Women,Graduate Education,and Feminist Knowledge

Abstract

This paper argues that knowledge and strategies of inquiry for producing knowledge are not gender-neutral. Bias in existing academic disciplines goes deeper than simply ignoring the existence of women as scholarly contributors or as a category for study. Bias extends to the very philosophical foundations of how inquiry is conceptualized. It extends to theories about how we think and to judgments about what constitutes “good” thinking. As a result, women in graduate school are often constrained to inquire in ways that are male-oriented and discontinuous with their life experience—to the detriment of their persistence in graduate programs. The paper discusses the relationships between feminist scholarship, science, feminist epistemology, and developments in the philosophy of science. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these relationships for the education of women.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

American Council on Education. (1981). 1981/82 fact book for academic administrators. Washington, DC: American Council on Education.

Bhaskar

(1975). A realist theory of science. Leeds, England: Leeds Books.

Bhaskar

(1979). The possibility of naturalism. Brighton, England: Harvester Press.

Bleier

(1984). Science and gender: A critique of biology and its theories on women. New York: Pergamon.

Bohm

(1957). Cause and chance in modern physics. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Bunge

(1959). Causality. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Chodorow

(1978). The reproduction of mothering. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Eisenberg

, & Lennon

(1983). Sex differences in empathy and related capacities. Psychological Bulletin, 94, 100–131.

Gilligan

(1982). In a different voice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

10.

Greenson

(1968). Disidentifying from mother: Its special importance for the boy. In Explorations in psychoanalysis (pp. 305–312). New York: International Universities Press.

11.

Hanson

N. R.

(1958). Patterns of discovery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

12.

Harre

(1972). Philosophies of science. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

13.

Jaeger

(1983). Feminist politics and human nature. Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman & Allanheld.

14.

Keller

E. F.

(1978). Gender and science. In Harding

, & Hintikka

(Eds.), Discovering reality (pp. 187–205). Boston: D. Reidel.

15.

Kuhn

(1962). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

16.

Manicas

P. T.

, & Secord

P. F.

(1983). Implications for psychology of the new philosophy of science. American Psychologist, 38(4), 399–413.

17.

Martin

J. R.

(1984). Bringing women into educational thought. Educational Theory, 3(4), 341–353.

18.

Maslow

(1966). The psychology of science. New York: Harper & Row.

19.

Mitroff

I. A.

(1974). The subjective side of science. New York: Elsevier.

20.

Toulmin

(1961). Foresight and understanding. New York: Harper & Row.

21.

Weisstein

(1971). Psychology constructs the female. In Gornick

, & Moran

B. K.

(Eds.), Women in sexist society (pp. 96–104). New York: Basic Books.

22.

Witkin

H. A.

(1962). Psychological differentiation. New York: John Wiley.