China’s Mao Tse Tung has once stated that “women hold up half the sky”, in recognizing the significant contribution of women to the advancement of society and the justness of according women the equality that society has deprived from them. In all arenas, the streets, communities and academic institutions, women have been active and strived together to advanced their rights and welfare. As such, the consciousness that came from the study of the concrete analysis of women’s concrete conditions is the product of women’s emancipation movements.
Women in the academe have in turn challenged existing social science practice as their contribution, rooting discourse in women’s activism. This “project” was undertaken particularly because the social sciences, as a venue for the scientific study of social phenomena has in general, lacked initiative with regards to the key issues of women’s oppression. Because it is constructed by men and continue to be dominated by them, they can not assume the role of objectively studying the women question. Feminist academicians have held different views in how feminism should be in the academe.
Hence, the preceding decades saw the proliferation of feminist writing and critiques on social science methods, methodology, epistemology and the possibilities of feminist social science. These were attempts at applying the knowledge gained through decades of women’s activism. Often with diverging views, women have created a new discourse and brought to the academe’s forefront the concerns of women. This paper reviews briefly the main shifts in feminist focus, characterized in the so called “waves” of feminism.
The “first wave” (19th century to present) represents the application of established theories into the women’s emancipation movements. Marxist feminism is presented as representative of this wave. The “second wave” (1960’s to present) focused on issues regarding the place and role of feminism in the academe. Radical feminism is the selected as the concretization of this wave. Finally, contemporay trends on feminism especially with regards to the question concerning feminist social science are presented as the “third wave” (1990’s-present).
Each wave can be seen as building on the gains of that which preceded it. As such, they are not seen as separate but are periods in a continuum of the development of feminism. The First Wave: Feminism and the Women’s Liberation Movement The Marxist Feminism of Socialist Feminists Socialist feminists view women’s oppression as inherent in the economic and political structures of society. It is an attempt to apply the basic principles of Marxist theory to the study of women’s situation.
Deriving on Engels’ Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, women’s oppression is traced to a time in history when human production has improved to produce considerable surplus, the first form of wealth, which became the basis of private ownership (1902:15). Although women were also equally part of production with their specialization in agriculture, their biological functions in the reproductive process has prevented them from engaging in the productive activities conducted by men (Stanley and Wise 1993:46).
The advent of animal domestication led to the individual acquisition of lands for pasture and agriculture, which was exclusively the domain of women in the productive sphere, shifted focus on crops for animal fodder. Private property as a result of men’s production relegated women to a subordinate position as mothers giving birth to and raising legitimate children who will inherit private property and keep it within the confines of the family.
Because she has been removed from the productive sphere, she lost all economic and political power. Private property created inequality from the earlier practice of communalism, or the equal distribution of the products of production to all those who participated and resulted in the division of society into classes. This division dichotomized society primarily into the propertied who also have control over the tools of production and the propertyless who offer their labor to the propertied under exploitative conditions.
The relegation of women into a subordinate position was an essential component in the accumulation of private property and in the cultures of succeeding class societies, this was reinforced. Culture here is referred to as the enforced homogenous way of thinking and living that legitimizes the economic and political control by a few. The established social roles and norms by men created a stereotypical woman in her “proper place” with accompanying passivity. This general view permeated all aspects of society - the home, the educational institutions, science, the work place, the church.
The further development of economic production into capitalism led to the commodification of everything, including women. Thus the relegation of women into the reproductive role was made worse through their objectification. This constitutes women’s oppression because of their gender. It is because of this institutionalized thinking of women as objects, inferior/second class, useful only in the kitchen and bed, summed up in the word patriarchy, that women become subjugated. It is because of this general view that women are discriminated upon.
Hence, gender oppression does not occur by chance but rather it is structural and therefore systematic (Stanley and Wise 1993:46). However, socialist feminists go further in saying that oppression based on gender is just one of a number of oppressions (Stanley and Wise 1993:51). More importantly, gender oppression affects women in different ways when seen along the lines of social class. For example, a peasant woman has greater chances of being sexually abused than a woman who is the daughter of a politician.
Conversely, the latter has more access to resources than the former and thus, has minimal domestic burdens. Socialist feminists also take into account the distinct forms of women’s oppression in the third world as more complex than women’s experience in the first world, taking into consideration added issues such as ethnicity or militarization. Since both class and gender oppression is rooted in the economic and political system, revolutionary changes have to be made through a people’s movement of both oppressed men and women.
In terms of women’s responses, primacy is given to the role of the women’s movement as the avenue for advancing women’s rights within the people’s movement and society as a whole. In essence, the struggle for women’s rights becomes an integral part of the over-all struggle for changes in class status of all oppressed peoples. Because the primary targets for change are the structures of society and the primary emphasis is in the mass movement as the force for social change, the academe is treated as one of the secondary but necessary avenues for change.
