Standpoint Theory and Epistemic Privilege
Maeve M. O’Donovan, Ph.D.
College of Notre Dame of Maryland
April 1, 2006
Standpoint Theory and Epistemic Privilege1
This paper is part of a larger project in which I argue that Simone de Beauvoir’s The
Second Sex is a not only a work of Existential-Phenomenology, but also one of Feminist
Epistemology. To make that point I need to first explain what Feminist Epistemology is
(focusing on the branch most applicable to Beauvoir’s text) and then show why Beauvoir's work
should be categorized as an example of it.
I. Feminist Epistemology
Women have described and lived the world differently than the way it is described in
Western philosophy and Western history. Traditional philosophy and history describe a world
where the most valuable human endeavor is the life of the mind, where the best run society is
governed by men with highly developed intellects, and where women are the natural inferiors of
men. Women's history projects have begun to tell a different story, where human community and
childrearing are among the most precious of human experiences, where the best societies are
those that provide equal opportunities to all--all genders, all races, and where women have hated
and fought against being labeled inferior, only to find themselves made inferior by those in
power.
Feminism, at present a primarily interdisciplinary or 'women's studies' subject, is
beginning to be recognized by some for its contributions to classic philosophical questions.
Recent anthologies of Feminist Philosophy have gone from listing essays under schools of
feminism to listing them under sub-fields in Philosophy. (compare Women and Values to
Women, Knowledge and Reality, both edited by Marilyn Pearsall) One such sub-field is
(Feminist) Epistemology.
Feminist epistemology attempts to uncover the relationship between thought and lived
experience – in particular the lived experience of gender. (Beauvoir, in The Second Sex, does the
same.) Feminist epistemology admits as a starting point that there are differences in perception
attributable to differences in the concrete lived realities (gender being one important difference)
of those doing the perceiving--and in doing so it furthers the original philosophical project of
knowing ourselves, and of understanding the nature of thought. (Beauvoir, in The Second Sex,
does the same.) In studying the effects of situation on knowledge, feminist epistemologists have
developed standpoint theory – a theory which in its multiple forms argues that the standpoint of
the knower is an essential element of the account of the object known. This replaces
phenomenology's inclusion, in consciousness, of the object known with the inclusion, in the
object known, of consciousness.
There are at least three schools in the development of standpoint theory: 1) the original
Marxist analysis which takes as its beginning the conditions in which women labor as a
foundation for a superior epistemological framework through which women, as a marginalized
group, are able to more easily (than men/privileged groups) identify the errors in dominant and
patriarchal accounts of the world/human life; 2) a second approach criticizes the Marxist
approach as primarily gender neutral, proposing as an alternative that the conditions and activity
of women's labor, as a gendered, feminine labor consisting in traditionally feminine activities
such as nurturing, nourishing, caring for the body, and reproducing, be adopted as a standpoint
through which patriarchy can be critiqued and new ways of thinking can be found; and, 3) a third
approach proposes we adopt the notion of 'situated knowledges', arguing that the central insight
of Marxist and gendered standpoint theories is an insight into the inescapably partial nature of
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knowing, thinking, and making. This approach is taken up both in feminist critiques of science
and in postmodern feminism.
A. Marxist Standpoint Theory
Nancy Hartsock is frequently credited with introducing the idea of a 'feminist standpoint'.
Arguing that the position of the proletariat is analogous to that of women in patriarchal society,
Hartsock finds in Marx a means to identify and ground a feminist epistemology. Just as the
proletariat is able to "go beneath bourgeois ideology,"2 so too, she argues, can a reflective
approach to women's labor yield insights into "both why patriarchal institutions and ideologies
take such perverse and deadly forms and how both theory and practice can be redirected in more
liberatory directions."3 The basis for such an analogy lies in two things, an account of a
gendered division of labor, and a meeting of the five criteria--generated by Hartsock--for
establishing women's labor as capable of grounding a 'Feminist Historical Materialism'.
