absolutely no problem in generalizing from the experience of these males to ‘people’ in a way that never occurs with the all-female research populations.

This ready generalization from the experience of males to all people has been noted in psychology by Jane Chetwynd, who similarly bases her observations on an examination of journal articles (1975). Psychology journal articles contain fewer females than males, generalize from male experience to the whole population, and also treat women as ‘non-men’. By this Chetwynd means that they take male experience as the norm and assume that female experience falls at the other end of a ‘bi-polar scale’ from that of males. And so females are characterized as underachievers because males are typified as achievers, are described as nonaggressive because males are typified as aggressive, and so on.

Chetwynd argues that the biases of under-representation, and the failure to take sex as a variable into account, ‘can all be corrected by simple attention to the fact’ (1975, p. 5). She also argues that far more serious and difficult to change than this are stereotypic ideas about women; but these too can be challenged by constantly questioning attitudes, and by being aware that such biases can affect the entire research process. And so she maintains that ‘bias’ can be removed from theory and practice and that ‘we must strive for the neutrality which true scientists exhibit’ (1975, p. 5). Chetwynd, as well as many other feminist academics, seems to accept the idea that ‘neutrality’ and ‘true science’ can be achieved within the social sciences. Indeed some feminists seem to go further than this by seeing the inclusion of women’s experience as the means of achieving this. We detect something of this in comments made by Michelle Rosaldo and Louisa Lamphere in relation to anthropology’s current ‘deficiencies’ (Rosaldo and Lamphere, 1974).

The lack of interest about women and women’s concerns within conventional anthropology is seen by them as leading to a ‘genuine deficiency, that…has led to distorted theories and impoverished ethnographic accounts’ (Rosaldo and Lamphere, 1974, p. vi). They argue that the concentration on male interests and concerns now necessitates a refocusing of attention on women and a consequent reappraisal of old theories.

This re-evaluation of existing theory and practice occasioned by feminist criticism is, they suggest, necessary for the development of anthropology as a ‘science’. To become truly scientific requires the recognition of old biases and the examination of areas of concern previously ignored within it. In other words, they suggest that this incorporation of women’s perspective will lead to the development of truly scientific work within anthropology.

The kind of feminist criticisms we have outlined so far are described by Jessie Bernard as ‘the female critique’ —the concern with the removal of sexist biases from, and the refinement of existing ideas and practices within, the social sciences (Bernard, 1973). She characterizes ‘the female critique’ as ‘normal science’. By this she means that it accepts existing social science assumptions, beliefs, ways of working and ways of viewing the world, and is concerned with removing sexism from these rather than producing any more radical alternative. While Bernard is largely approving of this emphasis in feminist academic work, we find it merely the beginning of a fully developed feminist alternative. We shall discuss this more fully at the end of this chapter, but the substance of our argument concerns our rejection of ‘normal science’.

Research on, by and for women

One implication of feminist criticisms of sexism within the social sciences is that future research ought to be on and for women, and should be carried out by women. Such research is, at least in part, ‘corrective’. By this we mean it is largely descriptive and concerned with filling in gaps in our knowledge about women. That this is a major concern of feminist social science can be seen in Arlene Kaplan Daniels’ review of American feminist sociological research, which demonstrates that most feminist research is focused entirely on women (Daniels, 1975).

Women’s present marginality within ‘male society’ means that women know about two different ‘worlds’, men know about only one. Including women’s ‘world’ in academic work would lead to the concerted reordering of established beliefs and perspectives, and also to a greater understanding of the many different stratifications which exist within society. But such a contribution, she suggests, can come about only through carrying out research on topics in which female interests have not been previously explored. And so the emphasis on feminist research which is concerned to ‘fill in the gaps’ by focusing on women only.

This emphasis on ‘filling in the gaps’ about women’s interests and experiences is reflected in much of the literature about sexism in the social sciences. The epitome of such an approach can be seen in the foundation and operation of ‘women’s studies’, in which research on and for women has become the focus for feminists and some academics (Tobias, 1978).

The rationale behind the development of women’s studies is that so much has been excluded and so much misrepresented about women that, Tobias feels, the particular study of ‘women’ as a separate topic area is an appropriate corrective to this.

