Anderson - Feminist Epistemology: An Interpretation and A Defense.
Anderson - Feminist Epistemology: An Interpretation and A Defense.
Anderson - Feminist Epistemology: An Interpretation and A Defense.
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FeministEpistemology:
An Interpretation
anda Defense
ELIZABETHANDERSON
has oftenbeenunderstood
as thestudyof feminine"ways
Feministepistemology
is
better
understoodas the branchof
But
feminist epistemology
of knowing."
that
the
various
studies
social
naturalized,
influencesof normsand
epistemology
and
on theproductionof
and
interests
experiences
conceptionsof gender gendered
claims
about
avoids
dubious
This
femininecognitive
understanding
knowledge.
differencesand enablesfeministresearchin variousdisciplinesto pose deepinternal
critiquesof mainstreamresearch.
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dents and researchershave had on the content, shape, and progressof theoretical knowledge. In some cases, sex discrimination in the academy has
demonstrablyretarded the growth of knowledge. It took more than three
decades for biologists to understandand recognizethe revolutionaryimportance of BarbaraMcClintock'sdiscoveryof genetic transposition.Her attempts
to communicate this discovery to the largerscientific community met with
incomprehensionand disdain.This failurecan be partlyexplained by the fact
that no biology departmentwas willing to hire her for a permanentposition
despite her distinguishedrecordof discoveriesand publications.Lackingthe
opportunitiessuch a position wouldhave providedto recruitgraduatestudents
to her researchprogram,McClintock had no one else doing researchlike hers
who could replicateher resultsor help communicatethem to a widerscientific
community (Keller 1983).
Cases such as McClintock's demonstrate that the gendered structureof
theoretical labor and cognitive authority sometimes slows the progressof
knowledge. But does it change the content or shape of knowledge or the
directionof knowledgegrowth?If the genderof the knoweris irrelevantto the
content of what is investigated, discovered,or invented, then the impact of
removingsex discriminationwouldbe to add to the pace of knowledgegrowth
by adding more inquirers and by raising the average level of talent and
dedication in the research community. Feminist epistemology would then
recommend strictly "gender-blind" changes in the processes by which
research jobs get assigned and epistemic authority distributed. The MLA's
adoption of blind reviewing of papersto reduce cognitive bias due to sexism
in the evaluation of research represents an exemplary application of this
side of feminist epistemology. It is logically on a par with the institution of
double-blind testing in drugresearchto reduce cognitive bias due to wishful
thinking.
But if the gender of the inquirermakesa differenceto the content of what
is accepted as knowledge, then the exclusion and undervaluationof women's
participationin theoreticalinquirydoes not merelyset uprandomlydistributed
roadblocksto the improvementof understanding.It impartsa systematicbias
on what is taken to be knowledge. If the gender of the inquirer makes a
differenceto what is known, then feministepistemologywould not confine its
recommendationsto purelygender-blindreformsin our knowledgepractices.
It could recommend that these knowledge practices actively seek gender
diversityand balance among inquirersand actively attend to the genderof the
researchersin evaluating their products.
The genderof the researcheris known to makea differenceto what is known
in certain areas of social science. In survey research,subjects give different
answersto questions depending on the perceived gender of the interviewer
(Sherif 1987, 47-48). The perceived race of the interviewer also influences
subjects'responses.It is a highly significantvariableaccounting for subjects'
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that women have gender-typical"waysof knowing,"styles of thinking, methodologies, and ontologies that globallygovern or characterizetheir cognitive
activities acrossall subjectmatters.Forinstance, variousfeminist epistemologists have claimed that women think more intuitively and contextually,
concern themselves more with particularsthan abstractions, emotionally
engage themselves more with individual subjects of study, and frame their
thoughts in termsof a relationalratherthan an atomistic ontology (Belenky,
Clinchy, Goldbergerand Tarule 1986; Gilligan 1982; H. Rose 1987; Smith
1974; Collins 1990).
There is little persuasiveevidence forsuch globalclaims (Tavris1992, chap.
2). I believe the temptation to accept them is based partly on a confusion
between gendersymbolism-the fact that certain styles of thinking are labeled
"feminine"-and the actual characteristicsof women. It is also partlydue to
the lack of morecomplex and nuancedmodelsof how women enteringcertain
fields have changed the courseof theorizingfor reasonsthat seem connected
to their gender or their feminist commitments. I will propose an alternative
model toward the end of this essay, which does not suppose that women
theorists bring some sharedfeminine differenceto all subjectsof knowledge.
Controversiesover supposedglobal differencesin the ways men and women
think have tended to overshadowother highly interesting work in feminist
epistemologythat does not depend on claims that men and women think in
essentially different ways. The influence of genderedconcepts and norms in
ourknowledgepracticesextends farbeyondthe waysmale and female individuals are socialized and assignedto differentroles in the division of labor.To
see this, consider the role of gendersymbolismin theoretical knowledge.