Although Hartsock ultimately argues that Marx's conception of production fails to account
satisfactorily for women's labor, she makes use of his account in establishing women's work in
the home as a form of 'production of use values.'
After making clear that her account of women's labor will focus on commonalities in
women's work, and admitting that this means the account does not of necessity apply to any
particular woman who is working, Hartsock argues that there is not only a social division of
labor into economic classes, there is also a gendered division of labor that "is central to the
organization of social labor more generally."4
Using Marx's terminology and conceptual scheme, Hartsock points out two difference
between women's and men's labor: 1) women’s labor is doubled compared to men's; and, 2) only
women are 'institutionally defined' by their labor in the home. By analyzing both the
institutionalization of women's labor (in the home) and the type of labor that this involves,
Hartsock is able to justify her claim that there is a gendered division of labor, and, an important
addition, to begin identifying the advantages such conditions produce for women in regards to
their (unique/privileged) ability to see through patriarchy and ground a critique of, and
alternative to it.
Hartsock points out that both men and women, in producing for/in the home, can engage
in behaviors that are grounded in material reality, activities that bring about a transformation of
nature. Using Marx she argues that it is through these activities that men and women contribute
to "a unification of mind and body."5 However, there are significant differences for men and
women due to the sexual division of labor. "Women as a group work more than men, … a larger
proportion of women's labor time is devoted to the production of use values than men's, … [and]
women's production is structured by repetition in a different way from men's."6 Unlike men, for
whom the process of production entails a part but not the whole of life, women move ceaselessly
from one job to another, from the factory to the home; their engagement in productive activity
never ends. In addition, women's work in the home is a transformation of nature now outside of
the conditions of political economy (to a degree, not entirely).7 Given that her labor in the home
is unrecognized and uncommodified by capitalist society (while at the same time essential to the
functioning of that society); woman is able to see into the material reality of existence through
her productive labor (in the home). She is in fact transforming nature not for exchange value but
for the reproduction and care of the 'worker.' Seen in comparison to man's, woman's labor (in the
home) now takes on the liberatory structure of the proletariat, while man's labor (outside of the
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home), as commodified and alienated from him, ceases to be productive labor and thus no longer
makes available to him the revolutionary/critical vantage point. 8
What makes women's position in society, as producers in the home of future
producers--babies and well-raised adults, liberatory is that pregnancy and childrearing do not fit
easily into this notion of capitalist production. There is no object produced. The man born to
woman, no matter how alienated he may become, retains his ability to change the social relations
in which he works (to un-alienate himself), whereas a car or bushel of apples does not. The
repetitious and supposedly un-productive nature of woman's work in the home -- the baby once
fed will need to be fed again and again, and the feeding of the baby produces something akin to,
and yet not explainable by use value, and with no surplus value--conceals the fulfillment that the
work of rearing children can provide. In motherhood, woman produces not an object but a
species-being, an entity and a community of humans that political economy unsuccessfully
attempts to commodify. In addition, the work of motherhood, though it involves repetitious
behaviors (bathing and clothing infants, practicing the letters of the alphabet with toddlers, etc.)
is not in fact repetitious but transformative of both mother and child.9
And so women labor under political economy in ways that are meaningful and productive,
and in ways that can't be fully accounted for by its model of production. In doing so women and
their labor make it possible to see and see through these enslaving and objectifying relations. But it
took women to see this. While Marx provides a groundwork for this form of standpoint theory, it
was not until women (who worked, at home and elsewhere) attempted to use his framework for
feminist critique that these flaws and omissions were identified.
Unlike the more common argument, that women's labor in the home ought to be
recognized in the same way that similar labor (say, janitorial work or day care) would be
recognized outside of the home (would be paid), Hartsock finds that it is the lack of
commodification of home labor (and the nature of that labor) that provides for those who do it
(women) a privileged standpoint (into the inherent flaws of capitalism and patriarchy).
B. A Standpoint Theory of Care
A second version of standpoint theory emerges out of the first. In reading Hartsock's
argument for a feminist standpoint, Sara Ruddick takes a closer look at Hartsock's account of
women's labor. Instead of being primarily Marxist in nature, Ruddick argues, Hartsock provides
an alternative to the Marxian conception of labor--replacing it with the idea of women's labor as
caring, rather than strictly productive, labor.
