Unknown Speaker  00:01
probably six or eight years now and at Cornell is on the Women's Studies program. My major areas have to do with women and employment, application aspiration and work motivation and female sexuality. I also am, as many of you are an endangered species. And this paper or the paper whose title I bought for this program, which isn't quite what my remarks will be without it is part of a series in which I've been examining, really for a rather long time. The possibilities were relationships between feminist scholarship and more traditional scholarship. And that's kind of what what my contribution will be today. Before we start, let me ask you whether as you went around the room, you could hear well enough, not let me urge you to take the risk of moving in a little closer, it won't hurt anybody. And I'm. Out, as I will kind of limit my initial presentation.

Unknown Speaker  01:23
Of what I see.

Unknown Speaker  01:29
I've changed the title of this, because I think that the new title reflects the more pressing issue, which is the future of feminist scholarship.

Unknown Speaker  01:40
I view it

Unknown Speaker  01:42
as a background, humans work on normal science, and particularly on the dynamic processes, right, which science

Unknown Speaker  01:58
I believe Kuhn would say that what he describes is more of a science is the ideal type towards which all of us engage in scholarship or two. I know he leaves up the social sciences. And without apology, humanities and some traditional scholarship. But today, the term scholarship has been used in a random elusive sense, and I'm comfortable with that. So I often certainly entertain arguments about why he is not relevant. But until I hear them, I will apply some of his ideas what Kuhn means by normal science, I should say at the outset that they were set up as a sort of straw man in the paper, because Kuhn has two ideas, which should be imbalanced and are not as treatment that is the notion of paradigms and the notion of the scale, and can you and I believe that in order to understand or to make a prediction about the future of feminist scholarship, we will have to know very thoroughly how the community operates. And queuing gives much more attention to the development of the new paradigm than he does to the community, which is in fact, on why I believe that the issue for this analysis is the politics of inclusion and exclusion. And I think we really have to understand how the academic community and I use that term. How it works in order to assess, for example, you know, either at a theoretical level or at a practical level as people plan their careers, and plan, continue eating and continue being sheltered in practice, things like that, that we sort of know what we're up against. As you know, what Kuhn has in Milan, when he uses the term paradigm is a whole complex of items, which include a body of knowledge, such as industrial and scientific laws, particularly instrumentation, methodology, political significance, which accuses not everyone realized. But if I don't get to it, you might find me that I'm very interested in the issue of methodology. And that term has been used by Mary Daly, and wasn't John Roberts. I

Unknown Speaker  04:30
believe it's a profoundly political

Unknown Speaker  04:33
conception. What else? There is basically an epistemology, that is that is often indistinct, embedded in paradigms, and that's something which I think will become more proud to say what I think of as the nature of the feminist challenge. And there is also very important into entire As of studying academic careers, there is a priority or prioritize research agenda, which is part of our Kuhn says essentially that all scientific disciplines, and as I said I would other scholars tend toward the state of normal science, it's only within that inquiry is completely governed by parents. And Q talks about some of the agenda for today, which is a rapid post. So that, for me, one of the points, I should say, that I find useful, but it's very patriarchal kind of philosophies. And when I say that he completely incorporates the kind of winner loser cycle, I don't think it's necessarily important valid. I think it's quite possible as Ritzer and others have said that the social sciences can never get to the stage of normal science, that there will not be the dominance of one paradigm over all others. And to the extent that we structured scientific careers as though that were the end, there may be anything. I will, I will hold out as a possibility, but in fact, feminists have struck structure in ways different from how the men who trained us continue to do. And believe me, I'm animal. And when I say, I creeping up on being able to define the feminist paradigm, the paradox, I want to start, given that reservation, I'm not sure we're going to do it. But I know it's taken me a long time to be able to get some content. Because I have some I have a definition, which was great politics. In any case, partly because of this dynamic perspective. Kuhn writes as though change in the scientific community were inevitable, he takes the long historical perspective, he doesn't worry about individual scholars who fail to survive. He doesn't worry about 10 years of wasted time, before information, which was available in 1967 is incorporated in the curricula of our colleagues. And those are issues that concern me. But I'm taking a historical perspective, I think there's another flaw in Kuhn, which is that basically, and one of the weaknesses of his treatment of communities that he assumes social homogeneity, within the scholarly community, the only way he can transcend the competition between generations, is to assume that the challenges are at some level, acceptable to the people who are now at any historical moment controlled at this point. Now say right out when the challenges are females, I don't think that assumption holds. And one of the points that I get to in my outline is, in what ways is challenged from feminist scholarship, different from this normal situation that I've been describing where there were paradigms around which knowledge is organized, and they're in competition until one of them proves to be more powerful? Another point from Kuhn, and then I should leave him Is it what he writes about resistance, and the adoption of paradigms, Kuhn tries to defend himself because people have claimed that he presents science as an irrational enterprise. And there are those who feel really uncomfortable with that criticism. But in fact,

