Feminist Standpoint Theory

Feminist standpoint theorists make three principal claims: (1) Knowledge is

socially situated. (2) Marginalized groups are socially situated in ways that make it
more possible for them to be aware of things and ask questions than it is for the non-
marginalized. (3) Research, particularly that focused on power relations, should
begin with the lives of the marginalized. Feminist standpoint theory, then, makes a
contribution to epistemology, to methodological debates in the social and natural
sciences, to philosophy of science, and to political activism. It has been one of the
most influential and debated theories to emerge from second-wave feminist thinking.
Feminist standpoint theories place relations between political and social power and
knowledge center-stage. These theories are both descriptive and normative,
describing and analyzing the causal effects of power structures on knowledge while
also advocating a specific route for enquiry, a route that begins from standpoints
emerging from shared political struggle within marginalized lives. Feminist
standpoint theories emerged in the 1970s, in the first instance from Marxist feminist
and feminist critical theoretical approaches within a range of social scientific
disciplines. They thereby offer epistemological and methodological approaches that
are specific to a variety of disciplinary frameworks, but share a commitment to
acknowledging, analyzing and drawing on power/knowledge relationships, and on
bringing about change which results in more just societies. Feminist scholars
working within a number of disciplines—such as Dorothy Smith, Nancy Hartsock,
Hilary Rose, Sandra Harding, Patricia Hill Collins, Alison Jaggar and Donna
Haraway—have advocated taking women’s lived experiences, particularly
experiences of (caring) work, as the beginning of scientific enquiry. Central to all
these standpoint theories are feminist analyses and critiques of relations between
material experience, power, and epistemology, and of the effects of power relations
on the production of knowledge.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Historical Roots of Feminist Standpoint Theory
3. Central Themes in Feminist Standpoint Theory
4. What is a Standpoint?
5. Acquiring Knowledge via Standpoints
6. The Outsider Within
7. Controversies
a. False Universalism
b. Epistemic Relativism
c. The Bias Paradox
8. References and Further Reading
a. Works Cited
b. Earlier Papers
c. Later Contributions
1. Introduction
At first blush there appears a tension between the traditional epistemological
assumption that a general, universal and abstract account of knowledge and
scientific enquiry is possible, and the politically inflected feminist claim that such
analyses are only properly understood in the social contexts in which they arise, and
in terms of the biases and prejudices those contexts generate. From the outset, then,
feminist epistemologies seem to be located within the contradictory pull of the
politicized material and experiential concerns of feminism and the abstract universal
concerns of epistemology. Feminist epistemological projects began as a critique of
that tradition but have evolved beyond the critical to reframe and reconceptualize the
problems of knowledge and the epistemological project itself. Feminist epistemology
does not adopt a monolithic critical position with respect to a traditional canon of
epistemological work; rather it consists of a variety of feminist epistemological
approaches, of which feminist standpoint epistemologies form a strand.
Here feminist standpoint theory is examined primarily as a feminist epistemology
and as a methodology for feminist researchers in the social sciences where, arguably,
feminist standpoint theory has had the most influence and been the subject of most
debate. As with feminist theories generally, it would be somewhat misleading to
represent feminist standpoint theory as a single set of epistemological commitments
or a single methodological approach. More appropriate would be to think of them in
terms of ‘standpoint theories’. Nevertheless, standpoint theories share common
commitments and approaches, which are taken as the focus here. Aspects of those
theories that attract controversy both within and outside of the intellectual
conversations in which feminist standpoint theories have been developed and
employed are also briefly discussed.
2. Historical Roots of Feminist Standpoint
Theory
The genealogy of feminist standpoint theory begins in Hegel’s account of the
master/slave dialectic, and subsequently in Marx and, particularly, Lukacs’
development of the idea of the standpoint of the proletariat. Hegel argued that the
oppressed slave can eventually reach a state of freedom of consciousness as a result
of her/his realization of self-consciousness through struggles against the master, and
via involvement through physical labor in projects that enable her/him to fashion the
world—to affect it in various ways. Hegel’s analysis of the struggle inherent in the
master/slave relationship gave rise to the insight that oppression and injustice are
better analyzed and understood from the point of view of the slave than from that of
the master. Marx and Engels, and, later, Lukacs developed this Hegelian idea within
the framework of the dialectic of class consciousness, thereby giving rise to the
notion of a standpoint of the proletariat (the producers of capital) as an epistemic
position that, it was argued, provided a superior starting point for understanding and
eventually changing the world than that of the controllers and owners of capital. The
Hegelian and Marxist traditions, then, provide the genesis of standpoint theorists’
claim that the ‘double vision’ afforded to those who experience social relations from a
position of marginality can, under certain circumstances, offer them epistemic
advantage.
Although their genealogy begins in the Hegelian and Marxist traditions, some
current feminist standpoint theories are also located squarely within an empiricist
tradition in epistemology. These feminist epistemologies extend the traditional
empiricist commitment to experience and observation as the starting points for
knowledge. Following Quine and his successors, they recognize and acknowledge
that observation is theory-laden and that those theories themselves are artifacts of
our making. They also draw on the insight that a set of observation-based data can
serve as equally credible evidence for more than one of those theories.
