feminist theory research topics

Feminist Research Topics for Students

Table of contents

• 0.1 Key Points
• 1 How to Select the Best Feminist Research Topic?
• 2 Feminist Research Paper Topic Ideas
• 3 Controversial Feminist Research Paper Topics
• 4 Feminist Argumentative Research Topics
• 5 Feminist History Research Paper Topics
• 6 Women’s Rights Research Topics
• 7 Feminist Theory Research Paper Topics
• 8 Feminism Project Ideas
• 9 Women’s Studies Research Topics
• 10 Feminist Research Topics For Discussion
• 11 Interesting Research Topics
• 12 Abortion Research Paper Topics
• 13 Women Empowerment Research Paper Topics
• 14 Domestic Violence Research Paper Topics
• 15 Conclusion

To what extent do you want to explore feminist research? This essay digs deeply into a wide variety of fascinating topics connected to the exciting realms of gender equality, the feminism movement, and radical feminism. These discussions will center on how feminist theory challenges gender discrimination and feminist ideas shape the modern world. We want to examine how feminist research topics affect society.

• Intriguing inquiries in research encourage curiosity, analysis, and investigation.
• Choosing suitable feminist topics for your paper may shift the conversation and make the world better.

How to Select the Best Feminist Research Topic?

It’s a daring endeavor to think of ways to determine which research paper on feminism is the greatest. The knowledge that there are other sources for a research paper on feminism is, nonetheless, valuable. As a result, you need to choose the right feminist topics to write about. Here are three rules to live by as you sift through potential options and choose the best feminist research paper:

• Embrace your passion: Think about what you really care about while deciding on a topic. Follow your curiosity, whether it leads you to examine the impact of feminist movements on modern lifestyles or radical feminist ideas.
• Think beyond the surface: Dig deeper below the surface to learn about the true nature of gender disparity and bias. Investigate the complexities of feminist theory and how it might affect different social institutions. Consider looking into little-known details that may be key to understanding significant problems.
• Address real-world problems: Feminist research can improve people’s lives. Focus on issues like women empowerment research topics that can make a difference and have real-world applicability. Aligning your feminism research topics with the goals of the feminist movement is possible via a focus on practical issues.

Exploring feminist research topics can be both rewarding and complex, requiring careful thought and detailed analysis. If you’re facing challenges with structuring your paper or need expert assistance, a professional research paper service can help you create a well-researched and thoroughly written paper.

Feminist Research Paper Topic Ideas

This section will delve into captivating feminist research topics that bring attention to equality and the results of feminist movements. Remember that references and citing sources are just as crucial as picking a topic. Here are 15 samples to explore:

• Feminist Psychology; Critical Analysis To Empowerment Metrics.
• Examining How Liberal Feminism Has Shaped The Fight For Women’s Rights.
• Feminism Reconstructed Gender Roles And Expectations
• Women’s Health Care And Reproductive Rights: A Feminist Analysis.
• Domestic Violence Against Women.
• The Feminist Critics’ Position On Current Social Issues.
• Making A Modern Feminist Manifesto: Goals, Obstacles, And Tactics.
• How Feminism Influences Science And Scientific Research.
• Gender Empowerment Measures.
• Women’s Suffrage Movement And Its Past, Present, And Future Struggles.
• Women In Military And Religious Families
• Impeded Feminist Advocacy: Obstacles To And Methods For Propelling Social Change.
• Resonating The Stories And Perspectives Of Black Women (Black Feminism).
• Widespread Effects Of Gender Inequality.
• Religious Patriarchy And Feminist Critiques.

Controversial Feminist Research Paper Topics

Deftly navigating the waters of potentially divisive feminist research topics requires careful consideration and analysis. For this reason, it is not easy to learn all there is to know about how feminism affect modern lifestyle. The option to pay for a research paper is an excellent help to individuals who lack the time to complete their research. A handful of problematic topics for research papers are as follows:

• The Force Of Black Feminism In Overturning Assumptions And Kickstarting Progress.
• Using Sexual Education To Combat Global Gender Inequality.
• Do International Laws Targeting Inequality Actually Make A Difference?
• Subverting Gender Stereotypes Via Sexual Education And Toy Distribution.
• Questioning The Feminist Movement: Does It Promote Female Dominance?
• Culture, History, And The Development Of Feminist Ideologies In Islamic Nations.
• Media’s Stereotypes And Their Challenge
• Principles Of Empowering Women And Their Effects And Applications
• Examining The Impact Of Feminism On The Present-Day World
• Theories On Women’s Rights In An Era Of Provocative Feminism
• The Radical Feminists Debate: Social Uniters Or Fragmenters?
• Supporting Women’s Political Participation Via Feminist Advocacy
•  Feminism Equate: Taking A Look At The Myths About Feminist Philosophies.
• Changes In Feminist Sociology Over Time And In Application
• Rethinking Stereotypes Through Feminist Analysis Of Family Life.

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Feminist Argumentative Research Topics

Explore the intriguing world of the feminist movement and feminism’s effect on contemporary lives while delving into key feminist argumentation research subjects. Below are some samples topics to consider:

• Feminist Movement On Gender Roles
• Feminist Critics In Challenging Societal Norms.
• The Root Causes Of Domestic Violence Against Women.
• Gender Empowerment Measure And Its Implications For Equality.
• Investigating The Historical Struggles For Women’s Suffrage Worldwide.
•  Feminist Ideology In Contemporary Society.
• The Implementation Of The Women’s Empowerment Principles In Organizations.
• Feasibility In Achieving Total Global Gender Equality.
•  Modern Society’s Perception Of Equal Rights And Equality Of Women.
• Analyzing The Factors And Consequences Of The Anti-Feminist Movement.
• The Role Of Empowering Women In Promoting Social Progress.
• Investigating Ethnic Groups Prohibit Feminism And Its Implications.
• The Tenets And Impact Of Marxist Feminism In Society.
• Strategies To Promote Feminism And Its Effectiveness.
• Misconceptions And Prejudices About What Radical Feminism Preach About.

Feminist History Research Paper Topics

You can better appreciate the struggles and victories of women throughout history by studying the development of the feminist movement in modern society. Here are some examples of feminist history research paper ideas:

• Feminist Ideology In The Suffrage Movement.
• Historical Account On Societal Discrimination Faced By Women In The Workplace.
• Why the Feminist Movements Deserve Recognition In History.
• Exploring The Gender Gap In Stem Fields: Historical Perspectives And Modern Challenges.
•  Gender Inequality Aspects In Historical Legal Systems.
• Historical Account On How Islamic Countries Address The Female Gender.
• Unveiling Gender Differences In Historical Art Movements.
• Political Statements Made By Feminist Activists In The 20th Century.
• Adopting Feminism: Historical Account On Women’s Rights Movements Worldwide.
• Civil Rights Movement And Its Influence On Feminist Activism.
• When Religious Groups Find Feminism: Perspectives And Challenges.
• Lessons From Historical Feminist Struggles On Achieving Gender Equality.
• Historical Account On How Feminists Cope With Societal Pressures.
• Breaking Down Stereotypes: How Feminist Movements Redefine Women.
• Historical Perspectives On Feminism’s Role In Shaping Civil Society.

Women’s Rights Research Topics

Researching is an excellent approach to educating yourself on the global status of women and the feminist movement. Here are 15 topic examples below:

• Women’s Rights in All Countries
• About Women’s Rights and Equality
• Equality between Men and Women
• Women’s Rights in Pakistan
• Women’s Rights in the United States in the 1970s
• Women’s Rights in Pride and Prejudice
• Abortion and Women’s Rights
• Women’s Rights in the French Revolution
• Elizabeth Stanton’s Impact on the Women’s Rights Movement
• Women’s Rights to Choose
• History of Women’s Rights in India
• Pencils and Bullets Women’s Rights in Afghanistan
• The Battle Fight for the Equality and Rights of Women
• Women’s Rights and Abolitionist Movement
• An Issue of Women’s Reproductive Rights

Feminist Theory Research Paper Topics

Gender’s impact on society, politics, and the economy are only some of the topics explored by feminist theoretical notions. Critical theory, poststructuralism, and postcolonial theory are only a few of the lenses through which feminist theorists examine gender equality and relationships. Research paper themes on this aspect are many, but some of the more common ones include the following:

• Feminist Theory: From Suffragettes To Intersectionality.
• The Effects Of Sexual Objectification On Women’s Mental Health.
• Women Empowerment: Unleashing The Fierce Force Within.
• Subtle Ways Sexism Persists In Modern Times And How Society Undermine Women.
• How Feminist Ideologies Examine Gender Disparity With A Magnifying Glass.
• Domestic Violence: Unveiling Its Dark Impact Behind Closed Doors.
• The Ripple Effect: How Domestic Violence Affects Generations.
• Human Rights: The Foundation Of Feminism’s Fight For Equality.
• Bridging Continents, Igniting Change Among European And African Feminists.
• How Social Media Shaped Feminism In The Digital Age.
• Feminism’s Impact On Society: A Radical Makeover Or Subtle Transformation?
• Making A Political Statement: Feminism’s Role In The Power Game.
• How Society Define Women: Challenging Stereotypes And Celebrating Diversity.
• Feminist Approaches To Domestic Violence Prevention And Support.
• Women In Political Movements: From Suffrage To Modern Feminism.

Feminism Project Ideas

Do you want more people to adopt feminism? You can study its influence on contemporary society or how modern feminism interacts with other social movements. Here are some examples of feminist topics for project ideas

• Examining How Feminism Affected Society.
• Documenting The Stories Of Domestic Violence Survivors.
• The Impact Of The Feminist Movement Throughout History.
• Breaking Chains: Investigating How Domestic Violence Affects Marginalized Communities.
• Encouraging Young People To Adopt Feminist Values.
• Equal Rights, Equal Lives: Advocating For Human Rights Through Feminism.
• Addressing Abortion Discrimination Against Women Seeking Abortions.
• How Cyber Feminism Imply Gender Empowerment Online.
• Raising Awareness About The Gender Gap In Various Sectors.
• Shedding Light On The Reality Of Domestic Violence.
• Supporting Survivors Of Domestic Violence Through Community Initiatives.
• Empowering Women To Challenge Patriarchal Norms In Public Spaces.
• Celebrating Influential Women Who Shaped The Feminist Movement.
• How Feminism Challenges Societal Expectations.
• Promoting Equality Through Grassroots Feminist Activism.

Women’s Studies Research Topics

Investigating issues like gender stereotypes in the media and the fight for women’s suffrage fall under the umbrella of women’s studies. Here are some potential study topics in the field of women’s studies:

• Implement Women’s Empowerment Programs In Promoting Gender Equality.
• Exploring The Cultural Significance Of Women’s Clothing And Fashion.
• How Domestic Violence Affect Women’s Mental Health
• Breaking Gender Barriers Of Women In Sports.
• Understanding The Experiences Of LGBTQ+ Women.
• Maternal Healthcare Disparities: Impact Of Race And Socioeconomic Factors.
• The Role Of Women In Peacebuilding And Conflict Resolution
• Women’s Participation In The Labor Force
• Connection Between Women’s Rights And Ecological Sustainability.
• History And Impact Of Reproductive Rights Movements.
• Women’s Representation In Literature And The Arts
• Women’s Experiences In Prison
• Women’s entrepreneurship
• The impact of gender-based Violence on marginalized communities.
• Women and aging.

Feminist Research Topics For Discussion

The field of feminist research provides fertile ground for serious and stimulating debates. Consider these feminist research topics suggested to spark some ideas.

• The portrayal of women in the media
• Persisting wage disparity between men and women.
• The overlapping effects of gender, race, and class in social inequality.
• Impact of societal beauty standards on women’s mental health.
• Sexual harassment in the Workplace
• Ongoing battle for women’s autonomy over their bodies.
• Women’s political representation:
• LGBTQ+ feminism
• Shedding light on domestic Violence and sexual assault.
• Challenges faced by women in science and technology.
• Advocating for accessible and equitable maternal healthcare services.
• Women’s Rights in developing countries
• Exploring the intersection of faith and women’s rights movements.
• Importance of male engagement in promoting gender equality.
• Gendered aspects of digital abuse and advocating for online safety.

Interesting Research Topics

Interesting research topics spark interest, critical thinking, and inquiry. It is also a way to showcase your writing and research skills. For those seeking to ease the burden, you can also buy apa research paper on exciting research topics to adopt feminism.

