ABSTRACT
Individuals unfamiliar with feminist scholarship or women's studies often assume that feminist theory provides a singular and unified framework for analysis. In one sense this is correct; all feminist theories posit gender as a significant characteristic that interacts with other characteristics, such as race and class, to structure relationships between individuals, within groups, and within society as a whole. However, using the lens of gender to view the world results in diverse images or theories, as seen in the following feminisms (Nicholson, 1997; Tong, 1998): liberal, socialist, African-American/ethnic, essentialist, existentialist, psychoanalytic, radical, postmodern, and postcolonial. Their variety and complexity provide a framework through which to explore central issues in developmental psychology, such as the causes of development, the processes underlying developmental change, and variability in developmental pathways and endpoints.