3. Central Themes in Feminist Standpoint
Theory
 Feminist standpoint theorists such as sociologists Dorothy Smith and Patricia Hill
Collins, political philosophers Nancy Hartsock and Alison Jaggar, sociologist of
science Hilary Rose, and philosopher of science Sandra Harding extended and
reframed the idea of the standpoint of the proletariat to mark out the logical space
for a feminist standpoint. Their principal claim regarding feminist standpoint
theories is that certain socio-political positions occupied by women (and by
extension other groups who lack social and economic privilege) can become sites of
epistemic privilege and thus productive starting points for enquiry into questions
about not only those who are socially and politically marginalized, but also those
who, by dint of social and political privilege, occupy the positions of oppressors. This
claim is captured by Sandra Harding thus: “Starting off research from women’s lives
will generate less partial and distorted accounts not only of women’s lives but also of
men’s lives and of the whole social order.” [1993: 56]
Following Marxist tradition in rejecting liberal assumptions that social and
historical factors are irrelevant to epistemic questions, central tenets of feminist
standpoint theories include their recognition of the role of social and historical
location in shaping epistemic agents and their knowledge, and an embrace of that
location as a potentially valuable contribution to knowledge. Feminist standpoint
theories work towards an epistemic approach that continues to value objectivity
(albeit rethought and reworked) as a goal of enquiry, while at the same time
accommodating, analyzing and understanding the effects of social location on
epistemic agents and on knowledge. This stance is in stark contrast to the relatively
pervasive traditional assumption that recognizing the effects of the socio-historical
location of epistemic agents rather than abstracting them from that location disrupts
enquiry. Feminist standpoint theories, then, involve a commitment to the view that
all attempts to know are socially situated. The social situation of an epistemic agent—
her gender, class, race, ethnicity, sexuality and physical capacities—plays a role in
forming what we know and limiting what we are able to know. They can affect what
we are capable of knowing and what we are permitted to know. The influence of
social location on epistemic content and capacity can be felt throughout our
epistemic practices, shaping not only the way in which we understand the world, but
also the way in which it is presented to us via experience. Consider the following
example offered by Terri Elliot:
Person A approaches a building and enters it unproblematically. As she
approaches she sees something perfectly familiar which, if asked, she might call ‘The
Entrance’. Person X approaches the same building and sees a great stack of stairs and
the glaring lack of a ramp for her wheelchair. [1994: 424]
The experience of person A is of the entrance to a building. Whereas the
experience of person X is of a barrier to entrance and (at best) an inconvenience.
Person X’s social location—qua person with a disability—means that the building
presents differently to her from how it does to someone without a disability.
Feminist standpoint theories seek, moreover, to go beyond analysis and
description of the role played by social location in structuring and shaping
knowledge. The normative aspect of feminist standpoint theories manifests firstly in
a commitment to the thesis that the ways in which power relations inflect knowledge
need not be understood as with a subjectivity that threatens their objectivity; rather
that socially situated knowledge can be properly objective. Secondly, feminist
standpoint theories’ normative weight is felt via their commitment to the claim,
developed by extension of the Marxist view of the epistemic status of the standpoint
of the proletariat, that some social locations, specifically marginalized locations, are
epistemically superior in that they afford hitherto unrecognized epistemic privilege,
thereby correcting falsehoods and revealing previously suppressed truths. Thus, as
Sandra Harding puts it, “Standpoint theories map how a social and political
disadvantage can be turned into an epistemic, scientific and political advantage.”
[2004; 7-8]
Standpoint theories, then, move beyond a descriptive situated-knowledge thesis
to a normative thesis, among the transformative objectives of which is a more
socially just world.
4. What is a Standpoint?
The concept of a standpoint employed in feminist standpoint theories takes a
narrow meaning, owed to Marxist theory, according to which a standpoint is an
achieved collective identity or consciousness. The establishment of a standpoint is
the political achievement of those whose social location forms its starting point; it is
not merely ascribed from beyond that location. There is a consensus among feminist
standpoint theorists that a standpoint is not merely a perspective that is occupied
simply by dint of being a woman. Whereas a perspective is occupied as a matter of
the fact of one’s socio-historical position and may well provide the starting point for
the emergence of a standpoint, a standpoint is earned through the experience of
collective political struggle, a struggle that requires, as Nancy Hartsock puts it, both
science and politics [Harding 2004: p. 8]. By way of emphasis of this point, Hartsock
uses the label ‘feminist standpoint’ whereas Dorothy Smith uses the label ‘women’s
standpoint’, reflecting the way in which standpoint theory argues for “women’s
place” as a starting point for enquiry [Harding 2004: 21].
So while both the dominant and the dominated occupy perspectives, the
dominated are much more successfully placed to achieve a standpoint. Nevertheless,
it is not impossible for those who occupy non-marginalized perspectives to become
part of the process of helping reach a shared critical consciousness with respect to
the effects of power structures on epistemic production. There are many different
lives consisting of many different activities and many different social relations and,
thus, potentially many different consciousnesses and many different standpoints.