• Feminism in a Doll’s House
• Feminism of Romeo and Juliet
• Feminism and Masculinity in Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House”
• Three Waves of Feminism
• Expressing Feminism in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• Gender Inequality and Feminism
• About Feminism in Hamlet
• Gladwell Outliers, Privilege Video, Intersectional Feminism
• Feminism is for Everybody Themes of Feminism Marriage and Respect Found in a Doll’s House
• Gender Inequality in the Workplace
• Feminism Represented through Frankenstein’s Characters
• Feminism in Frankenstein
• Short Essay on Feminism
• Dracula: Sexism and Feminism
• Beyonce’s Feminism Independent Woman in Her Song

Abortion Research Paper Topics

Abortion research has ranged from considering the moral complexities of the issue to assessing how legalization has affected women’s reproductive rights. Here are some sample topics below:

• Why Abortion is Wrong
• Abortion: the most Debated Topic
• Should abortion be Illegal or Not?
• Abortion: a Woman’s Choice
• Don Marquis’s View on Abortion
• The Murder of Innocence
• Abortion: Go or no Go
• Effects of Abortion on Young Women
• A Theme of Abortion
• Abortion Laws
• The History of Abortion
• Debates on Abortion Theme
• Reasons the Constitution of Texas Should be Rewritten
• Abortion in Teens should be Abolished
• Get Rid of Abortion or Not?

Women Empowerment Research Paper Topics

Exploring topics like gender equality, women’s leadership, and the social and economic effects of empowering women is essential for unlocking women’s potential. Below are sample topics you can explore:

• Women’s Leadership in Corporate America.
• The Role of Education in Empowering Women Worldwide.
• Women in Politics
• Empowering Women in Sports Leadership
• Empowering Rural Women and Promoting Economic Independence in Agricultural Communities.
• The Impact of Empowering Women on Sustainable Development Goals.
• Empowering Women in Traditional Societies
• Empowering Women through Microfinance
• Exploring Non-Traditional Careers for Women.
• Media Representation and Women’s Empowerment
• Addressing Gender-Based Violence against Women.
• Women’s Empowerment in Entrepreneurship
• Recognizing Multiple Dimensions of Female Identity.
• Women’s Empowerment and Health
• Empowering Women in Art and Media

Domestic Violence Research Paper Topics

Domestic Violence is a sad fact in a society where love and trust should rule. By investigating many angles of the problem, we may learn more about ending the cycle of domestic abuse.

• Domestic Violence: the Effect it has on Children
• Faith Harper Domestic Violence Case Study
• Domestic Violence and the Physicological Affects
• The Effects of Childhood Sexual Abuse
• Domestic Violence in Ethiopia
• Domestic Violence and Women’s Mental Health
• Domestic Violence and Traditional Feminist Philosophy and Beliefs
• What are the Possible Causes and Signs of Domestic Violence
• Domestic Violence: Advertisement in a Saudi Arabia
• Domestic Violence in the United States
• Domestic Violence: a Power and Control Perspective Wheel
• Exploitation and Spiteful Crimes against Women in the United States
• Low Self-Esteem and Abusive Relationships
• The Effects of Domestic Violence: Family & Society
• Adverse Childhood Experiences and Women in Domestic Violence Shelters

We have investigated the nuanced nature of gender parity, delving into topics of vital importance to women everywhere. We’ve discussed everything from reproductive freedom to discrimination in the workplace. Hopefully, you’ve learned something new and been inspired to become a feminist activist after reading this. Remember that information is power, and each area of study represents progress toward a more just and equal tomorrow. Never stop exploring, expanding your knowledge, and working to make a difference.

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Article contents

Feminist theory and its use in qualitative research in education.

• Emily Freeman Emily Freeman University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.1193
• Published online: 28 August 2019

Feminist theory rose in prominence in educational research during the 1980s and experienced a resurgence in popularity during the late 1990s−2010s. Standpoint epistemologies, intersectionality, and feminist poststructuralism are the most prevalent theories, but feminist researchers often work across feminist theoretical thought. Feminist qualitative research in education encompasses a myriad of methods and methodologies, but projects share a commitment to feminist ethics and theories. Among the commitments are the understanding that knowledge is situated in the subjectivities and lived experiences of both researcher and participants and research is deeply reflexive. Feminist theory informs both research questions and the methodology of a project in addition to serving as a foundation for analysis. The goals of feminist educational research include dismantling systems of oppression, highlighting gender-based disparities, and seeking new ways of constructing knowledge.

• feminist theories
• qualitative research
• educational research
• positionality
• methodology

Introduction

Feminist qualitative research begins with the understanding that all knowledge is situated in the bodies and subjectivities of people, particularly women and historically marginalized groups. Donna Haraway ( 1988 ) wrote,

I am arguing for politics and epistemologies of location, position, and situating, where partiality and not universality is the condition of being heard to make rational knowledge claims. These are claims on people’s lives I’m arguing for the view from a body, always a complex, contradictory, structuring, and structured body, versus the view from above, from nowhere, from simplicity. Only the god trick is forbidden. . . . Feminism is about a critical vision consequent upon a critical positioning in unhomogeneous gendered social space. (p. 589)

By arguing that “politics and epistemologies” are always interpretive and partial, Haraway offered feminist qualitative researchers in education a way to understand all research as potentially political and always interpretive and partial. Because all humans bring their own histories, biases, and subjectivities with them to a research space or project, it is naïve to think that the written product of research could ever be considered neutral, but what does research with a strong commitment to feminism look like in the context of education?

Writing specifically about the ways researchers of both genders can use feminist ethnographic methods while conducting research on schools and schooling, Levinson ( 1998 ) stated, “I define feminist ethnography as intensive qualitative research, aimed toward the description and analysis of the gendered construction and representation of experience, which is informed by a political and intellectual commitment to the empowerment of women and the creation of more equitable arrangements between and among specific, culturally defined genders” (p. 339). The core of Levinson’s definition is helpful for understanding the ways that feminist educational anthropologists engage with schools as gendered and political constructs and the larger questions of feminist qualitative research in education. His message also extends to other forms of feminist qualitative research. By focusing on description, analysis, and representation of gendered constructs, educational researchers can move beyond simple binary analyses to more nuanced understandings of the myriad ways gender operates within educational contexts.

Feminist qualitative research spans the range of qualitative methodologies, but much early research emerged out of the feminist postmodern turn in anthropology (Behar & Gordon, 1995 ), which was a response to male anthropologists who ignored the gendered implications of ethnographic research (e.g., Clifford & Marcus, 1986 ). Historically, most of the work on feminist education was conducted in the 1980s and 1990s, with a resurgence in the late 2010s (Culley & Portuges, 1985 ; DuBois, Kelly, Kennedy, Korsmeyer, & Robinson, 1985 ; Gottesman, 2016 ; Maher & Tetreault, 1994 ; Thayer-Bacon, Stone, & Sprecher, 2013 ). Within this body of research, the majority focuses on higher education (Coffey & Delamont, 2000 ; Digiovanni & Liston, 2005 ; Diller, Houston, Morgan, & Ayim, 1996 ; Gabriel & Smithson, 1990 ; Mayberry & Rose, 1999 ). Even leading journals, such as Feminist Teacher ( 1984 −present), focus mostly on the challenges of teaching about and to women in higher education, although more scholarship on P–12 education has emerged in recent issues.

There is also a large collection of work on the links between gender, achievement, and self-esteem (American Association of University Women, 1992 , 1999 ; Digiovanni & Liston, 2005 ; Gilligan, 1982 ; Hancock, 1989 ; Jackson, Paechter, & Renold, 2010 ; National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education, 2002 ; Orenstein, 1994 ; Pipher, 1994 ; Sadker & Sadker, 1994 ). However, just because research examines gender does not mean that it is feminist. Simply using gender as a category of analysis does not mean the research project is informed by feminist theory, ethics, or methods, but it is often a starting point for researchers who are interested in the complex ways gender is constructed and the ways it operates in education.

This article examines the histories and theories of U.S.–based feminism, the tenets of feminist qualitative research and methodologies, examples of feminist qualitative studies, and the possibilities for feminist qualitative research in education to provide feminist educational researchers context and methods for engaging in transformative and subversive research. Each section provides a brief overview of the major concepts and conversations, along with examples from educational research to highlight the ways feminist theory has informed educational scholarship. Some examples are given limited attention and serve as entry points into a more detailed analysis of a few key examples. While there is a large body of non-Western feminist theory (e.g., the works of Lila Abu-Lughod, Sara Ahmed, Raewyn Connell, Saba Mahmood, Chandra Mohanty, and Gayatri Spivak), much of the educational research using feminist theory draws on Western feminist theory. This article focuses on U.S.–based research to show the ways that the utilization of feminist theory has changed since the 1980s.

Histories, Origins, and Theories of U.S.–Based Feminism

The normative historiography of feminist theory and activism in the United States is broken into three waves. First-wave feminism (1830s−1920s) primarily focused on women’s suffrage and women’s rights to legally exist in public spaces. During this time period, there were major schisms between feminist groups concerning abolition, rights for African American women, and the erasure of marginalized voices from larger feminist debates. The second wave (1960s and 1980s) worked to extend some of the rights won during the first wave. Activists of this time period focused on women’s rights to enter the workforce, sexual harassment, educational equality, and abortion rights. During this wave, colleges and universities started creating women’s studies departments and those scholars provided much of the theoretical work that informs feminist research and activism today. While there were major feminist victories during second-wave feminism, notably Title IX and Roe v. Wade , issues concerning the marginalization of race, sexual orientation, and gender identity led many feminists of color to separate from mainstream white feminist groups. The third wave (1990s to the present) is often characterized as the intersectional wave, as some feminist groups began utilizing Kimberlé Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality ( 1991 ) to understand that oppression operates via multiple categories (e.g., gender, race, class, age, ability) and that intersecting oppressions lead to different lived experiences.

Historians and scholars of feminism argue that dividing feminist activism into three waves flattens and erases the major contributions of women of color and gender-nonconforming people. Thompson ( 2002 ) called this history a history of hegemonic feminism and proposed that we look at the contributions of multiracial feminism when discussing history. Her work, along with that of Allen ( 1984 ) about the indigenous roots of U.S. feminism, raised many questions about the ways that feminism operates within the public and academic spheres. For those who wish to engage in feminist research, it is vital to spend time understanding the historical, theoretical, and political ways that feminism(s) can both liberate and oppress, depending on the scholar’s understandings of, and orientations to, feminist projects.

Standpoint Epistemology

Much of the theoretical work that informs feminist qualitative research today emerged out of second-wave feminist scholarship. Standpoint epistemology, according to Harding ( 1991 , 2004 ), posits that knowledge comes from one’s particular social location, that it is subjective, and the further one is from the hegemonic norm, the clearer one can see oppression. This was a major challenge to androcentric and Enlightenment theories of knowledge because standpoint theory acknowledges that there is no universal understanding of the world. This theory aligns with the second-wave feminist slogan, “The personal is political,” and advocates for a view of knowledge that is produced from the body.

Greene ( 1994 ) wrote from a feminist postmodernist epistemology and attacked Enlightenment thinking by using standpoint theory as her starting point. Her work serves as an example of one way that educational scholars can use standpoint theory in their work. She theorized encounters with “imaginative literature” to help educators conceptualize new ways of using reading and writing in the classroom and called for teachers to think of literature as “a harbinger of the possible.” (Greene, 1994 , p. 218). Greene wrote from an explicitly feminist perspective and moved beyond simple analyses of gender to a larger critique of the ways that knowledge is constructed in classrooms.

Intersectionality

Crenshaw ( 1991 ) and Collins ( 2000 ) challenged and expanded standpoint theory to move it beyond an individual understanding of knowledge to a group-based theory of oppression. Their work, and that of other black and womanist feminists, opened up multiple spaces of possibility for feminist scholars and researchers because it challenged hegemonic feminist thought. For those interested in conducting feminist research in educational settings, their work is especially pertinent because they advocate for feminists to attend to all aspects of oppression rather than flattening them to one of simple gender-based oppression.

Haddix, McArthur, Muhammad, Price-Dennis, and Sealey-Ruiz ( 2016 ), all women-of-color feminist educators, wrote a provocateur piece in a special issue of English Education on black girls’ literacy. The four authors drew on black feminist thought and conducted a virtual kitchen-table conversation. By symbolically representing their conversations as one from the kitchen, this article pays homage to women-of-color feminism and pushes educators who read English Education to reconsider elements of their own subjectivities. Third-wave feminism and black feminism emphasize intersectionality, in that different demographic details like race, class, and gender are inextricably linked in power structures. Intersectionality is an important frame for educational research because identifying the unique experiences, realities, and narratives of those involved in educational systems can highlight the ways that power and oppression operate in society.

