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Feminist Epistemology

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Situated knowledge asks where knowledge begins

Feminist epistemology is not one unified method. It asks how power shapes what can be known, who counts as a knower, what evidence becomes credible, and who bears the consequences of research. Situated knowledge names knowledge made from a partial, located position; Haraway calls for situated knowledges that can be held accountable. Recognizing location does not require abandoning evidence or treating every account as equally well supported.

Standpoint theory asks a related but distinct question: what can critical inquiry learn when it begins from lives obscured by dominant accounts? A social location alone does not guarantee a standpoint or an infallible insight. Sandra Harding’s 1996 chapter on strong objectivity asks which knowledge projects can be objective and whether, and how, feminist inquiry can produce objectivity. Different feminist approaches answer this differently, and that disagreement is part of the field rather than a flaw to erase.

Sharmila Rege makes the stakes concrete in an Indian feminist debate. Her 1998 essay resists treating caste as a separate concern that can simply be assigned to Dalit women’s organizations. If feminist movements name difference without examining how caste and gender shape their histories and knowledge, the label can leave the wider politics unchanged. This is a historically specific argument, not a template to map onto every society.

The same questions travel into data and design. Who chose the categories? Whose accounts are absent, and does absence signal exclusion, privacy, or refusal? Who prepares and maintains the evidence, and who can challenge its use? Data feminism makes these decisions visible in data science and visualization. A checklist or more diverse dataset cannot settle them by itself: participation matters when people affected can help set questions, contest classifications, and refuse harmful collection.

Four questions for reading claims of knowledge

What does situated knowledge mean?

Ask where a claim was produced, through which methods and relationships, and what its location lets it see or leaves outside its frame.

Does experience guarantee truth?

No identity grants automatic authority or immunity from criticism. Follow how a standpoint is developed through collective history, inquiry, and accountability.

Do feminist approaches agree on objectivity?

No. They share questions about power and knowledge but differ over method, evidence, and what makes a claim more reliable. Keep those disagreements visible.

How can this guide data work?

Trace categories, missingness, labor, consent, and decision rights from data collection through display and institutional use.

Choose a way in

Move from Haraway’s account of partial perspective to debates over whose knowledge shapes feminist theory, then carry the questions into data and care practices.

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21 · Feminist Epistemology

Books

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01

Books · Feb 2024

All in Her Head: The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us about Women's Bodies and Why It Matters Today

Elizabeth Comen

Memorial Sloan Kettering oncologist and medical historian Dr. Elizabeth Comen unveils the collective medical history of women, exploring how medicine has long misunderstood women's bodies and how these historical oversights continue to affect women's health today.

02

Books · Mar 2020

Data Feminism

Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein

It proposes seven practical principles that bring power analysis, intersectionality, situated knowledge, and co-design into data work itself.

03

Books · Mar 2017

Matters of Care

María Puig de la Bellacasa

A feminist reading of María Puig de la Bellacasa’s account of care as maintenance, affect and political obligation - from knowledge-making to permaculture and living soil.

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Books · Feb 2011

Feminist Security Studies

Annick T. R. Wibben

Annick T. R. Wibben uses narrative analysis to show how security stories define threats, authorize responses, and exclude situated experiences.

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Books · Jan 2006

Writing Caste/Writing Gender: Narrating Dalit Women's Testimonios

Sharmila Rege

Sharmila Rege reads Dalit women's life narratives as historical and theoretical knowledge, asking who gets to write caste and gender into India's feminist history.

06

Books · Oct 1997

The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses

Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí

Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí questions how ‘woman’ became a universal category, tracing Western gender theory through Yoruba history, language, and colonial knowledge-making.

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01

Papers · Jan 2025

Translating the Feminist Theory of Intersectionality into Gender Analytical Frameworks for Gender and Development

Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt

This paper explores how to translate intersectional feminist theory into practical gender analytical frameworks (GAF) for development interventions, warning against turning intersectionality into a simple instrument stripped of its theoretical and methodological nuances.

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Papers · Oct 2016

Feminist Data Visualization

Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein

D’Ignazio and Klein turn feminist epistemology into questions for visualization design: how categories, visual form, participation, context, and labor shape whose knowledge becomes legible.

03

Papers · Dec 2000

Pure tolerance revisited

Denise Thompson

This radical feminist theoretical article revisits the place of tolerance in feminist theory, critically responding to the pluralist stance advocated by the inaugural issue of Feminist Theory journal. Drawing on Herbert Marcuse's theory of 'repressive tolerance', Thompson argues that unlimited tolerance provides shelter for patriarchal and anti-feminist viewpoints, thereby undermining feminism's core as a liberatory politics. She contends that feminism must maintain intolerance toward male domination to preserve its theoretical coherence and political efficacy.

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Papers · Aug 2000

Being reasonable, telling stories

Rita Felski

In a 2000 feminist-theory exchange, Rita Felski broadly agrees with Sylvia Walby while questioning how Walby characterizes Donna Haraway and Iris Marion Young.

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Papers · Aug 2000

In search of feminist theory

Sylvia Walby

This essay is Walby's response to critiques from Phoenix, Knapp, and others, further elaborating her position that feminism needs robust theorization and universal claims. Walby argues that in the era of globalization, feminism cannot be limited to politics of location but needs to develop theoretical frameworks capable of analyzing systemic oppression across local boundaries.

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Papers · Aug 2000

More Power to Argument

Gudrun-Axeli Knapp

This essay responds to Sylvia Walby's claim that feminism needs to move beyond politics of location toward universal arguments. Knapp, drawing from German Critical Theory and feminist traditions, explores the power of argument while warning against power relations that abstract universalism might mask, advocating for argumentative practice that is both critically powerful and acknowledges situatedness.