But there are dangers in such an approach. Studying women separately may lead to a ‘ghetto effect’, because if ‘women’ are separated-off in this way then feminist work may be seen as having no implication for the rest of the social sciences. We feel that an equal danger is that if such a separation occurs then the social sciences won’t influence feminism. If ‘academic feminism’ becomes ‘women’s studies’ then this separating-off of feminism from particular disciplines may also separate it off from ideas and debates of crucial importance to it. Feminism, we argue, should remain open to, adopt, adapt, modify and use, interesting and useful ideas from any and every source. If it becomes cut-off from research and thinking in specialist fields and particular disciplines, then academic feminism cuts off its life-blood as much as if it cut itself off from feminism itself.

We also have difficulty with the idea that feminist research must be research on women only. If ‘sexism’ is the name of the problem addressed by feminism then men are importantly involved, to say the least, in its practice. And so we argue that, essential though research specifically on women is, feminist research (as opposed to women’s studies) must not become confined to this. Feminist research must be concerned with all aspects of social reality and all participants in it. It seems obvious to us that any analysis of women’s oppression must involve research on the part played by men in this.

Although we find problems with research exclusively ‘on women’, we see an emphasis on research by women as absolutely fundamental to feminist research. We reject the idea that men can be feminists because we argue that what is essential to ‘being feminist’ is the possession of ‘feminist consciousness’. And we see feminist consciousness as rooted in the concrete, practical and everyday experiences of being, and being treated as, a woman. Feminist consciousness, as we discuss it in more detail in chapter 5, is a particular kind of interpretation of the experience of being a woman as this is presently constructed in sexist society. No men know what it is to be treated as a woman; and even fewer interpret such treatment in the ways we shall define as central to ‘feminist consciousness’.

Closely associated with the interpretation of feminist research as research on women and by women is the notion that it ought also to be research for women. The product of feminist research should be directly used by women in order to formulate policies and provisions necessary for feminist activities. Each of these three elements—on, by and for women—is included in Nancy Kleiber and Linda Light’s ideas about ‘interactive methodology’ (Kleiber and Light, 1978). Their work is primarily concerned with formulating a new approach to research practice derived from feminist principles and understandings. In this they are particularly concerned with the part played by ‘the researched’ as well as ‘the researcher’, and with breaking down the power differentials that exist between them in the research process.

Their research was carried out on, within, and for, the Vancouver Women’s Health Collective and not from the traditional research vantage point outside the group studied. What they describe as their ‘interactive methodology’ is, as it stands, no more and no less than a traditional battery of research techniques. However, they attempt to use these techniques and methods in a new way, so that ‘the researched’ become much more a part of the research process. In attempting to do this the people who were the ‘objects’ of the research helped to choose methods, to decide what should be focused on within the research, and were involved in the interpretation of results and the use of these in changing the operation of the Health Collective. And so Kleiber and Light suggest that this research was truly ‘interactive’, because the Collective was always in a state of change, to a large extent because of the on-going application of the research findings.

This approach, suggest Kleiber and Light, can be separated out into different but related issues. These concern the sharing out of power, the ownership of information by everyone rather than just the researchers, and the rejection of traditional interpretations of ‘objectivity’. However, they insist that this rejection of objectivity, so-defined, doesn’t mean that ‘basic standards’ of research aren’t conformed to. The type of research methods used in Kleiber and Light’s work are very traditional, so for us what is particularly interesting about it is the part played by ‘the researched’ rather than its ‘methodology’ as such. A consequence of this new role of the researched was that the research results became interpreted as for them. This research insists that the primary recipients and users of feminist research should be the people who are its subjects rather than the researchers.

This is one of the most interesting pieces of feminist research that we have seen. Of course ‘action research’ itself isn’t new, although this was one of its first feminist manifestations (Duelli- Klein, 1980; Mies, 1978). But what is new here is the conscious and deliberate sharing of skills, the recognition that the researched have power and knowledge which the researchers need, and the acceptance of feminist principles by everyone involved. But we also feel that this research doesn’t go far enough along the path it has chosen. The presence of feminist thinking has affected the ‘power’ aspect of information gathering, but not the means by which this information was gathered nor even the kind of information collected. Also the research report is presented by the researchers only, not by the researched as well; we see everything from the researchers’ point of view. Our own feeling is that its dismantling of power differentials is more apparent than real, at best only partial. If we were ‘the researched’, we would find a report written by only the researchers a convincing demonstration of this.

And for us a further problem exists...