Feminist Poststructural Theory

Feminist poststructural theory has greatly informed many feminist projects in educational research. Deconstruction is

a critical practice that aims to ‘dismantle [ déconstruire ] the metaphysical and rhetorical structures that are at work, not in order to reject or discard them, but to reinscribe them in another way,’ (Derrida, quoted in Spivak, 1974 , p. lxxv). Thus, deconstruction is not about tearing down, but about looking at how a structure has been constructed, what holds it together, and what it produces. (St. Pierre, 2000 , p. 482)

Reality, subjectivity, knowledge, and truth are constructed through language and discourse (cultural practices, power relations, etc.), so truth is local and diverse, rather than a universal experience (St. Pierre, 2000 ). Feminist poststructuralist theory may be used to question structural inequality that is maintained in education through dominant discourses.

In Go Be a Writer! Expanding the Curricular Boundaries of Literacy Learning with Children , Kuby and Rucker ( 2016 ) explored early elementary literacy practices using poststructural and posthumanist theories. Their book drew on hours of classroom observations, student interviews and work, and their own musings on ways to de-standardize literacy instruction and curriculum. Through the process of pedagogical documentation, Kuby and Rucker drew on the works of Barad, Deleuze and Guattari, and Derrida to explore the ways they saw children engaging in what they call “literacy desiring(s).” One aim of the book is to find practical and applicable ways to “Disrupt literacy in ways that rewrite the curriculum, the interactions, and the power dynamics of the classroom even begetting a new kind of energy that spirals and bounces and explodes” (Kuby & Rucker, 2016 , p. 5). The second goal of their book is not only to understand what happened in Rucker’s classroom using the theories, but also to unbound the links between “teaching↔learning” (p. 202) and to write with the theories, rather than separating theory from the methodology and classroom enactments (p. 45) because “knowing/being/doing were not separate” (p. 28). This work engages with key tenets of feminist poststructuralist theory and adds to both the theoretical and pedagogical conversations about what counts as a literacy practice.

While the discussion in this section provides an overview of the histories and major feminist theories, it is by no means exhaustive. Scholars who wish to engage in feminist educational research need to spend time doing the work of understanding the various theories and trajectories that constitute feminist work so they are able to ground their projects and theories in a particular tradition that will inform the ethics and methods of research.

Tenets of Feminist Qualitative Research

Why engage in feminist qualitative research.

Evans and Spivak ( 2016 ) stated, “The only real and effective way you can sabotage something this way is when you are working intimately within it.” Feminist researchers are in the classroom and the academy, working intimately within curricular, pedagogical, and methodological constraints that serve neoliberal ideologies, so it is vital to better understand the ways that we can engage in affirmative sabotage to build a more just and equitable world. Spivak’s ( 2014 ) notion of affirmative sabotage has become a cornerstone for understanding feminist qualitative research and teaching. She borrowed and built on Gramsci’s role of the organic intellectual and stated that they/we need to engage in affirmative sabotage to transform the humanities.

I used the term “affirmative sabotage” to gloss on the usual meaning of sabotage: the deliberate ruining of the master’s machine from the inside. Affirmative sabotage doesn’t just ruin; the idea is of entering the discourse that you are criticizing fully, so that you can turn it around from inside. The only real and effective way you can sabotage something this way is when you are working intimately within it. (Evans & Spivak, 2016 )

While Spivak has been mostly concerned with literary education, her writings provide teachers and researchers numerous lines of inquiry into projects that can explode androcentric universal notions of knowledge and resist reproductive heteronormativity.

Spivak’s pedagogical musings center on deconstruction, primarily Derridean notions of deconstruction (Derrida, 2016 ; Jackson & Mazzei, 2012 ; Spivak, 2006 , 2009 , 2012 ) that seek to destabilize existing categories and to call into question previously unquestioned beliefs about the goals of education. Her works provide an excellent starting point for examining the links between feminism and educational research. The desire to create new worlds within classrooms, worlds that are fluid, interpretive, and inclusive in order to interrogate power structures, lies at the core of what it means to be a feminist education researcher. As researchers, we must seriously engage with feminist theory and include it in our research so that feminism is not seen as a dirty word, but as a movement/pedagogy/methodology that seeks the liberation of all (Davis, 2016 ).

Feminist research and feminist teaching are intrinsically linked. As Kerkhoff ( 2015 ) wrote, “Feminist pedagogy requires students to challenge the norms and to question whether existing practices privilege certain groups and marginalize others” (p. 444), and this is exactly what feminist educational research should do. Bailey ( 2001 ) called on teachers, particularly those who identify as feminists, to be activists, “The values of one’s teaching should not be separated sharply from the values one expresses outside the classroom, because teaching is not inherently pure or laboratory practice” (p. 126); however, we have to be careful not to glorify teachers as activists because that leads to the risk of misinterpreting actions. Bailey argued that teaching critical thinking is not enough if it is not coupled with curriculums and pedagogies that are antiheteronormative, antisexist, and antiracist. As Bailey warned, just using feminist theory or identifying as a feminist is not enough. It is very easy to use the language and theories of feminism without being actively feminist in one’s research. There are ethical and methodological issues that feminist scholars must consider when conducting research.

Feminist research requires one to discuss ethics, not as a bureaucratic move, but as a reflexive move that shows the researchers understand that, no matter how much they wish it didn’t, power always plays a role in the process. According to Davies ( 2014 ), “Ethics, as Barad defines it, is a matter of questioning what is being made to matter and how that mattering affects what it is possible to do and to think” (p. 11). In other words, ethics is what is made to matter in a particular time and place.

Davies ( 2016 ) extended her definition of ethics to the interactions one has with others.

This is not ethics as a matter of separate individuals following a set of rules. Ethical practice, as both Barad and Deleuze define it, requires thinking beyond the already known, being open in the moment of the encounter, pausing at the threshold and crossing over. Ethical practice is emergent in encounters with others, in emergent listening with others. It is a matter of questioning what is being made to matter and how that mattering affects what it is possible to do and to think. Ethics is emergent in the intra-active encounters in which knowing, being, and doing (epistemology, ontology, and ethics) are inextricably linked. (Barad, 2007 , p. 83)

The ethics of any project must be negotiated and contested before, during, and after the process of conducting research in conjunction with the participants. Feminist research is highly reflexive and should be conducted in ways that challenge power dynamics between individuals and social institutions. Educational researchers must heed the warning to avoid the “god-trick” (Haraway, 1988 ) and to continually question and re-question the ways we seek to define and present subjugated knowledge (Hesse-Biber, 2012 ).

Positionalities and Reflexivity

According to feminist ethnographer Noelle Stout, “Positionality isn’t meant to be a few sentences at the beginning of a work” (personal communication, April 5, 2016 ). In order to move to new ways of experiencing and studying the world, it is vital that scholars examine the ways that reflexivity and positionality are constructed. In a glorious footnote, Margery Wolf ( 1992 ) related reflexivity in anthropological writing to a bureaucratic procedure (p. 136), and that resonates with how positionality often operates in the field of education.

The current trend in educational research is to include a positionality statement that fixes the identity of the author in a particular place and time and is derived from feminist standpoint theory. Researchers should make their biases and the identities of the authors clear in a text, but there are serious issues with the way that positionality functions as a boundary around the authors. Examining how the researchers exert authority within a text allows the reader the opportunity to determine the intent and philosophy behind the text. If positionality were used in an embedded and reflexive manner, then educational research would be much richer and allow more nuanced views of schools, in addition to being more feminist in nature. The rest of this section briefly discussrs articles that engage with feminist ethics regarding researcher subjectivities and positionality, and two articles are examined in greater depth.

When looking for examples of research that includes deeply reflexive and embedded positionality, one finds that they mostly deal with issues of race, equity, and diversity. The highlighted articles provide examples of positionality statements that are deeply reflexive and represent the ways that feminist researchers can attend to the ethics of being part of a research project. These examples all come from feminist ethnographic projects, but they are applicable to a wide variety of feminist qualitative projects.

Martinez ( 2016 ) examined how research methods are or are not appropriate for specific contexts. Calderon ( 2016 ) examined autoethnography and the reproduction of “settler colonial understandings of marginalized communities” (p. 5). Similarly, Wissman, Staples, Vasudevan, and Nichols ( 2015 ) discussed how to research with adolescents through engaged participation and collaborative inquiry, and Ceglowski and Makovsky ( 2012 ) discussed the ways researchers can engage in duoethnography with young children.

Abajian ( 2016 ) uncovered the ways military recruiters operate in high schools and paid particular attention to the politics of remaining neutral while also working to subvert school militarization. She wrote,

Because of the sensitive and also controversial nature of my research, it was not possible to have a collaborative process with students, teachers, and parents. Purposefully intervening would have made documentation impossible because that would have (rightfully) aligned me with anti-war and counter-recruitment activists who were usually not welcomed on school campuses (Abajian & Guzman, 2013 ). It was difficult enough to find an administrator who gave me consent to conduct my research within her school, as I had explicitly stated in my participant recruitment letters and consent forms that I was going to research the promotion of post-secondary paths including the military. Hence, any purposeful intervention on my part would have resulted in the termination of my research project. At the same time, my documentation was, in essence, an intervention. I hoped that my presence as an observer positively shaped the context of my observation and also contributed to the larger struggle against the militarization of schools. (p. 26)

Her positionality played a vital role in the creation, implementation, and analysis of military recruitment, but it also forced her into unexpected silences in order to carry out her research. Abajian’s positionality statement brings up many questions about the ways researchers have to use or silence their positionality to further their research, especially if they are working in ostensibly “neutral” and “politically free” zones, such as schools. Her work drew on engaged anthropology (Low & Merry, 2010 ) and critical reflexivity (Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008 ) to highlight how researchers’ subjectivities shape ethnographic projects. Questions of subjectivity and positionality in her work reflect the larger discourses around these topics in feminist theory and qualitative research.

Brown ( 2011 ) provided another example of embedded and reflexive positionality of the articles surveyed. Her entire study engaged with questions about how her positionality influenced the study during the field-work portion of her ethnography on how race and racism operate in ethnographic field-work. This excerpt from her study highlights how she conceived of positionality and how it informed her work and her process.

Next, I provide a brief overview of the research study from which this paper emerged and I follow this with a presentation of four, first-person narratives from key encounters I experienced while doing ethnographic field research. Each of these stories centres the role race played as I negotiated my multiple, complex positionality vis-á-vis different informants and participants in my study. These stories highlight the emotional pressures that race work has on the researcher and the research process, thus reaffirming why one needs to recognise the role race plays, and may play, in research prior to, during, and after conducting one’s study (Milner, 2007 ). I conclude by discussing the implications these insights have on preparing researchers of color to conduct cross-racial qualitative research. (Brown, 2011 , p. 98)

Brown centered the roles of race and subjectivity, both hers and her participants, by focusing her analysis on the four narratives. The researchers highlighted in this section thought deeply about the ethics of their projects and the ways that their positionality informed their choice of methods.

Methods and Challenges

Feminist qualitative research can take many forms, but the most common data collection methods include interviews, observations, and narrative or discourse analysis. For the purposes of this article, methods refer to the tools and techniques researchers use, while methodology refers to the larger philosophical and epistemological approaches to conducting research. It is also important to note that these are not fixed terms, and that there continues to be much debate about what constitutes feminist theory and feminist research methods among feminist qualitative researchers. This section discusses some of the tensions and constraints of using feminist theory in educational research.

Jackson and Mazzei ( 2012 ) called on researchers to think through their data with theory at all stages of the collection and analysis process. They also reminded us that all data collection is partial and informed by the researcher’s own beliefs (Koro-Ljungberg, Löytönen, & Tesar, 2017 ). Interviews are sites of power and critiques because they show the power of stories and serve as a method of worlding, the process of “making a world, turning insight into instrument, through and into a possible act of freedom” (Spivak, 2014 , p. xiii). Interviews allow researchers and participants ways to engage in new ways of understanding past experiences and connecting them to feminist theories. The narratives serve as data, but it is worth noting that the data collected from interviews are “partial, incomplete, and always being re-told and re-membered” (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012 , p. 3), much like the lived experiences of both researcher and participant.

Research, data collection, and interpretation are not neutral endeavors, particularly with interviews (Jackson & Mazzei, 2009 ; Mazzei, 2007 , 2013 ). Since education research emerged out of educational psychology (Lather, 1991 ; St. Pierre, 2016 ), historically there has been an emphasis on generalizability and positivist data collection methods. Most feminist research makes no claims of generalizability or truth; indeed, to do so would negate the hyperpersonal and particular nature of this type of research (Love, 2017 ). St. Pierre ( 2016 ) viewed the lack of generalizability as an asset of feminist and poststructural research, rather than a limitation, because it creates a space of resistance against positivist research methodologies.