Unknown Speaker  08:51
when he starts to talk about resistance and about paradigm change, he suddenly switches to a rather metaphysical vocabulary and talks about conversion, says basically no paradigm, no note, no paradigm, which is a challenger ever succeeds on the basis of weight of evidence. That's the way the arguments made, but a paradigm in its early stages cannot be sufficiently potent, to completely sweep aside the prior incumbent. So in fact, what happens is that people become converted. Kuhn has failed at this process at all, but the one observation he offers is that what happens is that members of a new generation become converted, and that the members of group which has profited under the old regime are very unlikely to become converted and they basically die on. This is of course, very consoling to those with a historical perspective. Not at all. So people like me. But in any case, now, one of the questions that I'm interested in is then the issue of the professional type So the question as to whether social attributes of members of the community who bring a challenge have something to do with the probability that their challenge will be accepted. And if you don't understand what I'm talking about, I'm saying I think there was sexism among graduate students. And I think that, to the extent that graduate schools are following the behest of the county commission cutting back on their programs, gonna cut back on proportion of women in the pipeline, I have some other things to say about the pipeline. And I think that this is a serious problem. I do not think that the challenge from feminist scholarship is a normal paradigm challenge. And I don't think the history of it is going to be resolved in a way that Kuhn represents as normal. Okay. So then my second concern has to do with the scientific community. And I will just throw out some headlines here because this is, this chapter has a great deal of literature, which I couldn't possibly do justice to. From Kuhn, we get the idea that a scientific community shares a paradigm. In fact, the paradigm represents a belief system, and to the extent that you descend from the paradigm in any substantial way, you really cannot be considered a member of the community. Now, I believe that has implications for feminist scholarship, because I have tried to practice periodize feminist scholarship in the earlier version of this paper. And I think that in fact, feminist scholarship inevitably leads people to descend from a dominant paradigm in not one but several ways. And I have sort of a value added theory of deviance that says, you can predict the magnitude of the punitive response to deviation on the basis of how many deviant points you add up. I'll come back to that. Because I want to give feminist scholarship because do in any case, Kuhn is very interested in how civil Kuhn is. And although he talks about scientific revolution, there's almost a playful, figurative quality to its elegant and delightful. But you don't get the sense that there's no bloodshed. And I believe there is bloodshed, I believe we're in a period of backlash, which threatens all of us. Those of you who have tenure, congratulations for those of us who don't, but I think there's an element of threat.

Unknown Speaker  12:25
Is this is focused on evolution. So

Unknown Speaker  12:30
that's where I get my ideas on June. Kuhn doesn't have all the criticisms of Kuhn that I do. Title, Thomas Eskew. It's a beautiful, shocking pink paperback called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. And you should get the current edition, because it has a postscript in which he tries to take into account the many criticisms and reactions that he's received since the initial publication, which I think is 1966 or seven. Right? How do you spell kuh? En? And, boy, I really am vulnerable to the criticism of of not citing female theoreticians, because the only people I'm going to talk about today, aside from instances of scholarship itself are Berger and luckmann. Some of you know already and Pune. But this is just this is just a sketch. Okay. I in my work on the scientific community, I've emphasized the nature and functions of professional networks. And I have a word some of the community that I develop here are the work of my student, Larry comer, who is doing a study of networks in the community of feminist scholars, and to see what they include and don't include what kinds of goodies are flowing through those networks. Of course, the extra the world's expert in that, Arlene, Kevin Daniels is here. And let me just say, most of you know, what kinds of resources flow through those networks, but one of the things we're interested in is citation studies. There's a great deal of documentation of the existence of functional ephemeral sculpture could people could undertake, and which I think is open do I consider a citation studies to be just the beginning of that work? The scientific community, in spite of what Kuhn would have you believe is stratified the way the real world is, which means the basic dimensions of social stratification determine outcomes in this community. Of the evidence that I've seen, gender is the most powerful of these race perhaps second and age third, although age is confounded with rank in our occupation. So in fact, rank turns out to be more powerful than some of the cities of the profession. Okay. Yes, All right. I you know, it's that's interesting. The data that I've been following take individuals as a unit of analysis. And it's easy to overlook, I think classes more than variables that you can pick individuals. So I have, I'm glad to be corrected in that respect. I think the real I think the real phenomenon, by the way, should take human human works as though the intellectual level which is what his analyzes, were, the real stuff. That's all there is, in fact, I think the social and political are more important. So I view this whole question as a problem in the maintenance of boundaries. And I haven't done much on that. But I have noticed the vital importance the vividness to me of magical code words, which discriminate perfectly, who is inside and outside, there are lists of those that I call lists of dirty words and lists of magic words. And for academia, for example, I think that Dick Lester's book is the magic word book. Anybody who doesn't know it, it's a very funny book. Also done at the it's called anti bias regulations in universities. Very fun book, but not Not, not meant to be funny. It isn't. It is a magic word book. This is a study which I don't think I'm doing justice to say. He asked all of his cronies, what negative effects they would anticipate if affirmative action were ever to become a reality in universities. And they told you all the stuff you got you got all the you got basically their answers. I didn't see any exceptions to this could be codified in terms of threats to the magic words, the magic words are things like standards, excellence, meritocracy, and so forth, and so on. A part of this paper, which isn't written yet, unfortunately, has to do with the fate of affirmative action, and universities. And although it's a very complex question, and there are many, many good contributions to the literature, I think you could go a long way and just looking at magic words and dirty words, to understand the the brief and painful history of production. Well, oppression is a dirty word. Discrimination is a dirty word.