The ongoing political and epistemic project of achieving a standpoint offers critical
insights that give rise to a new perspective on reality. Sandra Harding explains the
point thus,
Only through such struggles can we begin to see beneath the appearances created
by an unjust social order to the reality of how this social order is in fact constructed
and maintained. This need for struggle emphasizes the fact that a feminist
standpoint is not something that anyone can have simply by claiming it. It is an
achievement. A standpoint differs in this respect from a perspective, which anyone
can have simply by ‘opening one’s eyes’. [1991: 127]
5. Acquiring Knowledge via Standpoints
According to feminist standpoint theories, the process of achieving knowledge
begins when standpoints begin to emerge. They emerge when those who are
marginalized and relatively invisible from the vantage point of the epistemically
privileged become conscious of their social situation with respect to socio-political
power and oppression, and begin to find a voice. It is no historical accident that
feminist standpoint theory emerged in academic discourses more or less
contemporaneously with the feminist consciousness movement within feminist
activism. This demonstrates the way in which feminist standpoint theories are
grounded in feminist political practice. Contrary to the tendency of critics who
perceive feminist standpoint theory via an individualist lens, mistakenly reducing the
notion of a standpoint to an individual’s social location, the emergence of
standpoints is a collective process occurring through the recognition and
acknowledgment of others who occupy more or less the same standpoint as oneself.
Although such narratives may form a starting point, the emergence of a standpoint
does not consist merely in the telling of individual women’s narratives. Self-
definition in terms of a standpoint provides a starting point for the self-assertion of
one’s own identity, challenging those identities imposed by conventional stereotypes
that form part of hegemonic ways of thinking from the point of view of the socially
and politically dominant. This assertion of identity—of who I am—adds to a body of
knowledge about how my life is and how I experience the world. Those truths debunk
myths about me, about my relationship with the world, and about my relationships
with others in that world that have heretofore been taken to be true. In this vein,
Patricia Hill Collins discusses a stereotypical understanding of African American
women working as domestic servants—the Mammy stereotype which objectifies
black women as ‘faithful and obedient’ domestic servants, dedicated to the care of
their white family—in contrast to the Sapphire, controlling and manipulative, or the
Jezebel, a temptress [1990; 456]. As Collins shows, stereotypes such as these serve
as ‘controlling images’ that serve to reinforce for everyone, including African
American women, the ways of thinking from the point of view of the racially and
sexually dominant. This way of thinking oppresses as it constrains what can be
known about being an African American woman. African American women, rather
than racist and sexist social structures, are blamed for that oppression. Thus the
epistemic process whereby a standpoint emerges enables the occupants of that
standpoint to gain an element of power and control over knowledge about their lives.
In becoming occupants of a standpoint, they also become knowing subjects in their
own right, rather than merely objects that are known by others.
As shown by the claim from Harding that appears at the end of the previous
section, feminist standpoint theorists argue that the epistemic and political
advantages of beginning enquiry from within women’s lived experiences are not
limited to providing a truer account of those lives, but of all the lives and socio-
political relations within which those lives are enmeshed. Initial enquiry in women’s
lived experiences, mediated by the politicized consciousness that emerges within a
feminist standpoint, reveals the way in which male-dominated ideologies distort
reality. Standpoints make visible aspects of social relations and of the natural world
that are unavailable from dominant perspectives, and in so doing they generate the
kinds of questions that will lead to a more complete and true account of those
relations. Feminist standpoint theorists point out that, in order to survive within
social structures in which one is oppressed, one is required to understand practices
of oppression, to understand both oppressed and oppressor; but, this epistemic bi-
polarity is neither required of, nor available to, the dominant. For example, the
colonized have to learn the language of the colonizer—the New Zealand Māori
learned English while use of the Māori language was strongly discouraged, for
instance—in order to survive colonization, but the colonizer need not learn the
language of the colonized in order to survive. The colonized, then, have some means
of entry into the world of the colonizer, and the potential for gaining some
understanding of how the world works from that perspective, but the colonizer is
generally shut out of the world of the colonized and restricted to a mono-visual view
of how the world is. The double vision afforded via the social location of women and
other marginalized groups can provide the epistemic advantage of insights into social
relations that are unavailable to the non-marginalized. An illustration of the way in
which the often undervalued, messy caring work (caring for the sick and the elderly,
bearing and raising children, unrewarding, unpaid domestic labor, emotional labor)
in which women are traditionally engaged offers productive epistemic starting
points; Hartsock cites a passage from Marilyn French’s novel The Women’s Room:
Washing the toilet used by three males, and the floor and walls around it, is, Mira
thought, coming face to face with necessity. And that is why women were saner than
men, did not come up with the made, absurd schemes men developed; they were in
touch with necessity, they had to wash the toilet bowl and the floor. [Harding 2004:
43; French, 1978: 214]
Mediated via a critical standpoint, Mira’s lived experience could form a wellspring
of epistemic insights not only into the gender power relations of which her situation
(cleaning up men’s mess) is a result, but also of the basic necessities of all our lives
and of the need to ensure that they are met equitably. Thus, from this starting point
in the material condition of women’s lives, questions arise that would not otherwise
get asked, and these questions can form rich sites for research, for policy reform and,
ultimately, for social change. For instance, such questions might address issues such
as violence against women—why is it so prevalent in so many societies against
women of all classes and races, and why are women so often blamed for it? While
violence against women remains an ongoing challenge and tragedy, women have
derived epistemic advantage from the conceptual resources and clearer
understanding of violence that has been afforded to them within feminist
standpoints. In turn, this stronger understanding has flowed into social and political
discourses to the extent that, at least in some parts of the world, violence is no longer
considered acceptable or part of the normal dynamics of a marriage or partnership.