Denzin and Giardina ( 2016 ) urged researchers to “consider an alternative mode of thinking about the critical turn in qualitative inquiry and posit the following suggestion: perhaps it is time we turned away from ‘methodology’ altogether ” (p. 5, italics original). Despite the contention over the term critical among some feminist scholars (e.g. Ellsworth, 1989 ), their suggestion is valid and has been picked up by feminist and poststructural scholars who examine the tensions between following a strict research method/ology and the theoretical systems out of which they operate because precision in method obscures the messy and human nature of research (Koro-Ljungberg, 2016 ; Koro-Ljungberg et al., 2017 ; Love, 2017 ; St. Pierre & Pillow, 2000 ). Feminist qualitative researchers should seek to complicate the question of what method and methodology mean when conducting feminist research (Lather, 1991 ), due to the feminist emphasis on reflexive and situated research methods (Hesse-Biber, 2012 ).

Examples of Feminist Qualitative Research in Education

A complete overview of the literature is not possible here, due to considerations of length, but the articles and books selected represent the various debates within feminist educational research. They also show how research preoccupations have changed over the course of feminist work in education. The literature review is divided into three broad categories: Power, canons, and gender; feminist pedagogies, curriculums, and classrooms; and teacher education, identities, and knowledge. Each section provides a broad overview of the literature to demonstrate the breadth of work using feminist theory, with some examples more deeply explicated to describe how feminist theories inform the scholarship.

Power, Canons, and Gender

The literature in this category contests disciplinary practices that are androcentric in both content and form, while asserting the value of using feminist knowledge to construct knowledge. The majority of the work was written in the 1980s and supported the creation of feminist ways of knowing, particularly via the creation of women’s studies programs or courses in existing departments that centered female voices and experiences.

Questioning the canon has long been a focus of feminist scholarship, as has the attempt to subvert its power in the disciplines. Bezucha ( 1985 ) focused on the ways that departments of history resist the inclusion of both women and feminism in the historical canon. Similarly, Miller ( 1985 ) discussed feminism as subversion when seeking to expand the canon of French literature in higher education.

Lauter and Dieterich ( 1972 ) examined a report by ERIC, “Women’s Place in Academe,” a collection of articles about the discrepancies by gender in jobs and tenure-track positions and the lack of inclusion of women authors in literature classes. They also found that women were relegated to “softer” disciplines and that feminist knowledge was not acknowledged as valid work. Culley and Portuges ( 1985 ) expanded the focus beyond disciplines to the larger structures of higher education and noted the varies ways that professors subvert from within their disciplines. DuBois et al. ( 1985 ) chronicled the development of feminist scholarship in the disciplines of anthropology, education, history, literature, and philosophy. They explained that the institutions of higher education often prevent feminist scholars from working across disciplines in an attempt to keep them separate. Raymond ( 1985 ) also critiqued the academy for not encouraging relationships across disciplines and offered the development of women’s, gender, and feminist studies as one solution to greater interdisciplinary work.

Parson ( 2016 ) examined the ways that STEM syllabi reinforce gendered norms in higher education. She specifically looked at eight syllabi from math, chemistry, biology, physics, and geology classes to determine how modal verbs showing stance, pronouns, intertextuality, interdiscursivity, and gender showed power relations in higher education. She framed the study through poststructuralist feminist critical discourse analysis to uncover “the ways that gendered practices that favor men are represented and replicated in the syllabus” (p. 103). She found that all the syllabi positioned knowledge as something that is, rather than something that can be co-constructed. Additionally, the syllabi also favored individual and masculine notions of what it means to learn by stressing the competitive and difficult nature of the classroom and content.

When reading newer work on feminism in higher education and the construction of knowledge, it is easy to feel that, while the conversations might have shifted somewhat, the challenge of conducting interdisciplinary feminist work in institutions of higher education remains as present as it was during the creation of women’s and gender studies departments. The articles all point to the fact that simply including women’s and marginalized voices in the academy does not erase or mitigate the larger issues of gender discrimination and androcentricity within the silos of the academy.

Feminist Pedagogies, Curricula, and Classrooms

This category of literature has many similarities to the previous one, but all the works focus more specifically on questions of curriculum and pedagogy. A review of the literature shows that the earliest conversations were about the role of women in academia and knowledge construction, and this selection builds on that work to emphasize the ways that feminism can influence the events within classes and expands the focus to more levels of education.

Rich ( 1985 ) explained that curriculum in higher education courses needs to validate gender identities while resisting patriarchal canons. Maher ( 1985 ) narrowed the focus to a critique of the lecture as a pedagogical technique that reinforces androcentric ways of learning and knowing. She called for classes in higher education to be “collaborative, cooperative, and interactive” (p. 30), a cry that still echoes across many college campuses today, especially from students in large lecture-based courses. Maher and Tetreault ( 1994 ) provided a collection of essays that are rooted in feminist classroom practice and moved from the classroom into theoretical possibilities for feminist education. Warren ( 1998 ) recommended using Peggy McIntosh’s five phases of curriculum development ( 1990 ) and extending it to include feminist pedagogies that challenge patriarchal ways of teaching. Exploring the relational encounters that exist in feminist classrooms, Sánchez-Pardo ( 2017 ) discussed the ethics of pedagogy as a politics of visibility and investigated the ways that democratic classrooms relate to feminist classrooms.

While all of the previously cited literature is U.S.–based, the next two works focus on the ways that feminist pedagogies and curriculum operate in a European context. Weiner ( 1994 ) used autobiography and narrative methodologies to provide an introduction to how feminism has influenced educational research and pedagogy in Britain. Revelles-Benavente and Ramos ( 2017 ) collected a series of studies about how situated feminist knowledge challenges the problems of neoliberal education across Europe. These two, among many European feminist works, demonstrate the range of scholarship and show the trans-Atlantic links between how feminism has been received in educational settings. However, much more work needs to be done in looking at the broader global context, and particularly by feminist scholars who come from non-Western contexts.

The following literature moves us into P–12 classrooms. DiGiovanni and Liston ( 2005 ) called for a new research agenda in K–5 education that explores the hidden curriculums surrounding gender and gender identity. One source of the hidden curriculum is classroom literature, which both Davies ( 2003 ) and Vandergrift ( 1995 ) discussed in their works. Davies ( 2003 ) used feminist ethnography to understand how children who were exposed to feminist picture books talked about gender and gender roles. Vandergrift ( 1995 ) presented a theoretical piece that explored the ways picture books reinforce or resist canons. She laid out a future research agenda using reader response theory to better comprehend how young children question gender in literature. Willinsky ( 1987 ) explored the ways that dictionary definitions reinforced constructions of gender. He looked at the definitions of the words clitoris, penis , and vagina in six school dictionaries and then compared them with A Feminist Dictionary to see how the definitions varied across texts. He found a stark difference in the treatment of the words vagina and penis ; definitions of the word vagina were treated as medical or anatomical and devoid of sexuality, while definitions of the term penis were linked to sex (p. 151).

Weisner ( 2004 ) addressed middle school classrooms and highlighted the various ways her school discouraged unconventional and feminist ways of teaching. She also brought up issues of silence, on the part of both teachers and students, regarding sexuality. By including students in the curriculum planning process, Weisner provided more possibilities for challenging power in classrooms. Wallace ( 1999 ) returned to the realm of higher education and pushed literature professors to expand pedagogy to be about more than just the texts that are read. She challenged the metaphoric dichotomy of classrooms as places of love or battlefields; in doing so, she “advocate[d] active ignorance and attention to resistances” (p. 194) as a method of subverting transference from students to teachers.

The works discussed in this section cover topics ranging from the place of women in curriculum to the gendered encounters teachers and students have with curriculums and pedagogies. They offer current feminist scholars many directions for future research, particularly in the arena of P–12 education.

Teacher Education, Identities, and Knowledge

The third subset of literature examines the ways that teachers exist in classrooms and some possibilities for feminist teacher education. The majority of the literature in this section starts from the premise that the teachers are engaged in feminist projects. The selections concerning teacher education offer critiques of existing heteropatriarchal normative teacher education and include possibilities for weaving feminism and feminist pedagogies into the education of preservice teachers.

Holzman ( 1986 ) explored the role of multicultural teaching and how it can challenge systematic oppression; however, she complicated the process with her personal narrative of being a lesbian and working to find a place within the school for her sexual identity. She questioned how teachers can protect their identities while also engaging in the fight for justice and equity. Hoffman ( 1985 ) discussed the ways teacher power operates in the classroom and how to balance the personal and political while still engaging in disciplinary curriculums. She contended that teachers can work from personal knowledge and connect it to the larger curricular concerns of their discipline. Golden ( 1998 ) used teacher narratives to unpack how teachers can become radicalized in the higher education classroom when faced with unrelenting patriarchal and heteronormative messages.

Extending this work, Bailey ( 2001 ) discussed teachers as activists within the classroom. She focused on three aspects of teaching: integrity with regard to relationships, course content, and teaching strategies. She concluded that teachers cannot separate their values from their profession. Simon ( 2007 ) conducted a case study of a secondary teacher and communities of inquiry to see how they impacted her work in the classroom. The teacher, Laura, explicitly tied her inquiry activities to activist teacher education and critical pedagogy, “For this study, inquiry is fundamental to critical pedagogy, shaped by power and ideology, relationships within and outside of the classroom, as well as teachers’ and students’ autochthonous histories and epistemologies” (Simon, 2007 , p. 47). Laura’s experiences during her teacher education program continued during her years in the classroom, leading her to create a larger activism-oriented teacher organization.

Collecting educational autobiographies from 17 college-level feminist professors, Maher and Tetreault ( 1994 ) worried that educators often conflated “the experience and values of white middle-class women like ourselves for gendered universals” (p. 15). They complicated the idea of a democratic feminist teacher, raised issues regarding the problematic ways hegemonic feminism flattens experience to that of just white women, and pushed feminist professors to pay particular attention to the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality when teaching.

Cheira ( 2017 ) called for gender-conscious teaching and literature-based teaching to confront the gender stereotypes she encountered in Portuguese secondary schools. Papoulis and Smith ( 1992 ) conducted summer sessions where teachers experienced writing activities they could teach their students. Conceptualized as an experiential professional development course, the article revolved around an incident where the seminar was reading Emily Dickinson and the men in the course asked the two female instructors why they had to read feminist literature and the conversations that arose. The stories the women told tie into Papoulis and Smith’s call for teacher educators to interrogate their underlying beliefs and ideologies about gender, race, and class, so they are able to foster communities of study that can purposefully and consciously address feminist inquiry.

McWilliam ( 1994 ) collected stories of preservice teachers in Australia to understand how feminism can influence teacher education. She explored how textual practices affect how preservice teachers understand teaching and their role. Robertson ( 1994 ) tackled the issue of teacher education and challenged teachers to move beyond the two metaphors of banking and midwifery when discussing feminist ways of teaching. She called for teacher educators to use feminist pedagogies within schools of education so that preservice teachers experience a feminist education. Maher and Rathbone ( 1986 ) explored the scholarship on women’s and girls’ educational experiences and used their findings to call for changes in teacher education. They argued that schools reinforce the notion that female qualities are inferior due to androcentric curriculums and ways of showing knowledge. Justice-oriented teacher education is a more recent iteration of this debate, and Jones and Hughes ( 2016 ) called for community-based practices to expand the traditional definitions of schooling and education. They called for preservice teachers to be conversant with, and open to, feminist storylines that defy existing gendered, raced, and classed stereotypes.

Bieler ( 2010 ) drew on feminist and critical definitions of dialogue (e.g., those by Bakhtin, Freire, Ellsworth, hooks, and Burbules) to reframe mentoring discourse in university supervision and dialogic praxis. She concluded by calling on university supervisors to change their methods of working with preservice teachers to “Explicitly and transparently cultivat[e] dialogic praxis-oriented mentoring relationships so that the newest members of our field can ‘feel their own strength at last,’ as Homer’s Telemachus aspired to do” (Bieler, 2010 , p. 422).

Johnson ( 2004 ) also examined the role of teacher educators, but she focused on the bodies and sexualities of preservice teachers. She explored the dynamics of sexual tension in secondary classrooms, the role of the body in teaching, and concerns about clothing when teaching. She explicitly worked to resist and undermine Cartesian dualities and, instead, explored the erotic power of teaching and seducing students into a love of subject matter. “But empowered women threaten the patriarchal structure of this society. Therefore, women have been acculturated to distrust erotic power” (Johnson, 2004 , p. 7). Like Bieler ( 2010 ), Johnson ( 2004 ) concluded that, “Teacher educators could play a role in creating a space within the larger framework of teacher education discourse such that bodily knowledge is considered along with pedagogical and content knowledge as a necessary component of teacher training and professional development” (p. 24). The articles about teacher education all sought to provoke questions about how we engage in the preparation and continuing development of educators.