GENDER SYMBOLISM(I): THE HIERARCHYOF KNOWLEDGE
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a qualitative,historical,or interpretivemethodology.Experimentationasserts
more control over subjectsof study than observationdoes. So experimental
subfieldsin biology and psychologyare coded masculine and commandmore
cognitive authoritythan observationalsubfieldsof the samedisciplines.Values
are designatedfeminine. So normativesubfieldsin philosophy such as ethics
and political philosophy enjoy less prestige than supposedlynonnormative
fieldssuch asphilosophyof languageandmind.Social interpretationis thought
to be a feminine skill. So interpretiveanthropologyis designatedless masculine, scientific, and rigorousthan physical anthropology,which deals with
"hard"facts like fossilbones. In each of these cases,the sociallyenforcednorm
forrelationsbetween fields of knowledgemirrorsthat of the relationsbetween
husband and wife in the ideal patriarchalfamily: the masculine science is
autonomousfromand exercisesauthorityover the feminine science, which is
supposedlydependenton the former'spronouncementsto know what it should
think next.
This genderedhierarchyof theoreticalsubfieldsproducesseriouscognitive
distortions. Carolyn Sherif (1987) has investigated how the hierarchy of
prestigegeneratescognitive biasesin psychology.Fortyyearsago,experimental
psychology dominated developmental and social psychology.The gendered
character of this difference in cognitive authority is not difficult to read.
Experimentalpsychologists,by imitating the methods of the "hard"sciences
through manipulatingquantifiedvariables,claim some of the prestigeof the
naturalsciences. Developmentaland social psychologistsengage in laborthat
looks more like the low-status labor conventionally assigned to women.
Developmental psychologists work with children; social psychologists deal
with human relationships,and forty years ago usually did so in settings not
under the control of the researcher.Following the norm that "masculine"
sciences need not pay attention to findingsin "feminine"sciences, which it is
assumedcannot possiblybear on their more "fundamental"research,experimental psychology has a history of constructing experiments that, like Ray
Frey's,ignore the ways the social context of the experiment itself and the
social relation between experimenter and subject influence outcomes. The
result has been a history of findings that lack robustness because they are
mere artifacts of the experimental situation. In experimental research on
sex differences, this error has taken the form of ascribing observed differences in male and female behavior underexperimental conditions to innate
difference in male and female psychology rather than to the ways the
experiment has socially structured the situation so as to elicit different
responses from men and women.
The notorious claim in experimental psychology that women are more
suggestiblethan men offersan instructiveillustrationof the perilsof ignoring
social psychology (Sherif 1987, 49-50). The original experiments that confirmedthe hypothesisof greatersuggestibilityinvolved male researcherstrying
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competitive demands of the public sphere with a clear eye, the ideology of
masculinitytends to confuseseeing the naturalworldas indifferentin the sense
of devoid of teleological lawswith seeing the social worldas hostile in the sense
of full of agents who pursuetheir interests at others' expense (Keller 1992,
116-18). This confusion tempts biologists into thinking that the selfishness
their models ascribeto genes and the ruthlessstrategicrationalitytheir models
ascribeto individualorganisms(mere metaphors,however theoreticallypowerful) are more "real"than the actual care a dog expressestowardher pups.
Such thoughts also reflect the rhetoricof unmaskingbase motivationsbehind
policies that seem to be benevolent, a common if overused tactic in liberal
politics and political theory.The powerof this rhetoricdependson an appearance/realitydistinction that has no place wherethe stakesarecompetingsocial
modelsof biological phenomena, whose merits depend on their metaphorical
ratherthan their referentialpowers.Thus, to the extent that the theoretical
preference for competitive models in biology is underwritten by rhetoric
borrowed from androcentric political ideologies, the preference reflects a
confusion between models and reality as well as an unjustified intrusion of
androcentricpolitical loyalties into the scientific enterprise.
These arenot concerns that can be relieved by deployingthe discovery/justification distinction. To the extent that motivations tied to acquiring a
masculine-coded prestige as a theorist induce mathematical ecologists to
overlook the epistemic defects of models of natural selection that fail to
consider the actual impact of sexual selection, parenting, and cooperative
interactions,they distortthe context of justificationitself. Some of the criteria
of justification, such as simplicity, are also distorted in the light of the
androcentric distinction between public and private values. For example,
simplicity in mathematical biology has been characterizedso as to prefer
explanations of apparentlyfavorablepatterns of group survival in terms of
chance to explanations in termsof interspecificfeedbackloops, if straightforward individualistic mechanisms are not available to explain them (Keller
1992, 153). Finally,to the extent that genderideologiesinformthe context of
discoveryby influencing the direction of inquiryand development of mathematicaltools, they prevent the growthof alternativemodels and the tools that
could make them tractable,and hence they bias our views of what is "simple"
(Keller 1992, 160). The discovery/justificationdistinction, while usefulwhen
consideringthe epistemic relation of a theory to its confirmingor disconfirming evidence, breaksdown once we considerthe relative meritsof alternative
theories. In the latter context, any influence that biases the development of
the field of alternatives will bias the evaluation of theories. A theoretical
approachmay appearbest justifiednot becauseit offersan adequatemodel of
the world but becauseandrocentricideologieshave causedmore thought and
resourcesto be invested in it than in alternatives.