Moreover, campaigning by women and their male allies has resulted, in some
jurisdictions, in an anti-violence policy environment, and in legal protection and
redress for women. Moreover, women’s feminist stand against family violence has
(among other factors) motivated researchers to look for and critically analyze the
causes and conditions of family violence, such as poverty and inter-generational
family violence. In so doing, they have widened understanding of, and enquiry into,
family violence more generally to encompass violence perpetrated on children, on
male partners, and on elders. Other sites of enquiry that emerge from women’s lived
experience might include: Gender equity in the workplace—why are women so over-
represented in low-paid and under- or unvalued caring work?; Gender equity in the
domestic sphere—why is it often considered normal or usual for a woman to work a
double shift, one outside the home and one at home?; Bodies and their normal
biological processes—why are menstruation, birthing and menopause understood as
medical problems to be treated as illnesses?; Women’s bodies and objectification—
why do women’s bodies continue to be used to promote and sell products that run
the gamut from instant coffee powder to motorsport?
The development of a standpoint by the dominated dissipates the conceptual
dissonance experienced by someone who has been forced to adopt dominant
conceptual frameworks that do not truly belong to them. Conceptual frameworks
emanating from patriarchal systems fail to provide cognitive tools that enable women
and others who are marginalized to make sense of their experiences in and of the
world. The emergence of appropriate conceptual frameworks furnishes the
marginalized with the cognitive tools to become epistemic subjects, whereas
previously they are merely known by others. It enables them to name and think
about their experiences in ways that properly represent those experiences. That is not
to say that existing conceptual frameworks have been of no use whatsoever for
women, for even this conceptual dissonance has been mediated and expressed within
those frameworks. Rather, thinking from within a standpoint enables the emergence
of conceptual frameworks which resolve the contradictions that arise, and fill the
gaps and silences that are left empty when using a conceptual framework that is not
entirely fit for purpose.
Some critics of standpoint theories have charged that their central claim of
epistemic advantage amounts to a claim of automatic epistemic privilege. However,
as we have seen in Section 4, a standpoint is not equivalent to a social location and
the standpoint theorist’s claim is not that epistemic advantage is bestowed by dint of
one’s social location, but that it is rather earned through involvement in collective
political struggle. Theorists argue that experiences of the marginalized reveal
problems to be explained; problems that can become research agendas or policy
issues/initiatives and are a source of objectivity-maximizing questions. Such
questions force us to examine the beliefs, prejudices and biases of the dominant
groups in society, the propositions that have previously counted as knowledge. It is in
this way, feminist standpoint theorists propose, that we achieve less partial and
distorted understandings of all of our lives than we do if we allow questions about
those lives to originate only from the experiences of dominant groups. The realities of
women’s lives, then, can provide sites of enquiry that lead to new, more complete,
less partial, and more objective knowledge.
Moreover, as Alison Wylie argues [2004: 345-6], standpoint theorists’ situated-
knowledge claims explicitly undermine the conventional assumption that objective
epistemic agents are non-specifically located, and that they are neutral and
disinterested with respect to the subject of their enquiry. In so doing, however,
standpoint theorists’ approach to the method of enquiry demonstrates a commitment
to what are typically taken to be its virtues when it is scientific: empirical adequacy,
construed as either empirical depth or breadth; internal coherence; inferential
robustness; consistency with relevant well-established bodies of knowledge; and,
explanatory power. Indeed, as Wylie notes, feminist interventions in social and
scientific enquiry have been successful in demonstrating how it thus far has not
always manifested those virtues. Standpoint theorists move beyond this critical
moment, showing how the inclusion of lived realities, not yet properly visible to
enquirers, can make for better-supported hypotheses. In a case study of archaeology
considered in their article “Coming to Terms with the Values of Science”, Wylie and
Nelson point out the ways in which researchers taking a gender-sensitive standpoint
with respect to studies on netting and basketry and on skeletal remains have resulted
in (among other things) a widening of the evidential base of archaeological enquiry in
these areas, leading to the re-examination of established hypotheses [2007: 64-70].
6. The Outsider Within
The epistemic advantage of the ‘double vision’ afforded to those in the position of
being outsiders within is a recurring theme of feminist standpoint theories. Several
theorists emphasize the epistemic advantage afforded to those forced conceptually to
straddle both sides of a dichotomous social divide. That advantage is captured by
black feminist critic Bell Hooks’ description of growing up in small-town Kentucky
thus:
Living as we did—on the edge—we developed a particular way of seeing reality.