Teacher identity and teacher education constitute how teachers construct knowledge, as both students and teachers. The works in this section raise issues of what identities are “acceptable” in the classroom, ways teachers and teacher educators can disrupt oppressive storylines and practices, and the challenges of utilizing feminist pedagogies without falling into hegemonic feminist practices.

Possibilities for Feminist Qualitative Research

Spivak ( 2012 ) believed that “gender is our first instrument of abstraction” (p. 30) and is often overlooked in a desire to understand political, curricular, or cultural moments. More work needs to be done to center gender and intersecting identities in educational research. One way is by using feminist qualitative methods. Classrooms and educational systems need to be examined through their gendered components, and the ways students operate within and negotiate systems of power and oppression need to be explored. We need to see if and how teachers are actively challenging patriarchal and heteronormative curriculums and to learn new methods for engaging in affirmative sabotage (Spivak, 2014 ). Given the historical emphasis on higher education, more work is needed regarding P–12 education, because it is in P–12 classrooms that affirmative sabotage may be the most necessary to subvert systems of oppression.

In order to engage in affirmative sabotage, it is vital that qualitative researchers who wish to use feminist theory spend time grappling with the complexity and multiplicity of feminist theory. It is only by doing this thought work that researchers will be able to understand the ongoing debates within feminist theory and to use it in a way that leads to a more equitable and just world. Simply using feminist theory because it may be trendy ignores the very real political nature of feminist activism. Researchers need to consider which theories they draw on and why they use those theories in their projects. One way of doing this is to explicitly think with theory (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012 ) at all stages of the research project and to consider which voices are being heard and which are being silenced (Gilligan, 2011 ; Spivak, 1988 ) in educational research. More consideration also needs to be given to non-U.S. and non-Western feminist theories and research to expand our understanding of education and schooling.

Paying close attention to feminist debates about method and methodology provides another possibility for qualitative research. The very process of challenging positivist research methods opens up new spaces and places for feminist qualitative research in education. It also allows researchers room to explore subjectivities that are often marginalized. When researchers engage in the deeply reflexive work that feminist research requires, it leads to acts of affirmative sabotage within the academy. These discussions create the spaces that lead to new visions and new worlds. Spivak ( 2006 ) once declared, “I am helpless before the fact that all my essays these days seem to end with projects for future work” (p. 35), but this is precisely the beauty of feminist qualitative research. We are setting ourselves and other feminist researchers up for future work, future questions, and actively changing the nature of qualitative research.

Acknowledgements

Dr. George Noblit provided the author with the opportunity to think deeply about qualitative methods and to write this article, for which the author is extremely grateful. Dr. Lynda Stone and Dr. Tanya Shields are thanked for encouraging the author’s passion for feminist theory and for providing many hours of fruitful conversation and book lists. A final thank you is owed to the author’s partner, Ben Skelton, for hours of listening to her talk about feminist methods, for always being a first reader, and for taking care of their infant while the author finished writing this article.

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Topics in Feminism

Feminism is both an intellectual commitment and a political movement that seeks justice for women and the end of sexism in all forms. However, there are many different kinds of feminism. Feminists disagree about what sexism consists in, and what exactly ought to be done about it; they disagree about what it means to be a woman or a man and what social and political implications gender has or should have. Nonetheless, motivated by the quest for social justice, feminist inquiry provides a wide range of perspectives on social, cultural, economic, and political phenomena. Important topics for feminist theory and politics include: the body, class and work, disability, the family, globalization, human rights, popular culture, race and racism, reproduction, science, the self, sex work, human trafficking, and sexuality. Extended discussion of these topics is included in the sub-entries to feminism in this encyclopedia.

1. Introduction

2.1 feminist beliefs and feminist movements, 2.2 normative and descriptive components, 2.3 feminism and the diversity of women, 2.4 feminism as anti-sexism, 3. topics in feminism: overview of the encyclopedia sub-entries, feminism and class, feminism and disability, feminism, human rights, global feminism, and human trafficking, feminism and race/ethnicity.

• Feminism, Sex, and Sexuality

Related Entries

Feminism brings many things to philosophy including not only a variety of particular moral and political claims, but ways of asking and answering questions, constructive and critical dialogue with mainstream philosophical views and methods, and new topics of inquiry. Feminist philosophers work within all the major traditions of philosophical scholarship including analytic philosophy, American Pragmatist philosophy, and Continential philosophy. Entries in this Encyclopedia appearing under the heading “feminism, approaches” discuss the impact of these traditions on feminist scholarship and examine the possibility and desirability of work that makes links between two traditions. Feminist contributions to and interventions in mainstream philosophical debates are covered in entries in this encyclopedia under “feminism, interventions”. Entries covered under the rubric “feminism, topics” concern philosophical issues that arise as feminists articulate accounts of sexism, critique sexist social and cultural practices, and develop alternative visions of a just world. In short, they are philosophical topics that arise within feminism.

Although there are many different and sometimes conflicting approaches to feminist philosophy, it is instructive to begin by asking what, if anything, feminists as a group are committed to. Considering some of the controversies over what feminism is provides a springboard for seeing how feminist commitments generate a host of philosophical topics, especially as those commitments confront the world as we know it.

2. What is Feminism?

The term ‘feminism’ has many different uses and its meanings are often contested. For example, some writers use the term ‘feminism’ to refer to a historically specific political movement in the US and Europe; other writers use it to refer to the belief that there are injustices against women, though there is no consensus on the exact list of these injustices. Although the term “feminism” has a history in English linked with women's activism from the late 19th century to the present, it is useful to distinguish feminist ideas or beliefs from feminist political movements, for even in periods where there has been no significant political activism around women's subordination, individuals have been concerned with and theorized about justice for women. So, for example, it makes sense to ask whether Plato was a feminist, given his view that women should be trained to rule ( Republic , Book V), even though he was an exception in his historical context. (See e.g., Tuana 1994.)

Our goal here is not to survey the history of feminism — as a set of ideas or as a series of political movements — but rather is to sketch some of the central uses of the term that are most relevant to those interested in contemporary feminist philosophy. The references we provide below are only a small sample of the work available on the topics in question; more complete bibliographies are available at the specific topical entries and also at the end of this entry.

In the mid-1800s the term ‘feminism’ was used to refer to “the qualities of females”, and it was not until after the First International Women's Conference in Paris in 1892 that the term, following the French term féministe, was used regularly in English for a belief in and advocacy of equal rights for women based on the idea of the equality of the sexes. Although the term “feminism” in English is rooted in the mobilization for woman suffrage in Europe and the US during the late 19th and early 20th century, of course efforts to obtain justice for women did not begin or end with this period of activism. So some have found it useful to think of the women's movement in the US as occurring in “waves”. On the wave model, the struggle to achieve basic political rights during the period from the mid-19th century until the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 counts as “First Wave” feminism. Feminism waned between the two world wars, to be “revived” in the late 1960's and early 1970's as “Second Wave” feminism. In this second wave, feminists pushed beyond the early quest for political rights to fight for greater equality across the board, e.g., in education, the workplace, and at home. More recent transformations of feminism have resulted in a “Third Wave”. Third Wave feminists often critique Second Wave feminism for its lack of attention to the differences among women due to race, ethnicity, class, nationality, religion (see Section 2.3 below; also Breines 2002; Spring 2002), and emphasize “identity” as a site of gender struggle. (For more information on the “wave” model and each of the “waves”, see Other Internet Resources .)

However, some feminist scholars object to identifying feminism with these particular moments of political activism, on the grounds that doing so eclipses the fact that there has been resistance to male domination that should be considered “feminist” throughout history and across cultures: i.e., feminism is not confined to a few (White) women in the West over the past century or so. Moreover, even considering only relatively recent efforts to resist male domination in Europe and the US, the emphasis on “First” and “Second” Wave feminism ignores the ongoing resistance to male domination between the 1920's and 1960's and the resistance outside mainstream politics, particularly by women of color and working class women (Cott 1987).

One strategy for solving these problems would be to identify feminism in terms of a set of ideas or beliefs rather than participation in any particular political movement. As we saw above, this also has the advantage of allowing us to locate isolated feminists whose work was not understood or appreciated during their time. But how should we go about identifying a core set of feminist beliefs? Some would suggest that we should focus on the political ideas that the term was apparently coined to capture, viz., the commitment to women's equal rights. This acknowledges that commitment to and advocacy for women's rights has not been confined to the Women's Liberation Movement in the West. But this too raises controversy, for it frames feminism within a broadly Liberal approach to political and economic life. Although most feminists would probably agree that there is some sense of “rights” on which achieving equal rights for women is a necessary condition for feminism to succeed, most would also argue that this would not be sufficient. This is because women's oppression under male domination rarely if ever consists solely in depriving women of political and legal “rights”, but also extends into the structure of our society and the content of our culture, and permeates our consciousness (e.g., Bartky 1990).

Is there any point, then, to asking what feminism is? Given the controversies over the term and the politics of circumscribing the boundaries of a social movement, it is sometimes tempting to think that the best we can do is to articulate a set of disjuncts that capture a range of feminist beliefs. However, at the same time it can be both intellectually and politically valuable to have a schematic framework that enables us to map at least some of our points of agreement and disagreement. We'll begin here by considering some of the basic elements of feminism as a political position or set of beliefs. For a survey of different philosophical approaches to feminism, see “Feminism, approaches to”.

In many of its forms, feminism seems to involve at least two groups of claims, one normative and the other descriptive. The normative claims concern how women ought (or ought not) to be viewed and treated and draw on a background conception of justice or broad moral position; the descriptive claims concern how women are, as a matter of fact, viewed and treated, alleging that they are not being treated in accordance with the standards of justice or morality invoked in the normative claims. Together the normative and descriptive claims provide reasons for working to change the way things are; hence, feminism is not just an intellectual but also a political movement.

So, for example, a Liberal approach of the kind already mentioned might define feminism (rather simplistically here) in terms of two claims:

• (Normative) Men and women are entitled to equal rights and respect.
• (Descriptive) Women are currently disadvantaged with respect to rights and respect, compared with men […in such and such respects and due to such and such conditions…].

On this account, that women and men ought to have equal rights and respect is the normative claim; and that women are denied equal rights and respect functions here as the descriptive claim. Admittedly, the claim that women are disadvantaged with respect to rights and respect is not a “purely descriptive” claim since it plausibly involves an evaluative component. However, our point here is simply that claims of this sort concern what is the case not what ought to be the case. Moreover, as indicated by the ellipsis above, the descriptive component of a substantive feminist view will not be articulable in a single claim, but will involve an account of the specific social mechanisms that deprive women of, e.g., rights and respect. For example, is the primary source of women's subordination her role in the family? (Engels 1845; Okin 1989) Or is it her role in the labor market? (Bergmann 2002) Is the problem males' tendencies to sexual violence (and what is the source of these tendencies?)? (Brownmiller 1975; MacKinnon 1987) Or is it simply women's biological role in reproduction? (Firestone 1970)

Disagreements within feminism can occur with respect to either the descriptive or normative claims, e.g., feminists differ on what would count as justice or injustice for women (what counts as “equality,” “oppression,” “disadvantage”, what rights should everyone be accorded?) , and what sorts of injustice women in fact suffer (what aspects of women's current situation are harmful or unjust?). Disagreements may also lie in the explanations of the injustice: two feminists may agree that women are unjustly being denied proper rights and respect and yet substantively differ in their accounts of how or why the injustice occurs and what is required to end it (Jaggar 1994).

Disagreements between feminists and non-feminists can occur with respect to both the normative and descriptive claims as well, e.g., some non-feminists agree with feminists on the ways women ought to be viewed and treated, but don't see any problem with the way things currently are. Others disagree about the background moral or political views.

In an effort to suggest a schematic account of feminism, Susan James characterizes feminism as follows:

Feminism is grounded on the belief that women are oppressed or disadvantaged by comparison with men, and that their oppression is in some way illegitimate or unjustified. Under the umbrella of this general characterization there are, however, many interpretations of women and their oppression, so that it is a mistake to think of feminism as a single philosophical doctrine, or as implying an agreed political program. (James 1998, 576)

James seems here to be using the notions of “oppression” and “disadvantage” as placeholders for more substantive accounts of injustice (both normative and descriptive) over which feminists disagree.