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and relationships,they found that infant survivalvariedenormously,depending on the behaviorand social statusof the mothers,that troop survivalitself
sometimes depended on the eldest female (who would teach others the
location of distant waterholes that had surviveddroughts),and that femaledirectedsocial and sexual behaviorsplay key roles in maintainingand changing primate social organizations (Hrdy 1981; Haraway 1989). Today the
importanceof female primatesis widely recognizedand studiedby both male
and female primatologists.
What normative implicationsshould be drawnabout the epistemic status
of androcentrictheories?Some feminist epistemologistspropose that theory
can proceed better by viewing the world through the eyes of female agents.
Gynocentrictheorycan be fun. What could be a moreamusingretortto a study
that purportsto explain why women lackself-esteemthan a studythat explains
why men are conceited?It can also be instructive.RichardWrangham(1979)
has proposed a gynocentric model of primate social organizationthat has
achieved widespreadrecognition in primatology.The model assumes the
centralityof female competition for food resources,and predictshow females
will space themselves (singly or in kin-related groups) according to the
distributionof the foods they eat. Males then space themselves so as to gain
optimumaccessto females.The model is gynocentricboth in definingthe core
of primate social groups around female kin-relations rather than around
relations to a dominant male and in taking the situation of females to
constitute the primaryvariablethat accountsforvariationsin male and general
primate social organization.According to the feminist primatologistSarah
Hrdy (1981, 126), Wrangham'smodel offersthe best availableexplanationof
primatesocial organization.
The three androcentric theoretical constructs mentioned correspondto
three differentwaysin which a theorycould be "gender-centric":
in takingone
sex or genderto set the normforboth, in definingcentralconceptswith respect
to the sex- or gender-typicalcharacteristics,behaviors,or perspectivesof males
or females alone, and in taking the behaviors,situation, or characteristicsof
one sex or gender to be causallycentral in determiningparticularoutcomes.
These logical differencesin gender-centrictheorizinghave differentepistemic
implications. As Wrangham'stheory shows, gynocentric causal models can
sometimes be superiorto androcentricmodels. Whether they are superiorin
any particulardomain of interest is an empirical question. It can only be
answeredby comparingrival gender-centricmodels to one another and to
models that do not privilege either male- or female-typical activities or
situationsin their causalaccounts,but ratherfocuson activities and situations
common to both males and females. An importantcontribution of feminist
scholarship in the social sciences and biology has been to show that the
activities and situations of females have been far more causallyimportantin
variousdomains than androcentrictheories have recognized.
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and women inhabit completely and rigidly segregatedspheres, and only for
concepts that apply exclusively to one or the other gender in such a society.
Normative gender-centrismeither dependson a problematiccosmic teleology
or on sexist values. This does not automaticallymake it epistemicallyinadequate,but it does requirethe assumptionof an explanatoryburden(why men's
and women's traits do not receive symmetricalexplanatorytreatment) that
non-gender-centrictheories need not assume.In addition, its dependence on
sexist values give theoristswho repudiatesexism sufficientreason to conduct
inquirythat is not normativelygender-centric.Finally,causalgender-centrism
may or may not be empiricallyjustified.Some events do turn asymmetrically
on what men or women do, or on how men or women are situated.
The chief trap in causal gender-centrismis the temptation to reify the
domain of events that are said to turn asymmetricallyon the actions or
characteristicsof one or the other gender.The selection of a domainof inquiry
is alwaysa function of the interestsof the inquirer.2Failureto recognizethis
maylead androcentrictheoriststo constructtheir domainof studyin waysthat
confine it to just those phenomena that turn asymmetricallyon men'sactivities. They may thereforedeclare as an objective fact that, say, women have
little causal impact on the "economy,"when all that is going on is that they
have not taken any interest in women'sproductiveactivities, and so have not
categorizedthose activities as "economic."Feminist naturalizedepistemologistscaution againstthe view that domainsof inquirydemarcatenaturalkinds.