That is why, it may seem, that there are relatively few Marxist feminists who concern themselves with academic discourse on how true feminist theory should be derived or how true feminist research should be conducted. The Second Wave: Feminist Critiques and Theorizing Radical Feminism On the contrary, radical feminists believe that Marxist theory itself which employs a linear causal explanation of women’s oppression propagates the masculine world view. Roberts queried that ‘what if the masculinist world view, which has depended on a logic of time lines, is…erroneous?
What if the most fundamental error is the search for mono-causation? What if the world is really a field of interconnecting events, arranged in patterns of multiple meaning? ’ (Roberts 1976 cited in Stanley and Wise 1993:47). This means that because the masculine way of thinking has pervaded all aspects of life, scientific study and theorizing is itself a male social construction. Hence, the traditional causal/masculinist and therefore sexist theorizing on the women question tends to oversimplify women’s situations and becomes incongruent with the particular experiences of women.
This generalization is but an attempt to “fit women into the masculinist world view” (Barrett 1979). Feminist theory in order to be truly so, should then come from the actual daily experiences of individual women who construct reality from their own point of view. An elaboration is made by Chester when she stated that “radical feminist theory is that theory follows from practice and is impossible to develop in the absence of practice, because our theory is that practicing our practice is our theory” (1979:12-15).
Thus, instead of employing “grand masculinist” theories such as Marxism, women should rely on their actual everyday practice from which their theory would be based upon and where this theory in turn will further enrich practice. It should be a “set of understandings or conceptual frameworks which are directly related to, and derive from, particular facets of everyday relationships, experiences and behaviours” (Stanley and White 1993:57). Radical feminists put central focus on women’s oppression vis a vis class and other issues, put premium on the individual woman vis a vis a women’s movement and men.
This is because contrary to a revolution which is a long-term process and where change is realized in a “distant future”, radical feminists posit that women can experience actual changes in their personal lives in real time. Espousing that “the personal is political”, individual women can, in their various capacities, transform the way they think and act and how others think and act. The cumulative effect of these efforts by women produces an evolutionary process from personal relationships towards the larger sphere of society, the realm of scientific study included.
The personal-individual-subjective and not the general-structural-objective should be the key resource in how to understand, interpret or construct reality. Feminist Criticisms with Regards to the Current Conduct of Social Science The basic criticism of feminists is that social science is innately biased with regards to women because it operates on theories and methodologies that arose from how men interpret and actually experience social reality as the superior and rational sector of society.
Sexism is manifested in the social sciences in the non-inclusion of women as subjects of research, under-representation or in explaining social reality where the role of women, their contribution or their participation is absent. In the instances where women are actually studied, they are portrayed with regards to their difference from men and their behavior explained based on men’s stereotyped image of women.
Friedan, on the theory of functionalism, said that it is a theory which, in the actual existence of women’s resistance towards the ‘ideal femininity’ as evident in the strains this resistance has put on marriage, still accepts the status quo with regards to women as essential for society (Friedan 1963). An examination of psychology journals by Chetwynd also revealed the tendency of psychologists to generalize all human behavior based on men’s experiences and also regard women in the sense that they are not men (Chetwynd 1975:3-5).
For instance, because of the view that men are rational then women are irrational or because men are successful then women are failures. Some feminists and non-feminists have suggested that the conscious inclusion of women as subjects of research and the inclusion of women’s experiences in the study of social phenomena would fill in the gaps in knowledge, make social science objective and the problem is thereby fixed. In other words, the integration of the feminist perspective will serve to correct the sexist biases (Stanley and Wise 1993:30).
Sexism here is defined as “a set of practices, contextually located and daily enacted, which fix us (women) within them” (Stanley and Wise 1993:179). An evaluation of specific traditional scientific practices, methods and theories is necessary and the subsequent rectification of these will refine the whole scientific practice. Women will still work within the current general framework of what scientific study should be. In relation to this, the next focus would then be on how to integrate the women’s perspective into the social sciences.
Because the intent is to provide knowledge on women as the marginalized sector with respect to men, research should be “on women, conducted by women and for women” (Stanley and Wise 1993:30). This is manifested in the creation of women’s studies as a distinct study within the social sciences that aims to provide the data gaps with respect to women as well as evaluate existing theories and methodologies and modify or create alternatives that are more appropriate (DeVault).
Research “by women” assumes that only women have the capable of doing research on women because women’s consciousness can only be developed through the actual experience of being regarded as such. Research “for women” attempts to eliminate the male-defined way of treating the researched as objects or as sources of data and the research as a property of the researcher. It gives a purpose to research other than the intentions of the researcher in traditional research practice and removes the previously exclusive prerogative of the researcher to define the topic, scope and methodology of the research.
Research “for women” allows women to participate in the research, decide on what the focus should be with regards to immediate problems or needs and outline the process. Most importantly, the knowledge gained from the whole exercise is shared among the women to be used in their endeavors. It is in this aspect that women identify themselves with research, that they are part of it. Still, the writing and final interpretation of results depend on the researcher. There are those who see women’s studies as problematic because the segregation of studies on women isolates the field from the rest of the social sciences.
