ABSTRACT
There are many “theories” that now inform Women’s Studies and methods that are called “feminist” or distinct to Women’s Studies. The theories are sets of ideas clustered together as part of unified, systematic thought such as “critical race theory” or “post-colonial theory,” both of which we have alluded to in earlier chapters. Theories may be said to be in contrast to early feminist ideas, which, some theorists suggest, were merely criticisms of society’s treatment of women in a standard rather than revolutionary way. That is, Women’s Studies sociologists or economists paid more attention to information about women’s lives than was usual for their disciplines. Still, their findings were based on normal “positive” or fact-finding activities to which both male and female scholars subscribed. Neither feminism nor Women’s Studies in the eyes of theorists could really work change because they were so piecemeal and normative, aiming at reform rather than a transformation in thinking. Feminist theorists acknowledge the importance of giving voice to inequities but they suggest that mere criticism of men, society, or values produces little movement to a better place. Violence against women persists despite feminism, this line of thinking goes, as does women’s inequality. Feminism did not raise the status of women: despite decades of activism and more recently Women’s Studies research, women continue to be generally seen as less valuable and
less worthy than men. Feminist theories developed with the idea that deeper or holistic analysis was needed. Such theories were wide-ranging in their approach, quite varied, and some of them even mutually antagonistic. Taken together, they show the way in which Women’s Studies generates new knowledge and ways of looking at the world. We reflect that Women’s Studies began with feminism as the
strongest point of its analytical base. Feminism had evolved over the centuries in the West as a quest for equal rights including rights to education, to sovereignty in the body, to vote, and to have a good job. It wanted women to be held in equal regard to men as well as gaining equality in political, economic, and social conditions. Parliaments, workplaces, and the home were to be transformed as places where women had the same status as men. Outside the West, pro-women thinking and activism concerned many of these same issues, but there was an additional, concerted emphasis on the right to basic needs such as food, shelter, clean water, good medical care, and freedom from bodily harm, especially after the downfall of colonialism left many regions of the world stripped of their resources and struggling for well-being. There was also in the activism of women in post-colonial nations an emphasis on analyzing the continuing exploitation from countries of the North and a much greater solidarity with men. Structures of power were at the center of investigation and theorizing for many. All of these points of analysis have developed even further down to the present day under the Women’s Studies umbrella but some of them began as theories quite distinct from concerns for reforming gender inequity. Theories involve transforming one’s way of thinking, providing
new tools for critique, and seeing the activities and representations of women from fresh perspectives. They can also involve thinking about gender and difference broadly and more conceptually. How Women’s Studies carries out and thinks about its procedures is another aspect of theory, sometimes seen as gendered as in the term “feminist epistemology” and at other times connected with distinctly pro-women ways of investigating women’s lives and presenting findings, as in the term “feminist methodology.” We will look at arguments for theory, present several specific theories that have been both influential and contested, and examine the development of what is called feminist methodology.