We looked both from the outside in and from the inside out…we understood both.
[1984: vii]
Patricia Hill Collins, for instance, considers black feminist academics to occupy a
position of potential epistemic privilege in so far as they are, on the one hand,
insiders by dint of their position as authentic academics; yet, on the other hand,
outsiders in so far as they are women and black, thus remaining to some extent
decentered within the context of the Academy. This places them in a unique position
from which to understand how things are in the Academy from the perspective of an
insider who enjoys some degree of power and privilege both professionally and
personally as a result of her membership, and who at the same time has an
understanding of how things are from the perspective of one who is marginalized
with respect to the centre of that power as a result of her gender and race. The dual
perspective available to someone in this position leaves her well-placed to recognize
the underlying assumptions and evaluative commitments that drive and shape the
dynamics of power within the Academy, while at the same time providing her with a
critical frame of reference derived from her own experience of the Academy, within
which to potentially gain a better understanding of its power structures and
dynamics. A dual perspective such as this, then, could form the basis of a feminist
standpoint which would generate challenging questions about the social and political
structures that engender the reality that black women academics experience in their
professional and personal lives. In addition, standpoint theories offer explanatory
resources for understanding how this dual positioning can potentially bestow
epistemic advantage.
The self-reflexivity inherent in the identification of this insider/outsider position
as a potentially advantaged epistemic location connects with the broader feminist
theme of the (often vexed) relationship between feminist practice and feminist
theory. Several feminist standpoint theorists’ work starts in their own lives, their
initial site of analysis is the material experience of women as academics and
scientists. Feminist sociologist Dorothy Smith argues that women sociologists are
placed at the centre of a contradiction in the relation of their discipline to their
experience of the world. This contradiction leads to a ‘bifurcation of consciousness’
[Harding 2004: p. 27]. On one side of that divide is the conceptual practice of
academic work conducted within the conceptual structures of the discipline of
sociology; and on the other, the concrete of the domestic sphere. She argues that
sociological discourse has been authored and authorized by men, noting that the
frames of reference against which its discourses of enquiry and discussion take place
have their origins in men’s lived experiences, not women’s. The sociologist is thus
conceived of as male, and women cannot be afforded the status of full participants in
the practices of sociology without suffering a ‘double estrangement’. To gain
legitimacy and status as sociologists they must suspend their identities qua women.
In her “Hand, Brain and Heart: A Feminist Epistemology for the Natural
Sciences”, Hilary Rose makes similar points with respect to women in the natural
sciences—‘Women Scientists in the Men’s Laboratories’, as she puts it [Harding
2004: 75]. Those women also have to negotiate the contradictory demands of private
and professional spheres. Drawing on physicist Evelyn Fox Keller’s accounts of her
experiences as a student (which includes narrative of male students avoiding her and
a male university teacher not countenancing the possibility that she could solve
mathematical problems without male help), Rose, like Smith, identifies a split in the
woman scientist’s consciousness: she is ‘cut in two’, her abstract, conceptual
scientific labor arises in ‘painful contradiction’ with her caring labor [Harding 2004:
76]. The implicit requirement that a woman suppress part of herself in order to
acquire any professional credibility is one reason, Rose argues, why women scientists
were, and in some disciplines remain, comparative rarities.
Thus, while the outsider-within position can afford the epistemic advantage of
‘double vision’ in the absence of the kind of political context and consciousness of
which a standpoint is constituted, those benefits can remain unrealized as women
scientists suppress their identity as women and as feminists in order to pass as
scientists. As Uma Narayan has argued, it should be acknowledged that this
colonialized bi-culturalism has a ‘dark side’ [Harding 2004: 221-3] with which
women adopt various strategies to survive. In order to negotiate and cope, the best
she can, with various contexts in which she finds herself having to operate, a woman
might suppress part of herself in some of those contexts while assuming the persona
best suited to each. Thus some women professionals emphasize only those
characteristics considered valuable in their professional context, allowing themselves
to be women and feminist only in private contexts. Alternatively, a woman might
simply try to imitate the traits, habits and practices of the dominant group while
suppressing herself entirely. For the feminist standpoint theorist, an alternative to
these strategies is to attempt to remain within the contradictory contexts, and to do
so critically. This is, potentially, the most epistemically powerful response, but it is
also the most challenging given the risk of alienation from oneself and from those
with whom one may have the most in common.
The difficulty of surmounting such challenges might account, in part, for the
tension inherent in many feminist standpoint theorists’ accounts of epistemic
insight. This tension arises between, on the one hand, recognition that epistemic
insights occur as a result of an individual’s insider/outsider experience and, on the
other, the central claim that a standpoint is a shared, rather than an individual,
achievement. Perhaps the existence of this tension reinforces the claim that, while
epistemic insight is achievable on the basis of individual insider/outsider experience,
it is only from the political context and shared consciousness of a standpoint that
such insights can be truly advantageous and move those within it from improved
understanding of the realities of their lives towards social and political change.