Some might prefer to define feminism in terms of a normative claim alone: feminists are those who believe that women are entitled to equal rights, or equal respect, or…(fill in the blank with one's preferred account of injustice), and one is not required to believe that women are currently being treated unjustly. However, if we were to adopt this terminological convention, it would be harder to identify some of the interesting sources of disagreement both with and within feminism, and the term ‘feminism’ would lose much of its potential to unite those whose concerns and commitments extend beyond their moral beliefs to their social interpretations and political affiliations. Feminists are not simply those who are committed in principle to justice for women; feminists take themselves to have reasons to bring about social change on women's behalf.

Taking “feminism” to entail both normative and empirical commitments also helps make sense of some uses of the term ‘feminism’ in recent popular discourse. In everyday conversation it is not uncommon to find both men and women prefixing a comment they might make about women with the caveat, “I'm not a feminist, but…”. Of course this qualification might be (and is) used for various purposes, but one persistent usage seems to follow the qualification with some claim that is hard to distinguish from claims that feminists are wont to make. E.g., I'm not a feminist but I believe that women should earn equal pay for equal work; or I'm not a feminist but I'm delighted that first-rate women basketball players are finally getting some recognition in the WNBA. If we see the identification “feminist” as implicitly committing one to both a normative stance about how things should be and an interpretation of current conditions, it is easy to imagine someone being in the position of wanting to cancel his or her endorsement of either the normative or the descriptive claim. So, e.g., one might be willing to acknowledge that there are cases where women have been disadvantaged without wanting to buy any broad moral theory that takes a stance on such things (especially where it is unclear what that broad theory is). Or one might be willing to acknowledge in a very general way that equality for women is a good thing, without being committed to interpreting particular everyday situations as unjust (especially if is unclear how far these interpretations would have to extend). Feminists, however, at least according to popular discourse, are ready to both adopt a broad account of what justice for women would require and interpret everyday situations as unjust by the standards of that account. Those who explicitly cancel their commitment to feminism may then be happy to endorse some part of the view but are unwilling to endorse what they find to be a problematic package.

As mentioned above, there is considerable debate within feminism concerning the normative question: what would count as (full) justice for women? What is the nature of the wrong that feminism seeks to address? E.g., is the wrong that women have been deprived equal rights? Is it that women have been denied equal respect for their differences? Is it that women's experiences have been ignored and devalued? Is it all of the above and more? What framework should we employ to identify and address the issues? (See, e.g., Jaggar 1983; Young 1990a; Tuana and Tong 1995.) Feminist philosophers in particular have asked: Do the standard philosophical accounts of justice and morality provide us adequate resources to theorize male domination, or do we need distinctively feminist accounts? (E.g., Okin 1979; Hoagland 1989; Okin 1989; Ruddick 1989; Benhabib 1992; Hampton 1993; Held 1993; Tong 1993; Baier 1994; Moody-Adams 1997; Walker 1998; Kittay 1999; Robinson 1999; Young 2011; O'Connor 2008).

Note, however, that by phrasing the task as one of identifying the wrongs women suffer (and have suffered), there is an implicit suggestion that women as a group can be usefully compared against men as a group with respect to their standing or position in society; and this seems to suggest that women as a group are treated in the same way, or that they all suffer the same injustices, and men as a group all reap the same advantages. But of course this is not the case, or at least not straightforwardly so. As bell hooks so vividly pointed out, in 1963 when Betty Friedan urged women to reconsider the role of housewife and demanded greater opportunities for women to enter the workforce (Friedan 1963), Friedan was not speaking for working class women or most women of color (hooks 1984, 1-4). Neither was she speaking for lesbians. Women as a group experience many different forms of injustice, and the sexism they encounter interacts in complex ways with other systems of oppression. In contemporary terms, this is known as the problem of intersectionality (Crenshaw 1991). This critique has led some theorists to resist the label “feminism” and adopt a different name for their view. Earlier, during the 1860s–80s, the term ‘womanism’ had sometimes been used for such intellectual and political commitments; more recently, Alice Walker has proposed that “womanism” provides a contemporary alternative to “feminism” that better addresses the needs of Black women and women of color more generally (Walker 1990).

To consider some of the different strategies for responding to the phenomenon of intersectionality, let's return to the schematic claims that women are oppressed and this oppression is wrong or unjust. Very broadly, then, one might characterize the goal of feminism to be ending the oppression of women. But if we also acknowledge that women are oppressed not just by sexism, but in many ways, e.g., by classism, homophobia, racism, ageism, ableism, etc., then it might seem that the goal of feminism is to end all oppression that affects women. And some feminists have adopted this interpretation, e.g., (Ware 1970), quoted in (Crow 2000, 1).

Note, however, that not all agree with such an expansive definition of feminism. One might agree that feminists ought to work to end all forms of oppression — oppression is unjust and feminists, like everyone else, have a moral obligation to fight injustice — without maintaining that it is the mission of feminism to end all oppression. One might even believe that in order to accomplish feminism's goals it is necessary to combat racism and economic exploitation, but also think that there is a narrower set of specifically feminist objectives. In other words, opposing oppression in its many forms may be instrumental to, even a necessary means to, feminism, but not intrinsic to it. E.g., bell hooks argues:

Feminism, as liberation struggle, must exist apart from and as a part of the larger struggle to eradicate domination in all its forms. We must understand that patriarchal domination shares an ideological foundation with racism and other forms of group oppression, and that there is no hope that it can be eradicated while these systems remain intact. This knowledge should consistently inform the direction of feminist theory and practice. (hooks 1989, 22)

On hooks' account, the defining characteristic that distinguishes feminism from other liberation struggles is its concern with sexism:

Unlike many feminist comrades, I believe women and men must share a common understanding — a basic knowledge of what feminism is — if it is ever to be a powerful mass-based political movement. In Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center , I suggest that defining feminism broadly as “a movement to end sexism and sexist oppression” would enable us to have a common political goal…Sharing a common goal does not imply that women and men will not have radically divergent perspectives on how that goal might be reached. (hooks 1989, 23)

hooks' approach depends on the claim that sexism is a particular form of oppression that can be distinguished from other forms, e.g., racism and homophobia, even though it is currently (and virtually always) interlocked with other forms of oppression. Feminism's objective is to end sexism, though because of its relation to other forms of oppression, this will require efforts to end other forms of oppression as well. For example, feminists who themselves remain racists will not be able to fully appreciate the broad impact of sexism on the lives of women of color. Furthermore because sexist institutions are also, e.g., racist, classist and homophobic, dismantling sexist institutions will require that we dismantle the other forms of domination intertwined with them (Heldke and O'Connor 2004). Following hooks' lead, we might characterize feminism schematically (allowing the schema to be filled in differently by different accounts) as the view that women are subject to sexist oppression and that this is wrong. This move shifts the burden of our inquiry from a characterization of what feminism is to a characterization of what sexism, or sexist oppression is.

As mentioned above, there are a variety of interpretations — feminist and otherwise — of what exactly oppression consists in, but the leading idea is that oppression consists in “an enclosing structure of forces and barriers which tends to the immobilization and reduction of a group or category of people” (Frye 1983, 10-11). Not just any “enclosing structure” is oppressive, however, for plausibly any process of socialization will create a structure that both limits and enables all individuals who live within it. In the case of oppression, however, the “enclosing structures” in question are part of a broader system that asymmetrically and unjustly disadvantages one group and benefits another. So, e.g., although sexism restricts the opportunities available to — and so unquestionably harms — both men and women (and considering some pairwise comparisons may even have a greater negative impact on a man than a woman), overall, women as a group unjustly suffer the greater harm. It is a crucial feature of contemporary accounts, however, that one cannot assume that members of the privileged group have intentionally designed or maintained the system for their benefit. The oppressive structure may be the result of an historical process whose originators are long gone, or it may be the unintended result of complex cooperative strategies gone wrong.

Leaving aside (at least for the moment) further details in the account of oppression, the question remains: What makes a particular form of oppression sexist? If we just say that a form of oppression counts as sexist oppression if it harms women, or even primarily harms women, this is not enough to distinguish it from other forms of oppression. Virtually all forms of oppression harm women, and arguably some besides sexism harm women primarily (though not exclusively), e.g., body size oppression, age oppression. Besides, as we've noted before, sexism is not only harmful to women, but is harmful to all of us.

What makes a particular form of oppression sexist seems to be not just that it harms women, but that someone is subject to this form of oppression specifically because she is (or at least appears to be) a woman. Racial oppression harms women, but racial oppression (by itself) doesn't harm them because they are women, it harms them because they are (or appear to be) members of a particular race. The suggestion that sexist oppression consists in oppression to which one is subject by virtue of being or appearing to be a woman provides us at least the beginnings of an analytical tool for distinguishing subordinating structures that happen to affect some or even all women from those that are more specifically sexist (Haslanger 2004). But problems and unclarities remain.

First, we need to explicate further what it means to be oppressed “because you are a woman”. E.g., is the idea that there is a particular form of oppression that is specific to women? Is to be oppressed “as a woman” to be oppressed in a particular way? Or can we be pluralists about what sexist oppression consists in without fragmenting the notion beyond usefulness?

Two strategies for explicating sexist oppression have proven to be problematic. The first is to maintain that there is a form of oppression common to all women. For example, one might interpret Catharine MacKinnon's work as claiming that to be oppressed as a woman is to be viewed and treated as sexually subordinate, where this claim is grounded in the (alleged) universal fact of the eroticization of male dominance and female submission (MacKinnon 1987; MacKinnon 1989). Although MacKinnon allows that sexual subordination can happen in a myriad of ways, her account is monistic in its attempt to unite the different forms of sexist oppression around a single core account that makes sexual objectification the focus. Although MacKinnon's work provides a powerful resource for analyzing women's subordination, many have argued that it is too narrow, e.g., in some contexts (especially in developing countries) sexist oppression seems to concern more the local division of labor and economic exploitation. Although certainly sexual subordination is a factor in sexist oppression, it requires us to fabricate implausible explanations of social life to suppose that all divisions of labor that exploit women (as women) stem from the “eroticization of dominance and submission”. Moreover, it isn't obvious that in order to make sense of sexist oppression we need to seek a single form of oppression common to all women.

A second problematic strategy has been to consider as paradigms those who are oppressed only as women, with the thought that complex cases bringing in additional forms of oppression will obscure what is distinctive of sexist oppression. This strategy would have us focus in the U.S. on White, wealthy, young, beautiful, able-bodied, heterosexual women to determine what oppression, if any, they suffer, with the hope of finding sexism in its “purest” form, unmixed with racism or homophobia, etc. (see Spelman 1988, 52-54). This approach is not only flawed in its exclusion of all but the most elite women in its paradigm, but it assumes that privilege in other areas does not affect the phenomenon under consideration. As Elizabeth Spelman makes the point:

…no woman is subject to any form of oppression simply because she is a woman; which forms of oppression she is subject to depend on what “kind” of woman she is. In a world in which a woman might be subject to racism, classism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, if she is not so subject it is because of her race, class, religion, sexual orientation. So it can never be the case that the treatment of a woman has only to do with her gender and nothing to do with her class or race. (Spelman 1988, 52-3)

Recent accounts of oppression are designed to allow that oppression takes many forms, and refuse to identify one form as more basic or fundamental than the rest. For example, Iris Young describes five “faces” of oppression: exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and systematic violence (Young 1990c, Ch. 2). Plausibly others should be added to the list. Sexist or racist oppression, for example, will manifest itself in different ways in different contexts, e.g., in some contexts through systematic violence, in other contexts through economic exploitation. Acknowledging this does not go quite far enough, however, for monistic theorists such as MacKinnon could grant this much. Pluralist accounts of sexist oppression must also allow that there isn't an over-arching explanation of sexist oppression that applies to all its forms: in some cases it may be that women's oppression as women is due to the eroticization of male dominance, but in other cases it may be better explained by women's reproductive value in establishing kinship structures (Rubin 1975), or by the shifting demands of globalization within an ethnically stratified workplace. In other words, pluralists resist the temptation to “grand social theory,” “overarching metanarratives,” “monocausal explanations,” to allow that the explanation of sexism in a particular historical context will rely on economic, political, legal, and cultural factors that are specific to that context which would prevent the account from being generalized to all instances of sexism (Fraser and Nicholson 1990). It is still compatible with pluralist methods to seek out patterns in women's social positions and structural explanations within and across social contexts, but in doing so we must be highly sensitive to historical and cultural variation.

However, if we pursue a pluralist strategy in understanding sexist oppression, what unifies all the instances as instances of sexism? After all, we cannot assume that the oppression in question takes the same form in different contexts, and we cannot assume that there is an underlying explanation of the different ways it manifests itself. So can we even speak of there being a unified set of cases — something we can call “sexist oppression” — at all?