FollowingQuine, they questionsupposedconceptualbarriersbetween natural
and social science, analyticand synthetic knowledge,personaland impersonal
knowledge,fact and value (Nelson 1990, chap. 3). Their empiricistcommitments enable them to uncover surprisingconnections among apparently
distantpoints in the web of belief. If naturalizedepistemologistsuse space-age
technology to explore the universeof knowledge,feminist naturalizedepistemologists could be said to specialize in the discovery of wormholes in that
universe. Gender and science are not light-years apart after all; subspace
distortionsin our cognitive apparatuspermitsurprisinglyrapidtransportfrom
one to the other, but feminist navigatorsare needed to ensure that we know
the route we are travellingand have reasonto take it.
SEXISMIN SCIENTIFIC
THEORIES
One frequentlytraveledroute between genderand science employsnormative assumptionsaboutthe properrelationsbetween men and women, or about
the respective characteristicsand interestsof men and women, in the content
or application of scientific theories. When a theory assertsthat women are
inferiorto men, properlysubordinatedto men, or properlyconfined to genderstereotypedroles, or when it judgesor describeswomen accordingto sexist or
doublestandards,the content of the theoryis sexist. When people employsuch
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OFNATURALIZED
THELOCAL
CHARACTER
FEMINIST
EPISTEMOLOGY
In readingthe projectof feministepistemologyalong naturalized,empiricist
lines, I have tried to show how its interest and critical power do not depend
on the global, transcendentalclaims that all knowledge is gendered or that
rationality as a regulatoryepistemic ideal is masculine. Naturalizedfeminist
epistemologistsmay travel to distant locations in the universe of belief, but
they alwaysremain inside that universe and travel from gender to science by
way of discrete, empiricallydiscoveredpaths. They have an interest in constructing new paths to empirically adequate, fruitful, and useful forms of
feminist science and in breakingup other paths that lead to cognitively and
sociallyunsatisfactorydestinations.All the paths by which naturalizedepistemologistsfind genderto influencetheoreticalknowledgearelocal, contingent,
and empiricallyconditioned. All the paths by which they proposeto change
these influences accept rationality as a key epistemic ideal and empirical
adequacyas a fundamentalgoal of acceptabletheories.This ideal and this goal
are in principleequallyopen to pursuitby male and female inquirers,but may
be best realizedby mixed-genderresearchcommunities.Naturalizedepistemologistsfind no persuasiveevidence that indicatesthat all women inquirersbring
some sharedglobal feminine differencein ways of thinking to all subjectsof
studynor that such a feminine differencegives us privilegedaccess to the way
the world is.
In rejectingglobal,transcendentalclaimsaboutdifferencesin the waysmen
and women think, naturalizedfeminist epistemologistsdo not imply that the
entry and advancement of significant numbers of women into scientific
communitiesmakesno systematicdifferenceto the knowledge these communities produce.But, following their view of inquiryas a social, not an individual, enterprise, they credit the improvements in knowledge such entry
producesto the greaterdiversityand equalityof membershipin the scientific
community rather than to any purportedlyprivileged subject position of
women as knowers (Tuana 1992; Longino 1993a). Men and women do have
somegender-specificexperiencesandpersonalknowledgedue to their different
socializationand social status.We have seen that such experiences and forms
of knowledge can be fruitfullybroughtto bear upon theoretical inquiry.So it
should not be surprisingthat women researchershave exposed and criticized
androcentrismin theories much more than men have. The diversity and
equalityof inquirershelp ensurethat social models do not merelyreflect or fit
the circumstancesof a narrowdemographicsegment of the population when
they are meant to applyto everyone.They correcta cognitive bias commonly
found among inquirersbelonging to all demographicgroups,located in the
habit of assumingthat the waythe worldappearsto oneself is the way it appears
to everyone.
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NOTES
I wish to thank Ann Cudd,Sally Haslanger,Don Herzog,David Hills, PeterRailton,
Justin Schwartz,MiriamSolomon, and the faculties at the Law Schools of Columbia
University,the University of Chicago, and NorthwesternUniversity for helpful com-
mentsandcriticisms.
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knowledgefor the sake of finding out how to get the proverbialpot of gold at the end.
Curiosityis one kind of interestwe can expressin a phenomenon.
3. The questionof the impactof feministtheoristson knowledgeis distinctfrombut
relatedto the questionof the impactof women theoristson knowledge.Not all women
theoristsarefeminists,andsomefeministtheoristsaremen.At the sametime, therecould
be no genuinefeministtheorythat wasconductedby men alone. Feministtheoryis theory
committed to the liberationand equalityof women. These goals can only be achieved
throughthe exerciseof women'sown agency,especiallyin definingand coming to know
themselves.Feministtheoryis one of the vehicles of women'sagency in pursuitof these
goals, and thereforecannot realizeits aims if it is not conductedby women. So it should
not be surprisingthat most of the transformationsof knowledge induced by feminist
theorywere broughtaboutby women.
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