7. Controversies
More than three decades have passed since the publication of the first work that
developed and advocated feminist standpoint theories. Yet standpoint theory
remains controversial and its controversies manifest both between and beyond
feminist scholars, as Alison Wylie writes,
Standpoint theory may rank as one of the most contentious theories to have been
proposed and debated in the twenty-five to thirty year history of second-wave
feminist thinking about knowledge and science. Its advocates, as much as its critics,
disagree vehemently about its parentage, its status as a theory, and crucially, its
relevance to current thinking about knowledge. [Harding 2004: 339-40]
This section outlines what are perhaps the most significant challenges to feminist
standpoint theory.
a. False Universalism
Since feminist standpoint theories take the view that enquiry is best started from
within women’s material experience and that epistemic advantage ensues from
within standpoints that emerge from that experience, they can mistakenly be
understood to espouse an essentialist universalism, according to which women are
afforded automatic epistemic privilege simply for the fact of their being women.
Since feminist standpoint theorists argue that enquiry is best started from women’s
lives, and that standpoints emerge only when women begin to reflect upon and
question the reality of those lives through a politicized framework, feminist
standpoint theories can also be misunderstood as proposing a single, monolithic
feminist standpoint. This misunderstanding presents this feminist standpoint as
arising not from ordinary women’s lives but from the lives of relatively privileged,
mostly middle-class, mostly white, women academics.
A good proportion of the work that has since built on early moments in feminist
standpoint theory has focused on incorporating considerations of difference within
feminist standpoint theories. Feminist standpoint theories are clearly not committed
to the project of formulating a homogenous women’s or feminist standpoint. Rather,
they recognize that women’s presence in many areas of the terrain of social and
economic marginalization means that women occupy positions at the intersection of
a number of oppressive social structures.
However, reconciliation between feminist standpoint theories and those feminist
theories which prioritize difference remains problematic and presents a dilemma:
The formation of a standpoint requires shared experiences of oppression and of
struggle against that oppression. But the inclusion of those experiences within a
standpoint, it can be argued, runs the risk of occluding epistemically significant
differences between women. A feminist standpoint may be taken (implicitly) as the
position of all women, but what account is taken of class, race, sexuality, and other
markers of difference, which structure the power relations that generate oppression,
the shared experience of which forms the basis of the standpoint? The response to
this dilemma from within standpoint theory has been, firstly, to emphasize that
feminist standpoint theories envisage a plurality of feminist standpoints; and,
secondly, to modify feminist standpoint theories to take account of the ways in which
women’s different experiences at the intersections of various oppressive social
structures will engender different standpoints. Patricia Hill Collins and Bell Hooks,
for example, have developed black feminist standpoint theories that take into
account the role of women of color in slavery and in devalued menial and caring
labor, and the way in which this oppression is experienced at the hands of other,
mostly white, women.
Thirdly, some feminist standpoint theorists respond head-on to the charge that by
focusing on the experiences that are common to most women, standpoint theories
fail to take account of significant differences between women. Maria Mies and
Vandana Shiva, for example, participate in the feminist standpoint conversation
from within their own experiences as activists in the women’s and ecology
movements. They argue, contrary to the charge of false universalization, that there
are many examples of women’s activism in pursuit of environmental causes which
demonstrate the reality of women overcoming differences and developing a shared
sense of solidarity through which they begin to gain an understanding of the
oppressive relations in which their lives are enmeshed [Harding, 2004: 334-5]. Thus,
as standpoints emerge, some differences will be occluded, but some significant
similarities will be thrown into sharper relief.
Postmodernist feminist critics argue not only that the risk of occlusion of
difference remains but, more fatally with respect to the possibility of reconciliation,
the categories upon which feminist standpoint theory depends—woman, feminist,
knowledge—are fluid and in a state of socially influenced flux and contestation,
making it impossible ever properly to capture experiences and identities within
standpoints. Standpoint theorists counter that the idea that identity is fluid itself
puts the political power of feminism at risk and threatens the loss of the material
experience of women’s oppression. Standpoint and postmodernist feminism remain
opposed in this respect: the former requires materiality as its starting point, the
latter rejects the reality of that ‘real world’ outright. As Haraway puts the point from
the perspective of the former position:
[T]o lose authoritative biological accounts of sex, which set up productive
tensions with its binary pair, gender, seems to be to lose too much; it seems to be to
lose not just analytical power within a particular Western tradition, but the body
itself as anything but a blank page for social inscriptions, including those of
biological discourse. [Harding 2004: p. 94]
 b. Epistemic Relativism
The charge that feminist standpoint epistemologies are committed to a politically
dangerous epistemic relativism ensues from the claim that all knowledge is socially
situated and that some social values enhance the process of enquiry and the
acquisition of knowledge.
In response to this charge, Sandra Harding reconceptualizes objectivity, arguing
for the pursuit of strong objectivity [1993: passim]. Harding argues that standpoint
theory imposes a rigorous logic of discovery involving a strong demand for ongoing
reflection and self-critique from within a standpoint, enabling the justification of
socially-situated knowledge claims. This critical approach, Harding asserts, results in
a stronger notion of objectivity than that achieved by traditional approaches to
enquiry. The traditional starting point for knowledge is the position of the dominant
and, despite assumptions to the contrary, that position is ideologically permeated.
