Women's Ways of Knowing
Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule (1986) examined the epistemology, or "ways of knowing", of a diverse group of women, with a focus on identity and intellectual development across a broad range of contexts including but not limited to the formal educational system. While conceptually grounded originally in the work of William G. Perry(1970) in cognitive (or intellectual) development and Carol Gilligan (1982) in moral/personal development in women, the authors discovered that existing developmental theories at the time did not address some issues and experiences that were common and significant in the lives and cognitive development of women (Love and Guthrie 1999). While the developmental positions described in "Women's Ways of Knowing" overlap to a large degree with Perry's cognitive developmental scheme, the authors describe additional knowledge perspectives not observed in Perry's study (Perry 1970) and report gender-related influences on cognitive development in women.
The 135 women who participated in Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule's study ranged from age 16 to over 60, came from rural and urban populations, and varied in socioeconomic class, ethnicity and educational history (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule 1986, Love and Guthrie 1999). As such, they represented a more diverse group than was included in Perry's 1970 study of male students at Harvard. The authors illustrated how the epistemological assumptions of the participating women were intimately linked to their perceptions of themselves and their relationship to their world. Each of the five "ways of knowing", or knowledge perspectives, represents a different point in the women's cognitive development, dependent on conceptions of self (self), relationship with others (voice) and understanding of the origins and identity of authority, truth and knowledge (mind) (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule 1986, Love and Guthrie 1999).
Read more about this topic: Women's Development Theory
Famous quotes containing the words women, ways and/or knowing:
“The first full-fledged generation of women in the professions did not talk about their overbooked agenda or the toll it took on them and their families. They knew that their position in the office was shaky at best. . . . If they suffered self-doubt or frustration . . . they blamed themselveseither for expecting too much or for doing too little.”
—Deborah J. Swiss (20th century)
“Parents have subtle ways of humbling you, of reminding you of your origins, perhaps by showing up at the moment of your greatest glory and reminding you where you came from and demonstrating that you still have some of it between your toes.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“Quite generally, the familiar, just because it is familiar, is not cognitively understood. The commonest way in which we deceive either ourselves or others about understanding is by assuming something as familiar, and accepting it on that account; with all its pros and cons, such knowing never gets anywhere, and it knows not why.... The analysis of an idea, as it used to be carried out, was, in fact, nothing else than ridding it of the form in which it had become familiar.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (17701831)