In many ways Ruddick agrees with Hartsock; the material world is structured differently
when seen from the perspective of caring labor--productivity, if it can still be called that, has as
its aim not exchange value but the satisfaction of "people's needs and pleasures, and, by
extension, of the needs and pleasures of any animal that is instrumental in human caring or is
tended for its own sake."10 This labor promotes interconnections and human community, rather
than isolation and alienation. And much of what is problematic in patriarchal thinking is
revealed through the activity of adopting a feminist standpoint, not merely through the
experience of being woman. "By looking and acting from a feminist standpoint, dominant ways
of thinking--and I had in mind primarily militarist thinking--were revealed to be as abstract and
destructive as I suspected."11 However, there are some problems with this feminist adoption of
Marxism that Ruddick identifies and addresses.
Ruddick argues that the story of masculinity and its acquisition in patriarchal society is a
construction, an acceptable situation since Ruddick believes that "all knowledge is
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constructed."12 What concerns Ruddick here is Hartsock's claim that women's standpoint is
privileged and not perverse, that the construction and acquisition of femininity is not addressed.
Early feminist standpoint theory argued for a more or less universal adoption of the feminist
standpoint and the 'women's work' model of labor. Ruddick is hesitant about such universalizing
claims: "Standpoint theorists are ready … to declare that dominant values are destructive and
perverse and that the feminist standpoint represents the 'real' appropriately human order of
life.”13
Ruddick's second criticism of traditional feminist standpoint theory is that claims, when
universalized, not only silence other voices and standpoints, they also unwittingly
(unreflectively) adopt some of the oppressive patriarchal structures that formed them. She is
suspicious of any dualism, including the one maintained by standpoint theorists who pit women's
labor against men's labor, who claim two standpoints, one of which is perverse/false, the other
'normal'/true. For Ruddick this not only perpetuates the structure that has been oppressive to
women, treating them and giving them meaning through their otherness, it also risks losing sight
of the flaws in women's ways (as, says Ruddick, all ways are partial and so potentially perverse.)
"Perhaps most worrisome, being on the side of good can foster a repressive self-righteousness
that legitimates killing or, alternatively, condemns violence without attending to the despair and
abuse from which it arises." 14 In other words, the feminist standpoint while valuable should not
be used to ignore the pleas and needs of persons of other standpoints--this would be a failure to
improve the very conditions feminist standpoint set out to transform.
What Ruddick most values in standpoint theory is the recognition that all knowing is
partial, and that a different standpoint tells a different story of a shared event. These critiques of
Marxist Standpoint Theory, and the solution Ruddick offers in “Maternal Thinking,” form the
basis of what I am calling a standpoint theory of care.
At the core of this Standpoint Theory of Care are three interests: “preservation, growth,
and acceptability.”15 Maternal Thinking, when done with the best interests of the child in mind,
begins with preservation of the child’s life, continues with a desire for growth of all kinds for the
child – physical, emotional, intellectual growth, and at the same time is aware that such growth
must be guided by a need to produce “a young child acceptable to her group.”16 Carrying out all
three functions is engaging in attentive love for the child.
What marks this kind of thinking as a standpoint is that it is a different thinking than that
carried out in other domains of human activity. For instance, the Defense Department is not
concerned with the preservation, growth and acceptability of the people it wages was against.
The dominant structure of thought of the capitalist businessman is more often agonistic than
caring. It is only when looking at maternal practices that we see a different way of relating to our
fellow human beings. For Ruddick, this different way should no longer be limited to the domain
of the child-rearer. “We must work to bring a transformed maternal thought in the public realm,
to make the preservation and growth of all children a work of public conscience.”17 And
ultimately, we are all children – only some of us are older than others.