Some feminists would urge us to recognize that there isn't a systematic way to unify the different instances of sexism, and correspondingly, there is no systematic unity in what counts as feminism: instead we should see the basis for feminist unity in coalition building (Reagon 1983). Different groups work to combat different forms of oppression; some groups take oppression against women (as women) as a primary concern. If there is a basis for cooperation between some subset of these groups in a given context, then finding that basis is an accomplishment, but should not be taken for granted.

An alternative, however, would be to grant that in practice unity among feminists cannot be taken for granted, but to begin with a theoretical common-ground among feminist views that does not assume that sexism appears in the same form or for the same reasons in all contexts. We saw above that one promising strategy for distinguishing sexism from racism, classism, and other forms of injustice is to focus on the idea that if an individual is suffering sexist oppression, then an important part of the explanation why she is subject to the injustice is that she is or appears to be a woman. This includes cases in which women as a group are explicitly targeted by a policy or a practice, but also includes cases where the policy or practice affects women due to a history of sexism, even if they are not explicitly targeted. For example, if women are deprived an education and so are, on the whole, illiterate. And if under these circumstances only those who are literate are entitled to vote. Then we can say that women as a group are being disenfranchised and that this is a form of sexist oppression because part of the explanation of why women cannot vote is that they are women, and women are deprived an education. The commonality among the cases is to be found in the role of gender in the explanation of the injustice rather than the specific form the injustice takes. Building on this we could unify a broad range of feminist views by seeing them as committed to the (very abstract) claims that:

• (Descriptive claim) Women, and those who appear to be women, are subjected to wrongs and/or injustice at least in part because they are or appear to be women.
• (Normative claim) The wrongs/injustices in question in (i) ought not to occur and should be stopped when and where they do.

We have so far been using the term ‘oppression’ loosely to cover whatever form of wrong or injustice is at issue. Continuing with this intentional openness in the exact nature of the wrong, the question still remains what it means to say that women are subjected to injustice because they are women. To address this question, it may help to consider a familiar ambiguity in the notion “because”: are we concerned here with causal explanations or justifications? On one hand, the claim that someone is oppressed because she is a woman suggests that the best (causal) explanation of the subordination in question will make reference to her sex: e.g., Paula is subject to sexist oppression on the job because the best explanation of why she makes $1.00 less an hour for doing comparable work as Paul makes reference to her sex (possibly in addition to her race or other social classifications). On the other hand, the claim that someone is oppressed because she is a woman suggests that the rationale or basis for the oppressive structures requires that one be sensitive to someone's sex in determining how they should be viewed and treated, i.e., that the justification for someone's being subject to the structures in question depends on a representation of them as sexed male or female. E.g., Paula is subject to sexist oppression on the job because the pay scale for her job classification is justified within a framework that distinguishes and devalues women's work compared with men's.

Note, however, that in both sorts of cases the fact that one is or appears to be a woman need not be the only factor relevant in explaining the injustice. It might be, for example, that one stands out in a group because of one's race, or one's class, or one's sexuality, and because one stands out one becomes a target for injustice. But if the injustice takes a form that, e.g., is regarded as especially apt for a woman, then the injustice should be understood intersectionally, i.e., as a response to an intersectional category. For example, the practice of raping Bosnian women was an intersectional injustice: it targeted them both because they were Bosnian and because they were women.

Of course, these two understandings of being oppressed because you are a woman are not incompatible; in fact they typically support one another. Because human actions are often best explained by the framework employed for justifying them, one's sex may play a large role in determining how one is treated because the background understandings for what's appropriate treatment draw invidious distinctions between the sexes. In other words, the causal mechanism for sexism often passes through problematic representations of women and gender roles.

In each of the cases of being oppressed as a woman mentioned above, Paula suffers injustice, but a crucial factor in explaining the injustice is that Paula is a member of a particular group, viz., women (or females). This, we think, is crucial in understanding why sexism (and racism, and other -isms) are most often understood as kinds of oppression. Oppression is injustice that, first and foremost, concerns groups; individuals are oppressed just in case they are subjected to injustice because of their group membership. On this view, to claim that women as women suffer injustice is to claim that women are oppressed.

Where does this leave us? ‘Feminism’ is an umbrella term for a range of views about injustices against women. There are disagreements among feminists about the nature of justice in general and the nature of sexism, in particular, the specific kinds of injustice or wrong women suffer; and the group who should be the primary focus of feminist efforts. Nonetheless, feminists are committed to bringing about social change to end injustice against women, in particular, injustice against women as women.

Given a schematic framework for considering different forms of feminism, it should be clearer how philosophical issues arise in working out the details of a feminist position. The most straightforward philosophical commitment will be to a normative theory that articulates an account of justice and/or an account of the good. Feminists have been involved in critiquing existing normative theories and articulating alternatives for some time now. A survey of some of this work can be found under “Feminism, interventions”, in the sub-entries within “Feminist Political Philosophy”, viz., Liberal Feminism, Materialist Feminism, and Radical Feminism. (See also Hampton 1993; Jaggar 1983; Kittay 1999; MacKinnon 1989; Nussbaum 1999; Okin 1979; Okin 1989; Pateman 1988; Schneir 1972; Schneir 1994; Silvers 1999; Young 1990.)

However, there is also important philosophical work to be done in what we have been calling the “descriptive” component of feminism. Careful critical attention to our practices can reveal the inadequacy of dominant philosophical tropes. For example, feminists working from the perspective of women's lives have been influential in bringing philosophical attention to the phenomenon of care and care-giving (Ruddick 1989; Held 1995; Held 2007; Hamington 2006), dependency (Kittay 1999), disability (Wilkerson 2002; Carlson 2009) women's labor (Waring 1999; Delphy 1984; Harley 2007), scientific bias and objectivity (Longino 1990), and have revealed weaknesses in existing ethical, political, and epistemological theories. More generally, feminists have called for inquiry into what are typically considered “private” practices and personal concerns, such as the family, sexuality, the body, to balance what has seemed to be a masculine pre-occupation with “public” and impersonal matters. Philosophy presupposes interpretive tools for understanding our everyday lives; feminist work in articulating additional dimensions of experience and aspects of our practices is invaluable in demonstrating the bias in existing tools, and in the search for better ones.

Feminist explanations of sexism and accounts of sexist practices also raise issues that are within the domain of traditional philosophical inquiry. For example, in thinking about care, feminists have asked questions about the nature of the self; in thinking about gender, feminists have asked what the relationship is between the natural and the social; in thinking about sexism in science, feminists have asked what should count as knowledge. In some such cases mainstream philosophical accounts provide useful tools; in other cases, alternative proposals have seemed more promising.

In the sub-entries included under “feminism (topics)” in the Table of Contents to this Encyclopedia , authors survey some of the recent feminist work on a topic, highlighting the issues that are of particular relevance to philosophy. These entries are:

• perspectives on autonomy
• perspectives on class and work
• perspectives on disability
• perspectives on globalization
• perspectives on objectification
• perspectives on power
• perspectives on rape
• perspectives on reproduction and the family
• perspectives on science
• perspectives on sex and gender
• perspectives on sex markets
• perspectives on the body
• perspectives on the self
• perspectives on trans issues

See also the entries in the Related Entries section below.

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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up this entry topic at the Indiana Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

Other Internet Resources

Resources listed below have been chosen to provide only a springboard into the huge amount of feminist material available on the web. The emphasis here is on general resources useful for doing research in feminist philosophy or interdisciplinary feminist theory, e.g., the links connect to bibliographies and meta-sites, and resources concerning inclusion, exclusion, and feminist diversity. The list is incomplete and will be regularly revised and expanded. Further resources on topics in feminism such as popular culture, reproductive rights, sex work, are available within each sub-entry on that topic.

• Feminist Theory Website
• Women and Social Movements in the US: 1600–2000
• The Path of the Women's Rights Movement: Detailed Timeline 1848–1997
• Documents from the Women's Liberation Movement (Duke Univ. Archives)
• Documenting Difference: An Illustrated & Annotated Anthology of Documents on Race, Class, Gender & Ethnicity in the United States
• Race, Gender, and Affirmative Action Resource Page

“Waves” of Feminism

• “Waves of Feminism” by Jo Freeman (1996).
• Winning the Vote (Western NY Suffragists).
• Amendments to the US Constitution: 13th, 14th, 15th, 18th, 19th, 21st
• NOW's 1966 Statement of Purpose
• “The Women's Liberation Movement: Its Origins, Structures, and Ideals” by Jo Freeman (1971).

Marxist, Socialist, and Materialist Feminisms

• WMST-L discussion of how to define “marxist feminism” Aug 1994)
• Marxist/Materialist Feminism (Feminist Theory Website)
• A Marxist Feminist Critique
• Marxist Feminism

Feminist Economics

• Feminist Economics (Feminist Theory Website)
• International Association for Feminist Economics
• Re:Gender , formerly National Council for Research on Women
• International Center for Research on Women

Women and Labor

• Rights for Working Women
• United States Department of Labor
• United States Department of Labor: Audience – Women , a shortcut to information and services the Department of Labor (DOL) offers for women.
• Center for Research on Women with Disabilities (CROWD)
• Global Feminism (Feminist Majority Foundation)
• NOW and Global Feminism
• United Nations Development Fund for Women
• Sisterhood is Global Institute (SIGI)
• Polaris Project
• Not For Sale Campaign
• Human Trafficking Search Website

General Resources

• Women's Studies Librarian's Office
• Women of Color Resource Sites

African-American/Black Feminisms and Womanism

• African-American/Black/Womanist Feminism on the Web
• Black Feminist and Womanist Identity Bibliography (Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library)
• Black Feminist/Womanist Works: A Beginning List (WMST-L)

Asian-American and Asian Feminisms

• American Women's History: A Research Guide (Asian-American Women)
• South Asian Women's Studies Bibliography (U.C. Berkeley)
• Journal of South Asia Women's Studies

Chicana/Latina Feminisms

• Bibliography on Chicana Feminism (Cal State, Long Beach Library)
• Chicano/a Latino/a Movimientos

American Indian, Native, Indigenous Feminisms

• Native American Studies Prgoram (Dartmouth College)

Feminism, Sex, Sexuality, Transgender, and Intersex

• History of Sexuality Resources (Duke Special Collections)
• Internet Resources: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (Stanford University Library)
• QueerTheory.com

affirmative action | communitarianism | contractarianism | discrimination | egalitarianism | equality | equality: of opportunity | exploitation | feminist philosophy, interventions: epistemology and philosophy of science | feminist philosophy, interventions: ethics | feminist philosophy, interventions: history of philosophy | globalization | homosexuality | identity politics | justice: as a virtue | justice: distributive | legal rights | liberalism | Mill, Harriet Taylor | Mill, John Stuart | multiculturalism | parenthood and procreation | race

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Elizabeth Harman for research assistance in preparing this essay. Thanks also to Elizabeth Hackett, Ishani Maitra, and Ásta Sveinsdóttir for discussion and feedback. Thanks to Leslee Mahoney for the 2011 revisions.

Copyright © 2012 by Sally Haslanger Nancy Tuana Peg O'Connor

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Literary Research: Feminist Theory

What is feminist theory.

"An extension of feminism’s critique of male power and ideology, feminist theory combines elements of other theoretical models such as psychoanalysis, Marxism, poststructuralism, and deconstruction to interrogate the role of gender in the writing, interpretation, and dissemination of literary texts. Originally concerned with the politics of women’s authorship and representations of women in literature, feminist theory has recently begun to examine ideas of gender and sexuality across a wide range of disciplines including film studies, geography, and even economics."

Brief Overviews:

• Feminism (Bloomsbury Handbook of Literary and Cultural Theory)
• Feminism (Routledge Companion to Critical and Cultural Theory)
• Feminist Literary Theory (Feminism in Literature: A Gale Critical Companion)
• Feminist Theory (Literary Theory Handbook)
• Feminist Theory (Oxford Research Encyclopedias)

Notable Scholars:

Luce Irigaray

• Irigaray, Luce., and Margaret Whitford.  The Irigaray Reader . Basil Blackwell, 1991.
• Irigaray, Luce, and Gillian Gill. Speculum of the Other Woman . Cornell University Press, 1985.
• Irigaray, Luce., and Carolyn Burke. This Sex Which Is Not One . Cornell University Press, 1985.

Julia Kristeva

• Kristeva, Julia, and Toril. Moi. The Kristeva Reader. Basil Blackwell, 1986.
• Kristeva, Julia, et al. Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art. Columbia University Press, 1980.