This results in partial and distorted accounts of reality, which thereby fail to live up
to modernistic standards of impartiality, neutrality and universality associated with a
commitment to epistemic objectivity.
With regard to the idea that the reconceptualization of objectivity represents a
retreat from modernity, rationality and science [Walby, 2001: 489], Harding labels
her feminist standpoint approach ‘neo-modern’ [2001: 518]. By these lights, feminist
standpoint theories remain committed to strengthening modernist commitments to
truth and objectivity, but are distanced from modernity’s absolutist overtones. Strong
objectivity encompasses a sense of completeness and a lack of distortion. The
ultimate epistemic goal of enquiry based on this model would be the inclusion of all
standpoints, enabling the revelation of different aspects of truth. This would be a
dialectical process consistent with standpoint theories’ roots in the Marxist tradition.
Objective enquiry modelled thus requires trust—we need to trust others truthfully to
reveal aspects of reality. Conceived thus, objectivity is not a goal that is easily
achievable.
c. The Bias Paradox
Some, such as Helen Longino [1993] and Susan Hekman [1997] have argued that
two of the central tenets of feminist standpoint theories—the claim that knowledge is
socially situated and the claim that marginalized standpoints (but not perspectives)
offer epistemic advantage—are in deep tension with each other. On the one hand, it is
claimed that there is no standpoint-neutral vantage point from which to make
judgements about the relative epistemic superiority of certain standpoints over other
ways of knowing the world; while on the other it is claimed that marginalized
standpoints are, indeed, epistemically better than the epistemic positions of the non-
marginalized. If this tension cannot be resolved, it is argued, the standpoint theorist
is pushed back towards the relativistic embrace of ‘multiple and incompatible
knowledge positions’ [Longino 1993: 107].
Harding’s ‘strong objectivity’ suggests a possible dissolution of this apparent
tension. Responses to the claim of a bias paradox offered by Rebecca Kukla [2006]
and Kristina Rollins can be understood as means by which Harding’s notion can be
realized. Both draw upon the resources of contextual approaches to epistemic
justification to show how taking account of the social location of epistemic agents can
strengthen knowledge claims. Kukla draws upon and extends Wilfrid Sellars’ account
of perceptual warrant to argue for an account of epistemic objectivity in which
contingent, contextual factors such as gender and race are recognized as sources of
justification for knowledge claims, rather than rejected as disruptors of
‘aperspectival’ objective epistemic endeavor [2006: 86-7]. Only when we are socially
located in certain respects, Kukla argues, can we best perceive certain aspects of
reality.
Rollins, meanwhile, argues that the bias paradox arises out of a foundationalist
framework: The standard of impartiality against which standpoints would be
assessed involves basic, foundational beliefs and, according to foundationalism,
these cannot be socially situated; hence, the tension between standpoint theories’
epistemic advantage thesis on the one hand and situated knowledge thesis on the
other. Drawing and expanding upon the resources of Michael Williams’
contextualism, Rollins argues that by offering a standard of impartiality provided by
a context of default entitlements whose status as such is always context-dependent,
contextualism shows how it is possible to establish standards of epistemic
justification that are themselves situated knowledge claims [2006: 129]. It is against
a background of a standard such as this that it would be possible to claim, without
retreat to relativism, that marginalized standpoints can offer epistemic advantage.
Generally, with respect to their commitment to objectivity, then, feminist
standpoint theories can be understood as attempts to synthesize the elements that
usually create an inherent tension in feminist and emancipationist projects. This
tension arises from acknowledging the epistemic value of the inescapable social
situation and dependence of epistemic subjects and of knowledge, and yet remaining
committed to the idea that we don’t make the world up. Feminist standpoint theory
attempts to occupy a position that incorporates both epistemic deference to the
world and acceptance of the way in which that world and the ways we experience and
understand it are shaped by our material circumstances. Feminist standpoint theory
is also informed by an acceptance of the way in which different experiences, needs
and interests give rise to different practices, and different ways of thinking about and
interacting with the world, some of which are better than others. Real knowledge on
this view just is socially situated; it is interested as opposed to disinterested [Harding
2004: 24-25]. In this vein, feminist standpoint theory serves as a critique of
conventional epistemic standards, arguing that what Donna Haraway dubbed ‘the
God Trick’—the traditional epistemic view that knowledge is only achieved by
adopting a disinterested, impartial view from nowhere—is unachievable, for
knowledge is always from somewhere [Harding, 2004: 93].
8. References and Further Reading
Many of the seminal articles on feminist standpoint theories (including the papers
by Dorothy Smith, Nancy Hartsock, Hilary Rose, Patricia Hill Collins and Donna
Haraway) mentioned in this article are now collected together in Harding’s The
Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader. Harding’s collection also includes more recent
papers that make new contributions to these debates, including the papers by Mies
and Shiva, Narayan and Wylie.