Unknown Speaker  17:25
And by the way, I haven't found in the social science literature, with the exception of the work on the economics of discrimination, any kind of substantive or operational definition of discrimination. I haven't found it doesn't exist as a problem in our literature. Okay, that's the kind of if you use the word oppression, you violate the canons of civility. It's a dirty word in certain communities. Am I wrong about that? And conversely, and first of all, it is I think, New York, because it's right on the line. That's right. It is right on the line. But do you remember that courses there used to be courses in social stratification, which of course is an establishment type where there are clearly shadings here and I'm not competent to do them justice. But in our university, the person who used to teach social stratification now teaches social inequality are crypto Marxist. I mean, for one or any other, this person is a Marxist. All right. One of the quit, one of the questions that I want to develop is basically a social psychological one, which comes out of an item that Kuhn deals with in all the sociology of applications deal with, which is the issue of professional socialization and the belief issue of personal identity, and professional identity. And I will just, I guess, I will jump to my next section and say, in terms of how social sciences distinctive, how we have to remember that it's different from the kinds of disciplines that Ken was talking about. It appears to me that the variables we study have some personal relevance for some people, and that that inevitably has repercussions. It has repercussions which are well documented by, for example, some of the excellent grandmother's I've done work on the psychology of tokenism. And Rosa Tanner has just published a paper on what she calls skewed sex ratios, general effects of skew sex ratios, it could apply to other minority anomalous statuses, that any person regardless of their intellectual work, regardless of her intellectual work, is going to be reacted to in terms of the creative, the social signification of her obvious attributes. And that's so obvious it shouldn't have to be said, it doesn't appear anywhere in Kuhn, or in any philosophy of science, and most of the sociologists do. Cantor is the current AJs or Asr That's American Journal of Sociology or American Sociological Review, and I think it's a great Let's see. Okay, I'll come back to this point. The last point is the point about methodology or methodology. And I don't think that Kuhn has made enough of this item, it is an element in what he terms, the claridon, which one it is adopted by a community is swallow whole. And it's ordinarily not made probably not a basis for discussion, the whole point is that you could go ahead and have the kind of scientific progress where each little bit adds on accumulates, and the millennium is just around the corner, only under conditions of normal science, because you don't have to discuss anything, you just go ahead and do it. I am told there were some famous communities like that. And in that case, I don't think. But in the case of normal science, I have my doubts, it should be obvious that methodology is one of is a very potent boundary maintenance function. In other words, you can only engage in privilege discourse within a community, if you can meet the canons of validity. And those are mostly defined in terms of methodology, the more evolved towards the science, the discipline becomes probably the more emphasis there will be on methodology. And of course, I think there's something terribly masculine about this whole thing.

Unknown Speaker  21:27
And I was thinking, during one of the one of the talks this morning, there is something irresistible to men, about dualities, and I consider the subject object one to be the underlying domain where there's concern about methodology. Why is it that men feel the obligation or the necessity? I don't think it's an obligation? I think it's I really think the explanation is psychological. Somebody will probably kill me before I walk out. I don't know what it's about. But I do I think that what's going on is that I observe certain behaviors, which seem to have the meaning of, of maximizing distance between the individual scientist and experience. So what you do is you simplify, you operationalize you put things in the laboratory, you exercise experimental and statistical control. And the best thing you could possibly do is to do simulations. All right, not to say what I mean, I think there's a dimension there. And I think that is very different from the way women are leaving aside the effects of training now, because I think we share training with our male colleagues. It's very difficult for me to separate instrumentation from other issues of epistemology.

Unknown Speaker  22:47
experimenters subjects and how that is set up in a small room is very clear.