In defense of her argument, Ruddick claims that neither she nor anyone else "[can]
identify the grounds, reason, or god that would legitimate [her or any] vision."18 Yet she admits
that she does wish for, and will act for, a world operating under the values of care. And she
argues that she is justified in doing so.
"All feminists must join in articulating a theory of justice shaped by and incorporating
maternal thinking. … As long as a mother--even if she is no more parent than father--is
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derogated and subordinated outside the home, children will feel angry, confused, and
'wildly unmothered'."
For Ruddick this way of thinking, also labeled 'attentive love', can be done by both men
and women (though historically primarily by women), is a social category, and has something to
add to our ways of thinking about thinking. It is not the only or the best model of thinking, it is
merely an alternative that has proven its usefulness in promoting a more peaceful, less
militaristic, and therefore more desirable world. This is an historical argument about the
effectiveness of thinking about war and violence from a new 'standpoint'. 19
Ruddick explains that her confidence in the transformative power of adopting a maternal
standpoint is the result of many years spent carefully analyzing moral and political choices from
this standpoint.20 She allows the possibility that careful work to ground (epistemologically and
morally) the standpoint of care may result in claims for its superiority, and yet she limits those
future claims by pointing out that they can only result from "specific oppositional comparisons."
This reminds us of her postmodern sympathies--superiority reveals itself only in certain contexts
(in particular binary, oppositional ones). Thus her call to feminists to make use of the new
critical tool that standpoint theory of care is does not contradict her claim to "share the
epistemological prejudice … that all knowledge is constructed."21
C. Situated Knowledge, Feminist Objectivity, and Strong Objectivity
The last variation on standpoint argues for 'situated knowledges' and ‘strong objectivity’.
This version takes up and explores the consequences of claiming what it takes to be the central
insight of Marxist and gendered standpoint theories: that all knowing, thinking, and making is
inescapably partial in nature. It differs from a standpoint theory of care in that its focus is
primarily epistemological, and not on women's work in particular. This approach is taken up in
both feminist critiques of science, and in postmodern feminism.
Postmodernism, as Lyotard famously defined it, is an "incredulity toward
metanarratives."22 For feminist standpoint theory the metanarrative in question is the claim that
the body and social relations are inconsequential in the pursuit and adoption of truth claims. In
Marxist standpoint theory this metanarrative is replaced with the claim that a critical analysis
undertaken by the oppressed of a society will reveal a true-r, less perverse account of the way the
world is (and should be). In Ruddick's standpoint theory of care the suspicion is extended to all
metanarratives, including the privileging of the epistemology of the oppressed. But Ruddick has
not given up hope that a standpoint of care is less perverse and a better standpoint from which to
pass judgments about social relations.
It is only in the more extreme form of Ruddick's suspicion, the postmodern standpoint,
that all perspectives are seen as perverse, partial, and error-prone. Consequently, a unique
challenge is faced by postmodernists: that of claiming a method and a standpoint from which to
make legitimate criticisms. How can a critical standpoint be adopted, and change recommended
if no standpoint is any better than another? There are two responses to this. The first is a deeper
questioning of the existence of masculinity and femininity themselves such as in Butler and
Wittig. This undercuts and requires a new thinking through of, the possible existence of a
feminine or feminist standpoint. The second is found in feminist criticism of science and
scientific method
Jane Flax provides a good summary of the connection between postmodernism and
feminist goals. According to Flax, "the single most important advance in feminist theory is that
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the existence of gender relations has been problematized."23 In other words, feminists have now
come to understand that
"Gender, both as an analytic category and a social process is relational. …Through
gender relations two types of person are created: man and woman. Man and woman are
posited as exclusionary categories. …Gender relations so far as we have been able to
understand them have been (more or less) relations of domination. … These relations of
domination and the existence of gender relations themselves have been concealed in a
variety of ways, including defining woman as a 'question' or the 'sex' or the 'other' and
men as the universal (or at least without gender)."
