Feminist Epistemology

Feminist epistemology refers to the feminist engagement with questions of truth, objectivity, method, and the knowing subject. Under its remit fall the theoretical foundations of women's and gender studies, and sexuality and queer studies. There is overlap with African-American, black, and postcolonial studies. The key question of feminist epistemology as a field of inquiry involves the epistemic status of the knowledge produced by privileged and marginalized subjects. Where to draw the line between knowledge and prejudice? In sum, feminist epistemology pertains to the intersection of knowledge and power. An appropriate starting point for a discussion of feminist epistemology is Sandra Harding's seminal book The Science Question in Feminism (1986). This book introduced the threefold progressive classification of feminist epistemology, a classification consisting of the strands of “feminist empiricism,” “feminist standpoint theory,” and “feminist postmodernism.” More recent discussions move beyond Harding's triad. Next to establishing the necessity of doing self-reflexive research, one of the most important methodological innovations of feminism has been the distinction between “studying up” and “studying down.” Studying down implies that asymmetrical power relations are reconfirmed easily in research. The alternative, studying up, is the standpoint theoretical model of researching from the lives of marginalized subjects.