Summary and Important Ideas

I. Definition of Terms
A. Method
1. Technique for gathering evidence
B. Methodology
1. Theory and analysis of the special ways in which the
general structure of theory find its application in particular scientific disciplines
C. Epistemology
1. A theory of knowledge
2. Concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge, its
presuppositions and basis, and the general reliability of claims to knowledge
3. A branch of philosophy that investigates the origin,
nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge (from dictionary.com)

II. Critiques of Traditional Methods

A. Androcentrism
1. Prescription of only a narrow range of methods has
made it impossible to understand womens natures and lives or how gender
activities and commitments influence behaviors and beliefs
2. Having only men interview only men about both men and
womens beliefs and behaviors
3. Cosmetics tested only on male rats on the grounds that
the estrus cycle unduly complicates experiments on female rats
4. Finding womens responses to his [Lawrence Kohlberg]
moral dilemmas less easy than the mens responses to sort into the categories
he had set up
5. Freud, Piaget, and Ericson believe that the patterns of
moral development characteristic of men should be regarded as the model of
human development.
6. Faulty methods of inquiry appear to be implicated in
these cases
B. Methodolatry
1. Fetishization of method
2. Preoccupation with method mystifies what have been
the most interesting aspects of feminist research process
3. Sacrifices scientific explanation and increased
understanding to scientistic fashions in research design
4. Fetishization of method itself also a target of feminist
criticisms

III. Proposed Alternative Feminist Research Methods

A. Catharine MacKinnon (1982): consciousness-raising is feminist method
1. Leaves biologists and social scientists puzzled about
what exactly they should do differently
B. Nancy Hartsock (1983): specifically feminist historical materialism
1. Replicates components of the method of Marxist political
economy (dialectical historical materialism)
2. Method of inquiry as well as epistemology
C. Phenomenological approaches
1. Feminist method is whatever is the opposite of
excessive empiricism or of positivist strains in social research
 2. Focus on the virtues of qualitative vs. quantitative
studies, and on importance of researcher identifying rather than objectifying her
(women) subjects
3. Prescription of a phenomenological approach as the
feminist method ignores many of the well-known problems with such ways of
conducting social research
4. Subjects of social inquiry are often not aware
5. These approaches do not fully enough appreciate
importance of critical studies of masculinity and men nor of feminist critical
studies of womens beliefs and behaviors

IV. Debate on the Feminist Method

A. Is there a special method for feminist research?
B. One sociologist: Three methods of social research
1. Listening to what people say
2. Observing what they do
3. Historical research
C. There cant be a feminist method of inquiry
D. Yet, the problem of eliminating androcentric results of research appears
to require more than simply having well-intentioned individuals conduct research
E. Individual intent is never sufficient to maximize objective inquiry
F. Criticizing the scientific method appear to some as proposing a non-
scientific method of inquiry
1. Cannot see how to reform or transform science as to
eliminate those consequences that are so damaging to women

V. Issues of Method, Methodology, and Epistemology

A. Method
1. How unique to feminism are the techniques of evidence
gathering used in the most widely acclaimed examples of feminist research?
a) Feminist researchers begin their
projects by listening more skeptically to what men say and more
sympathetically to what women say.
b) Nevertheless, can be argued that in a
way, feminist researchers are still using traditional methods of research.
c) This conclusion can assuage doubts
surrounding feminist research as social science. However, this may also
promote ignorance toward feminist research.
2. It is hard to see how to characterize what is new about
these ways of gathering evidence in terms of methods. On the other hand, new
methodologies, epistemologies, and other kinds of theories require new research
processes.
B. Methodology
1. Methods of inquiry cannot be separated from general
theories, specific hypotheses, and other background assumptions that guide
research.
2. Feminist researchers argued that these theories have
been applied in ways that make it difficult to understand womens participation in
social life, or to understand mens activities as gendered (vs. as representing the
human)
 3. The choice of a substantive feminist theory of any kind
will have consequences for what can be perceived as appropriate research
methods.
C. Epistemology
1. Mainstream Anglo-American tradition has sharply
distinguished epistemology from philosophy of science.
a) Epistemology is construed as analyses
of the nature and scope of ordinary knowledge
b) Philosophy of science is construed as
analyses of the nature and scope of explanation for the natural sciences
in general and/or for particular sciences.
2. If scientific method is such a powerful way of eliminating
social biases from the results of research as its defenders argue, how come it
has left undetected so much sexist and androcentric bias?
3. How do assumptions about the gender of audiences
shape traditional epistemological agendas and claims? How should such
sociological and textual understandings of epistemologies shape feminist
theories of knowledge?
4. It is a problem that social scientists tend to think about
methodological and epistemological issues primarily in terms of methods of
inquiry.
a) It is this habit that tempts many social
scientists to seek a unique method of inquiry as the explanation for what
is unusual about feminist analyses.
b) On the other hand, it is also a problem
that philosophers use such terms as scientific method and the method
of science when they are referring to issues of methodology and
epistemology.
c) It is entirely unclear how one could
define scientific method so that it referred to practices common to every
discipline counted as scientific.

VI. What Feminist Researchers Do

A. Harding argues against a distinctive feminist research method but
suggests three characteristics that expand our understandings of what makes feminist
research explanatorily so powerful
B. Not to provide definitive answer to title question but show that this
historical approach is the best strategy if we wish to account for
1. The discovery of gender and its consequences
a) One might even claim that
contemporary feminism discovered gender in the sense that its
everywhere, infusing daily beliefs and behaviors that were heretofore
thought to be gender-neutral
b) Feminist accounts ask how gender
(especially, tensions between individual, structural, and symbolic
expressions) accounts for womens oppression
c) Feminist research is distinctive in its
focus on gender as a variable and an analytic category, and in its critical
stance toward gender
d) Shift in subject matters characteristic of
feminist research have implications for method selection even if one
 cannot understand what is so powerful in feminist research by turning
first to its methods
2. Womens experiences as a scientific resource
a) It generates its problematics from the
perspective of womens experiences.
b) It has designed research for women that
is intended to provide explanations of social and biological phenomena
that women want and need.
c) There is no good reason to appropriate
under the label of method every important feature of the scientific
process.
3. A robust gender-sensitive reflexivity practice
a) Insistence that the researcher be placed
in the same critical plane as the overt subject matter
b) Class, race, culture, and gender
assumptions, beliefs, and behaviors of the researcher must be placed
within the frame of the picture that s/he paints.
c) To come to understand the historical
construction of race, class, and culture within which ones subject matter
moves requires reflection on the similar tendencies shaping the
researchers beliefs and behaviors.

VII. Conclusion
A. Feminism is fundamentally a moral and political movement for the
emancipation of women.
B. The search for a distinctive feminist method of inquiry is not a fruitful one.

I suggest we recognize that if there were some simple recipe we could follow and prescriber in order to
produce powerful research and research agendas, no one would have to go through the difficult and
sometimes painfulif always excitingprocesses of learning how to see and create ourselves and the
world in the radically new forms demanded by our feminist theories and practices.