There is a similarity to Marxist standpoint theory here in the claim that a relation between two
groups exists, as a relation of domination, one in which the domination is concealed and can only
be unconcealed through the voice of the dominated group (in this case, not women so much as
feminist theory). What is markedly different from the Marxist version is the claim that the two
groups may not exist in 'reality' but rather only in language and theory. In other words,
according to certain versions of feminist postmodernism, there may not be any women--by which
is meant a group classified according to genitalia, but there certainly are persons who are treated
as women and in being treated as such are oppressed and silenced.
The question for these thinkers becomes not 'what can women see that men don't', but
rather, 'what leads us to posit two genders, and what errors are inescapably bound up with that
process', a question that looks to the experience of the persons classified as women for some of
its answers. For Flax, there are gender relations in most, if not all, cultures, but the structures
and origins of those relations are so varied that any classification of them under one 'feminist
standpoint' is impossible and just as oppressive and silencing as the posited 'masculine
standpoint' of gender-invisibility/gender's unimportance.
Flax argues that claiming "child-rearing practices" are sufficient to ground an alternative,
feminine standpoint is neither simple nor acceptable. Her objection is that the ‘solution’ assumes
what it ought to be questioning - why are there gender-based divisions of 'labor'? In other words,
by using women's work as a model and standpoint from which to challenge the
authority/privileging of men's work, standpoint theorists are already assuming that there are
genders, and are failing to ask why a particular gender might be assigned a particular task, such
as childrearing. The standpoint theorists are in fact reifying a relation that has led to domination,
instead of questioning and perhaps tossing out the relation itself (as the possible source of the
domination, rather than the concrete situations onto which that 'naturally' occurring relation
imposes itself). In sum, Flax's main point is that "We cannot simultaneously claim (1) that the
mind, the self, and knowledge are socially constituted and that what we can know depends upon
our social practices and contexts and (2) that feminist theory can uncover the truth of the whole
once and for all."24
On the other hand, Susan Bordo, while supportive of postmodernist projects, raises the
concern that "this methodologism, which eschews generalizations about gender a priori on
theoretical grounds, is in danger of discrediting and disabling certain kinds of feminist cultural
critique."25 Her alternative to tossing out gender as a critical category, and to attempts to find the
'correct' standpoint from which to speak and demand to be heard, is to listen carefully to the
margins, and to recognize that feminist theory creates its own margins.26 The voices from the
margins that she refers to are those from groups whose experiences are not fully captured by the
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traditional accounts of women's work and experiences, and who are now (in feminism's third
wave) finally being heard.
There is at present a move to bring the multiple voices of marginalized peoples into the
space of feminist discourse, and to do so in a way that does not reduce the voices to their
commonalities--while at the same time still providing insight into the ways relations of
domination work. Only one hesitation is left at this point, as Bordo puts it, "just how many axes
can one include and still preserve analytical focus or argument?"27 For an answer to that last
question, let me turn to the feminist critiques of science that attempt to heed the call of
postmodernism while generating a workable critical position/believing that knowledge can be
gained, ignorance diminished.
D. Feminist Critiques of Science
Donna Haraway and Sandra Harding provide some of the best-known critiques of
scientific method from a feminist standpoint. In "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in
Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective,"28 Haraway gives a brilliant personal account
of the problems brought on when certain postmodernisms are mixed with social constructionism:
"I, and others, started out wanting a strong tool for deconstructing the truth claims of
hostile science by showing the radical historical specificity, and so contestability, of
every layer of the onion of scientific and technological constructions, and we end up with
a kind of epistemological electro-shock therapy, which far from ushering us into the high
stakes tables of the game of contesting public truths, lays us out on the table with selfinduced multiple personality disorder."29
Assuming that the undesirability of this position is evident, Haraway attempts what Flax says
cannot be done, and does so because she considers it an ethical imperative.30 According to
Haraway, if feminists wish to make the world a better place to live, for everyone, the project of a
liberatory critique cannot be abandoned out of a perceived theoretical necessity. Her solution is
to argue for what she calls 'situated knowledges' and 'feminist objectivity'.