Susan Hekman’s article, “Truth and Method: Feminist Standpoint Theory
Revisited”, Signs Vol 22, No. 2 (Winter, 1997) provides a critical response to feminist
standpoint theories which manifests the tension between standpoint theory and the
preoccupations of postmodernist feminism. That article and replies from Harding,
Hartsock, Hill Collins and Smith all appear in Harding’s 2004 collection.
a. Works Cited
 Terri Elliot, “Making Strange What had Appeared Familiar”, The Monist; Oct94, Vol. 77 Issue 4
 Evelyn Fox Keller, “The Anomaly of a Woman in Physics” in Sara Ruddick and Pamela Daniels,
eds., Working it Out: 23 Women, Writers, Scientists and Scholars Talk about their Lives, New York:
Pantheon Books, 1977
 Marilyn French, The Women’s Room, New York: Jove, 1978
  Sandra Harding Whose Science/ Whose Knowledge? Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991
 Sandra Harding, “Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology: What is Strong Objectivity?” in L. Alcoff
and E. Potter, eds., Feminist Epistemologies, New York/London: Routledge, 1993 (also appears in
Harding, 2004)
 Sandra Harding, “Comment on Walby’s ‘Against Epistemological Chasms: The Science Question
in Feminism Revisited’: Can Democratic Values and Interests Every Play a Rationally Justifiable Role in
the Evaluation of Scientific Work?, Signs, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Winter 2001)
 Sandra Harding, ed., The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader New York and London: Routledge,
2004
 Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges” in Harding 2004
 Nancy Hartsock, “The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Ground for a Specifically Feminist
Historical Materialism” in Harding, 2004
 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of
Empowerment, New York and London: Routledge, 1990
 Patricia Hill Collins, “Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black
Feminist Thought” in Harding 2004
 Bell Hooks, From Margin to Center, Boston: South End Press, 1984
 Rebecca Kukla, “ Objectivity and Perspective in Empirical Knowledge”. Episteme 3(1): 80-95.
2006
 Helen Longino, ‘Subjects, Power, and Knowledge: Description and Prescription in Feminist
Philosophies of Science’ in Feminist Epistemologies, L. Alcoff and E. Potter (eds.), New York:
Routledge, 1993, 101-120.
 Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva, “The Subsistence Perspective” in Harding, 2004
 Uma Narayan, “The Project of Feminist Epistemology: Perspectives from a Nonwestern Feminist”
in Harding, 2004
 Kristina Rolin, “ The Bias Paradox in Feminist Standpoint Epistemology” Episteme 1(2): 125-
136. 2006
 Hilary Rose, “Hand, Brain and Heart: A Feminist Epistemology for the Natural Sciences” in
Harding, 2004
 Wilfrid Sellars, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1997
 Dorothy Smith, “Women’s Perspective as a Radical Critique of Sociology” in Harding, 2004
 Sylvia Walby, “Against Epistemological Chasms: the Science Question in Feminism
Revisited” Signs, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Winter 2001)
 Michael Williams, Problems of Knowledge: A Critical Introduction to Epistemology, Oxford and
New York: Oxford University Press, 2001
 Alison Wylie, “Why Standpoint Matters” in Harding, 2004
 Alison Wylie & Lynn Hankinson Nelson, “Coming to terms with the values of science: Insights
from feminist science studies scholarship” In Value-free science: Ideals and illusions, eds. Harold
Kincaid, John Dupré, and Alison Wylie. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007
b. Earlier Papers
 Sally J. Kenney and Helen Kinsella, eds. Politics and Feminist Standpoint Theories, New York
and London, The Haworth Press, 1997
c. Later Contributions
 Sharon Crasnow, “Feminist anthropology and sociology: Issues for social science” In Handbook
of the philosophy of science, Volume 15: Philosophy of anthropology and sociology, 2006
 Sharon Crasnow, “Is Standpoint Theory a Resource for Feminist Epistemology? An
Introduction” Hypatia 24(4) 2009: 189-192.
 Sandra Harding, Sciences from below: Feminisms, postcolonialities, and modernities, Raleigh:
Duke University Press, 2008.
 Sandra Harding, “Standpoint Theories: Productively Controversial”, Hypatia 24(4) 2009: 192-
200.
 Kristen Intemann, “Standpoint empiricism: Rethinking the terrain in feminist philosophy of
science” In New waves in philosophy of science, eds. P.D. Magnus and Jacob Busch. Houndsmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010; 198-225.
 Kourany, Janet, “The Place of Standpoint Theory in Feminist Science Studies”, Hypatia 24(4)
2009: 209-218.
  Kourany, Janet, “Standpoint Theory as a Methodology for the Study of Power
Relations”, Hypatia 24(4) 2009: 218-226.
 Joseph Rouse, “Standpoint Theories Reconsidered” Hypatia 24(4) 2009: 200-209.
 Miriam Solomon, “Standpoint and Creativity”, Hypatia 24(4) 2009: 226-237.
Author Information
T. Bowell
Email: TABOO@waikato.ac.nz
University of Waikato
New Zealand