FEMINISMS

References

Cite

Share

Abstract

T THE END of the twentieth century, the American feminist movement no longer speaks with one voice. In the academy, a particularly influA ential version reigns, declaring that women not only speak “in a different voice” but encounter the world through a different “way of knowing.” This view is now coming under challenge from other feminists, among them the contributors to this section, to whom this seems a thinly disguised regression to the belief that women have innate intellectual and social limitations. Philosopher Janet Radcliffe Richards provides a close analysis of the fashionable practice of “feminist epistemology.” Leaving aside the vexed question of whether its contradictions and obscurities are consistent with naming it a philosophical position at all, Radcliffe Richards makes the case that, within any reasonable definition, feminism as such provides little justification for epistemological radicalism, and that it faces practical dangers from the versions popular on many campuses. Noretta Koertge, a philosopher of science with long experience within the women’s movement, also finds that feminist epistemology and the spirit that endorses it present a threat to the intellectual ambitions of women scholars. The present popularity of one particular brand of feminist philosophy puts pressure on women philosophers to conform to the style, and to present themselves in the job market as adherents and expositors even if their interestsindeed, their convictions-are markedly different. Meera Nanda, who works in a science studies program and has a strong background in biology, questions the assumption, now nearly ubiquitous in women’s studies and in the radical wing of science studies, that the rationalist traditions of the Enlightenment are inherently oppressive to non-Western peoples, particularly to women of the Third World. She rallies to Ernest Gellner’s view that Enlightenment liberalism is indispensible to the emancipation of women in traditional societies. Moreover, the scientific viewpoint, per se, is a key ingredient of the frame of mind needed to challenge the myriad forms of non-Western obscurantism that keep women in thrall all over the world. Mathematician Mary Beth Ruskai, to whom “feminism” has always meant women’s right to intellectual respect on the basis of full intellectual parity, finds that some of the more recent developments in feminist theory present a grave danger to this position. In particular, they demean and marginalize women who have succeeded, in sometimes-hostile environments, in the professions of science. Even worse, the “gender theorists” discourage or misdirect younger women with the talent and ambition to become scientists.