For Haraway this means a return to the workings of the body and the limitations that
accompany them, not to claim a privileged position based on one set of those limitations but
rather in order to point out that every position (standpoint) is limited, not just intellectually, but
physically. In addition, she cautions against a "romanticizing and/or appropriating the vision of
the less powerful".31 Her concern is based in her belief that the partiality of vision, the partiality
of the positions from which we see and judge the world, is, well, partial, and, unequal--each
position has flaws and ignorances, each has insights, but the insights and flaws are unique to
each. Arguing against the relativism that some say follows of necessity from the adoption of
such a theory, Haraway points out that "Relativism is a way of being nowhere while claiming to
be everywhere equally. The 'equality' of positioning is a denial of responsibility and critical
enquiry. Relativism is the perfect mirror twin of totalization in the ideologies of objectivity."32
So, how does one adopt the theory of situated knowledges, without privileging one
position or privileging no position? Haraway's answer is to adopt a scientific method for seeking
objectivity through listening to and engaging with multiple standpoints. (And this is exactly what
I argue Beauvoir is doing in The Second Sex--giving us, and critically engaging with multiple
standpoints from which 'woman' is viewed and described. Rather than looking to one all-seeing,
or one partial position, Haraway argues that we should adopt an approach that fundamentally
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integrates the partiality of knowledge with the pursuit of better and more successful answers to
the problems we face. "I want to argue for a doctrine and practice of objectivity that privileges
contestation, deconstruction, passionate construction, webbed connections, and hope for
transformation of systems of knowledge and ways of seeing.” 33 This is what she means by
situated knowledges and feminist objectivity.
Such critique requires an intellectual effort, techniques and tools, what she calls 'critical
positioning'. One does not 'see' from one's position, one needs assistance to be self-critical, and
further assistance to see (again partially) the position of others -- to recognize our partiality is not
only to demand of ourselves that others tell us their stories (but using our language, our way of
seeing), it is also to engage in projects of critical positioning through which we can see and
question not just our position, but all that it entails - the language and concept of position itself.
The second thinker I am using to help clarify the concept of situated knowledges is
Sandra Harding. Working from the plurality of positions within feminism regarding science and
the status of objective knowledge, Harding develops a program of 'strong objectivity'. In
"Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology: What is 'Strong Objectivity'?" Harding explains the
differences between Feminist Standpoint and ("Spontaneous") Feminist Empiricism. In doing so
she clarifies the nature of standpoint epistemology, its benefits, and its methodology, and
develops her alternative: "strong objectivity". Feminist Empiricism is described as spontaneous
because of the way in which it developed. According to Harding, the experiences of feminist
researchers in the sciences led these scientists to articulate how their research methods differed
from non-feminists, not as a separate type of "feminist" research, but rather as a way of
clarifying the variables and contexts involved in their work (as, they assumed, any good scientist
must do.) The stories these researches told, and the differences in their processes, were taken up
and developed, in particular by Helen Longino and Lynn Hankinson Nelson, into a feminist
epistemology.
The goal of this new theory was to encourage more careful and rigorous use of existing
scientific methods, rather than to create new methods. It shared with standpoint theory the belief
that social changes, leading to the un-silencing of marginalized groups, have revealed to
scientists a need to be more self-critical in their work--to take more notice of the situations in
which they research. What feminist empiricism does not lose hope in, however, is a continuing
perfection of scientific method and thus an increasing knowledge of our (scientifically described)
universe, brought about through such revelations. There is a commitment to admitting to and
overcoming "sexist and androcentric research processes and results"34 and to trying "to fit
feminist projects into prevailing standards of 'good science' and 'good philosophy'."
Standpoint theorists go a bit further, arguing that not just current uses of
methodology be questioned, but that the methodology of science itself be called into
question. Standpoint epistemology's goal is not to rid us of scientific method, but to
generate a new, more inclusive, and less error-prone method for research in the sciences.
As Harding explains: "The fact that feminist knowledge claims are socially situated does
not in practice distinguish them from any other knowledge claims … all bear the
fingerprints of the communities that produce them. All thought by humans starts off from
socially determinate lives. … Moreover, standpoint theory itself is historically emergent.