It also limits the capacity of women to impact on social science as practiced in the specific disciplines and vice versa. Radical feminists further argue that since sexism is at fault, then it is not enough to focus on the women alone. The participation of men is equally important for them to realize the inaccuracies and distortions they commit because of their sexist biases. In addition, the end result of research based on the imprecise description or omission of the presence of women also serve to also distort the existence of men.
There are also the attempts to dichotomize science into hard science and soft science, where the former is the result of using traditional male oriented views of objectivity, the primacy of quantitative data and prescribed research methods and processes. The latter, because it allows more flexible methods, gives value to qualitative along with quantitative data is where feminist studies ought to be. Feminism is already accommodated and has a place in science. There are feminists who are not content with the methods mentioned above.
They believe that feminist social science will only be possible not in mere supplementing the existing deficiency of social science with respect to women or in simply choosing from among existing theories and methods but in a state where social science begins with the perspective of women (Stanley and Wise 1993:163). Feminism, Theory and Research The pervasive notion of theory as abstract, universal and above ordinary life and that theorizing is within the capacity of intellectuals (who are generally men) only, has led most feminists and non-feminists in adopting or just modifying the existing social science theories.
This is so because of the virtual absence of feminists who attempt to generate feminist theory as radical alternatives to the traditional and although they criticize social science practice, they still work within the confines of available theories because it is the standard. This is also true with regards to the research process and is evident when evaluating current approaches to research such as positivism and naturalism and feminists’ regard to them.
Positivism is the belief that genuine knowledge can only be attained through scientific study and that scientific study is a process of verifying existing theories through adherence to a prescribed scientific method. In actual practice, positivism prescribes a procedure for research which starts with focusing on a particular theory with regards to a particular problem. Then hypotheses are formulated followed by adopting procedural methods in data gathering and finally, the presentation and analyses of data.
Naturalism on the other hand, states that all aspects of reality can be scientifically studied solely through the same scientific method. Naturalism plays the opposite, where theory comes out at the end of the process as the product of research and methods of collecting data include being a participant in the phenomenon being studied. The critique of both methods lies in their predefined ways of how data or reality should be describe, analyzed and interpreted. Thus researchers should work by the book, otherwise their work will not be deemed as truly academic or scientific.
Research then “does not attempt to describe what happened, when it happened, how it happened, and how people felt about it…but utilize abstractions from reality organized and presented within a pre-chosen framework” (Stanley and Wise 1993:152). That research, because it is conducted by humans who have different ways of thinking, may accommodate “mistakes” or encounter “problems” in the process, is taken care of by the use of prescribed methods which ensures that results of research is untainted by personal beliefs, principles and attachments.
If research as it is experienced does not conform to existing theory, then the researcher’s capacity is questioned. Research itself, as it is experienced by the researcher, does not stand as reality but instead the researcher has to be detached and process his/her data through paradigms or ‘theoretically derived world views which provides the categories and concepts through and by which we construct and understand the world’ (Stanley and Wise 1993:153).
Feminists, as part of the research, should also act to influence the data they are obtaining because “their experiences and consciousness…is an integral part of the research process…as much as they are in life” (Stanley and Wise 1993:58). Can there be a Feminist Social Science? Stanley and White argue that there can be a feminist social science if we break away from the “paradigms” that we use and tell things as they are or as we experienced it (Stanley and Wise 1993:183).
Although they say that it does not yet exist in the present and their attempts were merely to picture how it can be, its creation is part of the process of breaking down the paradigms that dictate how we think, act, research or write. It is part of the process of women changing their lives because research is part of the everyday. Along with change is a new reality which allows women to use new language, new ways of expression and new modes of thinking, new because they accurately reflect how women live as women.
This means constructing theory and research along feminist consciousness, of negating the notion of an “objective reality” which is a reality that represents all experiences, or reality that is equated with negating personal experiences in the conduct of scientific study to render it as impartial and therefore reality that is abstract. This obsession with “objective reality” is a manifestation of the male’s detachment from the facets of everyday life such as household work and raising kids.
Feminists should abstain from the traditional and universally accepted constructs of allowing theories to monopolize how reality should be interpreted. The only way in which feminist theorizing and feminist research can be done is in respecting a woman’s own set of experiences as his/her basis in seeing reality. When personal experience does not fit into existing theories, then that theory should be negated and one’s own explanation based on actual experience should hold true.
Feminist social science should derive theory from actual experience and experience should be accepted as part of the research process. Reality has many dimensions and aspects and as feminists continuously impact on the social sciences, their individual or collective practice of how they practice would somehow effect changes in how we view social reality. Increasing reliance on the personal, subjective, emotional experience over objectivity, detachment and rationality is to be expected.
Finally, the question of a feminist social science is not a question of producing a separate research method that is purely feminist but, according to Stanley and Wise, is fundamentally a matter of epistemology, an outline which defines knowledge, its characteristics, who has access to it and how do they turn out to be so as well as how particular contradictory ideas are accepted or discarded (1993:187). Epistemology is imperative for “it is around the constitution of a feminist epistemology that feminism can most directly and far-reachingly challenge non-feminist frameworks and ways of working” (Stanley and Wise 1993:187).