Unknown Speaker  22:58
So there are more things to it than just the use of a special space. I mean, religious observances, which, of course, some people are seeing parallels here to also use the aside space for certain kinds of rituals, activities. But you're right, there's much more to it that's patriarchal than that. And I think one of the best examples that I've ever seen, is the script for the famous Milgram experiment, when the real subjects tried to get the experimenter to respond to their concern about this poor victim that they were shocking. And the experimenter, in fact, didn't answer any of those comments. He had a script. We came out with a very small experiment, experimental had a script, and the experimenter would just keep repeating the directions to continue with the task. That interaction is very peculiar, but you can make a direct statement or demand about feelings about the necessity for yourself in the situation. And the person continues businesses usually, I think that's very patriarchal. Right? I think that's a good reason.

Unknown Speaker  24:09
Yeah, you see, there's nothing wrong with the humanistic psychology stuff on paper. But and I, I've been doing a thing on androgyny. So I've been reviewing this. It doesn't make me as nauseous as it did a few years ago. But I noticed that again, they're not really talking about women, when they talk about basically they're talking about personal liberation, which is marvelous and a very good perspective and psychology, but they're basically talking about liberating men from the kinds of things that have constrained man, they do not yet because they don't take the social categories corresponding to gender seriously, they can't possibly make a potent analysis of what liberation for women would be about and they don't. And in that community, no one challenges the moment. So I don't see that as a good correct method that they use. I think I have no idea whether there are any research methods approach, I have a problem

Unknown Speaker  25:16
what is an alternative? No idea. I mean, I'm trying to make the leap between having that experimenter repeatedly say follow the instructions. This will go on during my immediate thought is already studied. And I think, okay, what are alternatives to that? And why what makes them patriarchy? Is it not the presumption that matriarchy with the opposite is not the same? I mean, what makes them

Unknown Speaker  25:49
you're asking probably the toughest question if you if you take it to methodology, and all I can say is, I think there's a continuum. And there are some extremes that I think are not, are not justifiable, either in ethical terms, or in terms of validity, what human beings are about, of course, that's very unscientific to say that I can't represent myself as any kind of model. But the kind of research that I'm doing a my students are doing human sexuality is very different from that. You mean, the individual is the expert on her own history. And you can worry about invalidity and biases, various kind you can control on them. But this but the stance of the researcher visa vie, the respondent is so different. I mean, when I was training in social psychology, social psychology is moved to the far right, as far as I'm concerned in the last 10 years. So that in fact, perhaps, perhaps social psychology has reached the stage of of normal science. And there is paradigm bound, and all that other stuff. But certainly the payoffs, what was what was good research design, was to find things that were extremely cute, extremely cute, that all involved assumption that all involved in that relation. And the real question was, it's like this business of pesticides and herbicides, you know, as the, as the subjects become less and less naive, you try to figure out more and more complex ways to fool them. And I just have retreated from that line of thinking, subsequent people keep telling me I, there is a new methodology, implicit in my own work, and I wish they wouldn't be so pointless, can't tell you what it is. But, you know, I think that's where we're going. I don't have an answer for you right now.

Unknown Speaker  27:30
Yeah, I guess. I mean, I'm thinking in terms of more practical design. Obviously, you would have to experiment to scale experiment to try out situations where neither are those dominant personalities. So several subjects don't see either a male or a female running it for a male running. And you can have I mean, there's so many ways, but that doesn't seem to deal with the issue that you're getting yourself, which is sitting in either case, most people are still represented. But for now, I mean, I'm

Unknown Speaker  28:07
really rooting for novitiate where the experimenters do not respond to the subject. That's the key there, I think, a good place where, in the past, there has been some research. Again, it's been considered unscientific. I'm not saying that was a different model. But nevertheless,

Unknown Speaker  28:33
I would say that you could still gain satisfactory levels of logical and scientific rigor with research situations that were much more reciprocal. When my students do research, they have to offer the the participant person something in return, none of this crap about you come in, I'm going to do a few things to you. And it's all for science and art you go. And if they can't find I'm moving more and more into not because I really am into community research, but because the phenomenon I'm interested in, exist in, in, in social organizations, they have to find a way to make that research, sell to those who are the people who are going to configure it, if they can't, the research doesn't get done, period. That's a very different kind of set of constraints to adopt. I just think the issue of methodology is extraordinarily complex. I have no good ideas. i Furthermore think that good methodology is always a match between the problem and the method. That's why the term like methodology is meaningful to me. If you tell me there are people who there are people who cannot in my field, who cannot read anything that isn't in who can read anything that isn't a In the the third generation developed from path analysis, and regression statistics cannot read anything in any other methodology. So that says is what that says is that, that which fits into the, into the shackles of methodology now defines our field and anything else, one of my colleagues refers to me as an essays. I see I'm working on that, you know, eventually I will, I will be able to say, Oh, thank you. Now, I know that you want to see from the point of view of where we are with this kind of awfully imitating, tagging after the physical sciences, I know, he intends that as a deadly insult, there's no ambiguity about that. And it's precisely because of this kind of continuous kind of progression that I've been talking about, the more like physics we can become, the better we will be. