Standpoint Of Women Research Articles

SOURCES OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE

Feminist philosophy of religion is a tool for the development of justice in theory as well as practice. As such, it claims to root itself in women's experience: not 'religious experience' narrowly defined, but the standpoint of women's lives. Yet until now efforts to develop theology from women's experience have largely fallen back into traditional sources of religious knowledge. A consideration of standpoint theory enables a more radical grounding in women's experience as the source of religious knowledge. The work of Luce Irigaray may be considered as one such attempt, seeking to build a philosophy of religion on the basis of a female gendered divine as the horizon of becoming. Although feminist philosophy of religion is in its infancy, it is one of the most dynamic areas of current work in the philosophy of religion. It must be seen within the wider context of feminist theory, and, more broadly, within the feminist movement as a whole. The feminist movement is not primarily intellectual. Rather, it has as its raison d'etre the effort to bring about radical changes in the structures of society and the ways in which people relate to one another. Feminists believe that women are discriminated against because of their sex, whether or not they are also discriminated against in other ways, such as race, class, sexual orientation, or ability. These latter forms of discrimination are shared by women and men; the former is unique to women. Many feminists believe, furthermore, that if sexual discrimination could be ended, then the social changes of both structure and attitude which would be necessary to bring this about would effect a transformation of society which would help to end other forms of discrimination as well. If the social, economic, and political world were reconstructed in such a way that sexism became a thing of the past, then the radical changes necessary for this to take place would also liberate groups of people in many other areas of life in which they now suffer oppression. The area of religion would not be the least of the areas in which changes would need to occur. Feminism, therefore, is a movement whose first concern is with justice, starting (but not ending) with gender justice. Feminist scholarship is scholarship in the service of this movement for

Gender-power relations and safer sex negotiation.

This paper examines the gender-power relations in heterosexual relationships and discusses the implications for women in attempting to negotiate safer sex. Whilst acknowledging the need for examining both male and female perceptions of sexuality, the paucity of research on men's heterosexual experiences has restricted this paper to the consideration of the woman's standpoint. Reviewing the literature, the complexities of sexual relationships are explored in terms of the power imbalance which arises from the ideologies of femininity and masculinity. The implications for safer sex promotion by practice nurses working in primary health care teams are then discussed within the context of gender divisions of labour and gender role conflict.

From the Woman's Standpoint

From the Woman's Standpoint

Taking the Standpoint of Women in a Teacher Education Course

ABSTRACT The issue of gender and schooling has exercised the interests of a number of researchers for the last 25 years. Interestingly, relatively little work has been done on gender in initial teacher education. This paper offers some insights into how teacher education might represent the ‘standpoint of women’. It addresses the question of whether an initial teacher education programme can operationalise foundational ideas of social justice in curriculum and teaching studies subjects. It presents an account of what has been achieved in the initial development of one teacher education subject and provides details of its evaluation based on what students thought about it.

ACTIVIST MOTHERING:

This article examines the cross-generational continuity of community work performed by women living and working in low-income communities and demonstrates the complex ways in which gender, race-ethnicity, and class contribute to the social construction of mothering. The analysis of low-income women's community work challenges definitions of mothering that are limited to biological and legal expressions, thus neglecting the significance of community-based nurturing work for geographic communities and racial-ethnic and class-based groups. The analysis utilizes a broadened understanding of labor and contests the divisions between paid and unpaid work traditionally used to discuss women's work. The article compares and contrasts the experiences of African-American and Latina (predominantly Puerto Rican women) community workers from low-income communities in New York City and Philadelphia. The findings of the research further demonstrate the ways that knowledge generated from the standpoint of women from different classes and racial-ethnic backgrounds transforms our understanding of politics, labor, and mothering.

Talking and Listening from Women's Standpoint: Feminist Strategies for Interviewing and Analysis

Talking and Listening from Women's Standpoint: Feminist Strategies for Interviewing and Analysis

Talking and Listening from Women's Standpoint: Feminist Strategies for Interviewing and Analysis

This article combines feminist perspectives on women and language with a recent emphasis in qualitative methods on linguistic aspects of interview research. The feminist proposition that language is often incongruent with the realities of women's experiences provides an opening for methodological strategies aimed at the recovery and analysis of experiences that women often have difficulty articulating. Analytic strategies are discussed in relation to four research processes, each conceived in terms of language use: constructing topics, listening to respondents, transcribing and editing interview material, and writing about respondents' lives.

Knowers, Knowing, Known: Feminist Theory and Claims of Truth

paper. 1 For general arguments against an excessive philosophical preoccupation with epistemology, see Jacques Derrida, Dissemination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981); John Gunnell, Between Philosophy and Politics (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986); Mark Krupnick, ed., Displacement (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1983); Paul Kress, "Against Epistemology," Journal of Politics 41, no. 2 (May 1979): 526-42. For specific arguments against foundationalism, see Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979); Richard Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983); Don Herzog, Without Foundations: Justification in Political Theory (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985). It is worth noting the irony that even those most intent on repudiating epistemology on the grounds that traditional epistemological concerns involve claims altogether beyond the possibilities for human knowledge are themselves advancing epistemological claims.

Gender and Power in Family Theories

This paper intends to evaluate the contemporary family study frameworks from the standpoint of women's status and power and to identify the needed direction of the future family studies.The overriding perspective in family studies have been challenged by at least two streams. The first one is related to the changing situations of women and family in the real world. The challenge to family theories based on the assumption that the family is the women's world comes from the societal change which does no longer support the assumptions of “family as a group” and the two-parenthood. The increase in the married-women's participation in the labor market and in divorce rate seems to have contributed most to such a change. Another challenge comes from feminist theories. They view the interplay of patriarchy and capitalism as the basic source of structured male control over female. The notion that the modern conjugal family is egalitarian which is free of the patriarchal domination is challenged.Some theories of family change with cross-cultural comparative perspectives and resource/exchange theories using the notions of resources and legitimacy contribute to the analysis of the conjugal power relations in the context of the individualization of the family. Together with the interest in social equality, longitudinal approaches are essential to the understanding of the present time.

Knowledge and Gender: Epistemological Questions in the Social Analysis of Sport

The central question examined in this essay is whether there can be a distinctive feminist epistemology or theory of knowledge. If there can be, then what would it look like? The ensuing discussion focuses on why it is so important to comprehend this feminist challenge to the origin, nature, methods, and limits of knowledge that have shaped our understanding of social life and what implications this has for the social analysis of sport. The paper begins by noting that in order to answer our sociological questions about gender inequality in sport, it makes more sense to view sex/gender as a system of social relations between females and males rather than treat them as dichotomous categories. Our questions therefore become relational rather than distributive. Four theoretical approaches to the sex/gender system (liberal, traditional marxist, radical, and socialist) are outlined with particular attention being paid to the epistemological and methodological assumptions that stem from each variant. The notion of a standpoint, and in particular the standpoint of women, is introduced to show how it is possible for women to demystify their social reality and to begin the necessary reconstruction of the sportsworld so that women’s interests are no longer subordinate to those of men.

Matiyo and his Two Wives: A Further Case Study From Bunyoro

Opening ParagraphThe following text was recorded in 1953, in Lunyoro, by my assistant at that time, Mr. Edward Byaruhanga, a young man who had just finished secondary school. It is about a man called Matiyo (I have altered all the personal names) who decided, against his father's advice, to take a second wife, and it tells how this decision led to misfortune for Matiyo and his family. Traditionally in Bunyoro men liked to have two wives, or even more if they could afford to pay the bridewealth for them, and many still do. But it is well known that such joint households are not always happy ones, for two women who are competing for the favours of one man sometimes become jealous of each other, and this may lead to accusations of sorcery, even to violence, between them. Things are more difficult now than they were in traditional times, for many modern women, even in remote areas, have been to school for a year or two, and have learned to expect a more equal relationship with their husbands than their mothers enjoyed. Such a woman, after she is married, does not always look kindly on the arrival in her home of a second wife, especially if she is younger and prettier than she is. Also, more than half a century of Christian missionary activity has led, if not to the abandonment of polygyny, at least to the recognition that monogamy is the European ideal, and so—at least from the woman's standpoint—a status of rather higher prestige by modern standards. Many women leave their husbands, even after years of marriage, when they take second wives.