Kate Millett

• Millett, Kate. Sexual Politics . Doubleday, 1970.

Jennifer Nash

• Nash, Jennifer C. Birthing Black Mothers. Duke University Press, 2021.
• Nash, Jennifer C. The Black Body in Ecstasy: Reading Race, Reading Pornography . Duke University Press, 2014.
• Nash, Jennifer C. Black Feminism Reimagined: After Intersectionality . Duke University Press, 2019.

Christina Sharpe

• Sharpe, Christina Elizabeth. In the Wake: In Blackness and Being . Duke University Press, 2016.
• Sharpe, Christina Elizabeth. Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects . Duke University Press, 2010.

Elaine Showalter

• Showalter, Elaine. A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Brontë to Lessing .  Princeton University Press, 1999.

Hortense Spillers

• Spillers, Hortense J. Black, White, and in Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture . University of Chicago Press, 2003.
• Pryse, Marjorie, and Hortense J. Spillers. Conjuring: Black Women, Fiction, and Literary Tradition . Indiana University Press, 1985.

Introductions & Anthologies

Also see other  recent eBooks discussing or using feminist theory in literature and scholar-recommended sources on Julia Kristeva  and Luce Irigaray via Oxford Bibliographies.

Definition from: " Feminist Theory ." Glossary of Poetic Terms. Poetry Foundation.(24 July 2023)

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The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory

Lisa Disch is Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Michigan.

Mary Hawkesworth, Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Women's and Gender Studies, Rutgers University.

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The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory provides an overview of the analytical frameworks and theoretical concepts feminist theorists have developed to challenge established knowledge. Leading feminist theorists, from around the globe, provide in-depth explorations of a diverse array of subject areas, capturing a plurality of approaches. The Handbook raises new questions, brings new evidence, and poses significant challenges across the spectrum of academic disciplines, demonstrating the interdisciplinary nature of feminist theory. The chapters offer innovative analyses of the central topics in social and political science (e.g. civilization, development, divisions of labor, economies, institutions, markets, migration, militarization, prisons, policy, politics, representation, the state/nation, the transnational, violence); cultural studies and the humanities (e.g. affect, agency, experience, identity, intersectionality, jurisprudence, narrative, performativity, popular culture, posthumanism, religion, representation, standpoint, temporality, visual culture); and discourses in medicine and science (e.g. cyborgs, health, intersexuality, nature, pregnancy, reproduction, science studies, sex/gender, sexuality, transsexuality) and contemporary critical theory that have been transformed through feminist theorization (e.g. biopolitics, coloniality, diaspora, the microphysics of power, norms/normalization, postcoloniality, race/racialization, subjectivity/subjectivation). The Handbook identifies the limitations of key epistemic assumptions that inform traditional scholarship and shows how theorizing from women’s and men’s lives has profound effects on the conceptualization of central categories, whether the field of analysis is aesthetics, biology, cultural studies, development, economics, film studies, health, history, literature, politics, religion, science studies, sexualities, violence, or war.

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Handbook of Feminist Research: Theory and Praxis

• Edited by: Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber
• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc.
• Publication year: 2012
• Online pub date: December 22, 2014
• Discipline: Anthropology
• Methods: Feminism , Feminist research , Survey research
• DOI: https:// doi. org/10.4135/9781483384740
• Keywords: feminist theories , feminist theory , knowledge , race , social justice , standpoint , women's studies Show all Show less
• Print ISBN: 9781412980593
• Online ISBN: 9781483384740
• Buy the book icon link

Subject index

This Handbook presents both a theoretical and practical approach to conducting social science research on, for, and about women. It develops an understanding of feminist research by introducing a range of feminist epistemologies, methodologies, and emergent methods that have had a significant impact on feminist research practice and women's studies scholarship. Contributors to the Second Edition continue to highlight the close link between feminist research and social change and transformation.

The new edition expands the base of scholarship into new areas, with 12 entirely new chapters on topics such as the natural sciences, social work, the health sciences, and environmental studies. It extends discussion of the intersections of race, class, gender, and globalization, as well as transgender, transsexualism and the queering of gender identities. All 22 chapters retained from the first edition are updated with the most current scholarship, including a focus on the role that new technologies play in the feminist research process.

Discover the latest news from Author Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber:

Visit http://www.fordham.edu/Campus_Resources/eNewsroom/topstories_2397.asp

Front Matter

• Acknowledgments
• About the Editor
• About the Contributors
• Chapter 1 | Feminist Research: Exploring, Interrogating, and Transforming the Interconnections of Epistemology, Methodology, and Method
• Chapter 2 | Feminist Empiricism
• Chapter 3 | Feminist Standpoints
• Chapter 4 | Postmodern, Post-Structural, and Critical Theories
• Chapter 5 | Truth and Truths in Feminist Knowledge Production
• Chapter 6 | Critical Perspectives on Feminist Epistemology
• Chapter 7 | Interconnections and Configurations: Toward a Global Feminist Ethnography
• Chapter 8 | Intersectionality: A Transformative Paradigm in Feminist Theory and Social Justice
• Chapter 9 | The Synergistic Practice of Theory and Method
• Chapter 10 | Feminist Ethnography: Histories, Challenges, and Possibilities
• Chapter 11 | Feminist Qualitative Interviewing: Experience, Talk, and Knowledge
• Chapter 12 | Using Survey Research as a Quantitative Method for Feminist Social Change
• Chapter 13 | The Link Between Feminist Theory and Methods in Experimental Research
• Chapter 14 | Feminist Evaluation Research
• Chapter 15 | Feminist Approaches to Inquiry in the Natural Sciences: Practices for the Lab
• Chapter 16 | Participatory Action Research and Feminisms: Social Inequalities and Transformative Praxis
• Chapter 17 | Narratives and Numbers: Feminist Multiple Methods Research
• Chapter 18 | Feminism, Grounded Theory, and Situational Analysis Revisited
• Chapter 19 | Feminist Perspectives on Social Movement Research
• Chapter 20 | Feminist Research and Activism to Promote Health Equity
• Chapter 21 | Joining the Conversation: Social Work Contributions to Feminist Research
• Chapter 22 | Writing Feminist Research
• Chapter 23 | Putting Feminist Research Principles into Practice
• Chapter 24 | Challenges and Strategies in Feminist Knowledge Building, Pedagogy, and Praxis
• Chapter 25 | Authority and Representation in Feminist Research
• Chapter 26 | The Feminism Question in Science: What Does It Mean to “Do Social Science as a Feminist”?
• Chapter 27 | The Feminist Practice of Holistic Reflexivity
• Chapter 28 | Feminist Research Ethics
• Chapter 29 | Transgender, Transsexualism, and the Queering of Gender Identities: Debates for Feminist Research
• Chapter 30 | Future Directions in Difference Research: Recognizing and Responding to Difference in the Research Process
• Chapter 31 | Feminizing Global Research/Globalizing Feminist Research: Methods and Practice Under Globalization
• Chapter 32 | From Course to Dis-Course: Mainstreaming Feminist Pedagogical, Methodological, and Theoretical Perspectives
• Chapter 33 | Feminist Pedagogy Reconsidered
• Chapter 34 | Teaching, Techniques, and Technologies of Feminist Methodology: Online and on the Ground

Back Matter

• Author Index

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Feminist Methodologies

Experiments, Collaborations and Reflections

• Open Access
• © 2022

You have full access to this open access Book

• Wendy Harcourt 0 ,
• Karijn van den Berg 1 ,
• Constance Dupuis 2 ,
• Jacqueline Gaybor 3

International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Hague, The Netherlands

You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Rutgers kenniscentrum seksualiteit, utrecht, the netherlands.

• Offers valuable tools for feminist research as a continuous praxis
• Gives insights into feminist methodologies
• Reveals how the authors navigate theory and practice
• This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access

Part of the book series: Gender, Development and Social Change (GDSC)

124k Accesses

28 Citations

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About this book

This open access book gives insights into feminist methodologies in theory and practice. By foregrounding the experiential and embodied nature of doing feminist research, this book offers valuable tools for feminist research as a continuous praxis. Emerging from a rich collective learning process, the collection offers in-depth reflections on how feminists shape research questions, understand positionality, share research results beyond academe and produce feminist intersectional knowledges. This book reveals how the authors navigate theory and practice, candidly exploring the difficulty of producing knowledge on the edge of academia and activism. From different points of view, places and disciplinary positions, artistic and creative experiments and collaborations, the book provides a multi-layered analysis. This book will be a valuable resource and asset to early career researchers and interdisciplinary feminist students who can learn more about the doing of feminist researchfrom realistic, accessible, and practical methodological tools and knowledge.

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Participatory Research and Theoretical Lenses

The Ups and Downs of Feminist Activist Research: Positional Reflections

• development studies
• methodology
• feminist methodologies
• Gender studies
• social movements

Table of contents (14 chapters)

Front matter, introduction: feminism as method—navigating theory and practice.

• Constance Dupuis, Wendy Harcourt, Jacqueline Gaybor, Karijn van den Berg

Senses of Discomfort: Negotiating Feminist Methods, Theory and Identity

• Karijn van den Berg, Leila Rezvani

Feminist Ethics Amid Covid-19: Unpacking Assumptions and Reflections on Risk in Research

• Constance Dupuis

Of Apps and the Menstrual Cycle: A Journey into Self-Tracking

Jacqueline Gaybor

Embodying Cyberspace: Making the Personal Political in Digital Places

• Wendy Harcourt, Ximena Argüello Calle

Mulai Leave —datang Arrive —pulang Return . Working the Field Together: A Feminist Mother–Son Journey in Yogyakarta, Indonesia

• Martina Padmanabhan

Methodologies for Collaborative, Respectful and Caring Research: Conversations with Professional Indigenous Women from Mexico

• Marina Cadaval Narezo

Immersion, Diversion, Subversion: Living a Feminist Methodology

• C. Sathyamala

Embodied Urban Cartographies: Women’s Daily Trajectories on Public Transportation in Guadalajara, Mexico

• Azucena Gollaz Morán

Interconnected Experiences: Embodying Feminist Research with Social Movements

• Daniela Flores Golfín, Tamara Rusansky, Fleur Zantvoort

Feminist Storytellers Imagining New Stories to Tell

• Rosa de Nooijer, Lillian Sol Cueva

A Fieldwork Story Told Through Knitting

• Mahardhika Sjamsoe’oed Sadjad

Scarheart: Research as Healing

• Emily R. O’Hara

Epilogue: Learning, Unlearning, and Relearning

• Karijn van den Berg, Constance Dupuis, Jacqueline Gaybor, Wendy Harcourt

Editors and Affiliations

Wendy Harcourt, Constance Dupuis

Karijn van den Berg

About the editors

Wendy Harcourt  is Professor of Gender, Diversity and Sustainable Development at the International Institute of Social Studies of the Erasmus University Rotterdam. She is Coordinator of the WEGO-ITN “Well-being, Ecology, Gender and Community” - Innovation Training Network and Series Editor of the Palgrave series on Gender, Development and Social Change. She has written widely on gender and development, post-development, body politics and feminist political ecology. 

Karijn van den Berg   is an independent feminist researcher who brings together environmental politics, feminism, activism and relations of power in her academic and political work, and strives to connect theory, practice and political organising.  

Constance Dupuis  is a researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies of the Erasmus University Rotterdam, funded by the WEGO-ITN “Well-being,Ecology, Gender and Community” - Innovation Training Network. Her work focuses on ageing and intergenerational wellbeing from decolonial and feminist political ecology perspectives. 

Jacqueline Gaybor  is a Senior Technical Advisor at Rutgers - a Dutch centre of expertise on sexual reproductive health and rights and she is a Lecturer at the Erasmus University College, of the Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Bibliographic Information

Book Title : Feminist Methodologies

Book Subtitle : Experiments, Collaborations and Reflections

Editors : Wendy Harcourt, Karijn van den Berg, Constance Dupuis, Jacqueline Gaybor

Series Title : Gender, Development and Social Change

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82654-3

Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan Cham

eBook Packages : Political Science and International Studies , Political Science and International Studies (R0)

Copyright Information : The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2022

Hardcover ISBN : 978-3-030-82653-6 Published: 04 February 2022

Softcover ISBN : 978-3-030-82656-7 Published: 08 February 2023

eBook ISBN : 978-3-030-82654-3 Published: 03 February 2022

Series ISSN : 2730-7328

Series E-ISSN : 2730-7336

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XIX, 296

Number of Illustrations : 12 b/w illustrations, 13 illustrations in colour

Topics : Politics and Gender , Political Theory , Political Science

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