… no doubt it will be replaced by more useful epistemologies in the future."35 (emphasis
added)
Harding is concerned that we not forget our own lesson about the historical specificity of
knowledge (and theory) claims, and that we therefore re-envision standpoint theory as a useful
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response to a situation women face today, not as the new method for all (scientific) enquiry:
"Standpoint theory provides arguments for the claim that some social situations are scientifically
better than others as places from which to start off knowledge projects. … Sociological
relativism permits us to acknowledge that different people hold different beliefs, but what is at
issue in rethinking objectivity is the different matter of judgmental or epistemological relativism.
Standpoint theories neither hold nor are doomed to it."36
So, what does it mean to use/pursue/be committed to 'strong objectivity'? "Strong
objectivity requires that the subject of knowledge be as clearly identified and subjected to
analysis as the objects of her work."37 In other words, that the starting point of scientific enquiry,
or all enquiries, be recognized for the value and culturally-driven choice that it is, and that the
implicit assumptions of the scientist's discourse (and the feminist’s) be continually revisited in
interpreting and judging the value and meaning of the scientist's (and standpoint theorist’s) work.
II. Connections to Simone de Beauvoir
Understanding the variations in Standpoint Theory is important because it is sometimes
misunderstood as arguing that the view of the oppressed/marginalized is always
better/clearer/closer to truth than the standpoint of those in power. While I am arguing that
Beauvoir's The Second Sex meets the criteria for speaking as and from a feminist standpoint--it
addresses the concerns of early standpoint theorists successfully, it matches most closely this last
form of feminist standpoint theory (feminist critiques of science), and shares with that school its
Marxist roots –I am not arguing that Beauvoir privileges the standpoint of women. Instead, the
use of male and female voices in her text brings to light the importance and partiality of both
men and women in their answers to the question “What is a Woman?” I am also arguing that it is
only when her text is understood as such that its real insights and critical potentials come to light.
© Maeve M. O’Donovan, Ph.D., 2006
Nancy C. M. Hartsock, Money, Sex, and Power (New York: Longman Inc., 1983), 231.
3
Hartsock, 231.
4
Hartsock, 232.
5
Hartsock, 235.
6
Hartsock, 235.
7
This seems to me the only explanation for the claim that women are advantaged rather than disadvantaged by
working ceaselessly.
8
Hartsock, 236.
9
see Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born (New York: Norton & Co., 1976) for a discussion of the difference between
'power over' and 'transformative power' such as is found in the labor of mothering.
10
Ruddick, 406.
11
Ruddick, 406-7.
12
Ruddick405.
13
Ruddick, 408-9.
14
Ruddick, "Maternal Thinking," Women and Values: Recent Readings in Feminist Philosophy, third edition.
(Wadsworth. 1999) 119
15
Ruddick, 111.
16
Ruddick, 111.
17
Ruddick, 119.
18
Ruddick, 409.
19
Ruddick, 410.
20
Ruddick, 409.
21
Sara Ruddick, 405.
1
2
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22
Jean-François Lyotard, "The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge," Continental Philosophy: An
Anthology, ed. Wm. McNeill and K. S. Feldman. (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers Inc., 1998), 393.
23
Flax, 43-4.
24
Flax, 48.
25
Susan Bordo, "Feminism, Postmodernism, and Gender-Scepticism," Feminism/Postmodernism, ed. Linda J.
Nicholson. (New York: Routledge, 1990), 135.
26
Bordo, 138.
27
Bordo, 139.
28
Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: the Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991).
29
Simians, cyborgs and women: the reinvention of nature, Donna J. Haraway. (Routledge, New York, NY. 1991)
186.
30
Haraway, 187.
31
Haraway, 191.
32
Haraway, 191.
33
Haraway, 191-2.
34
Sandra Harding, "Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology: What is 'Strong Objectivity'?" in Feminist Epistemologies
(New York: Routledge, 1993), 53.
35
Harding, 57.
36
Harding, 61.
37
Harding, 69.
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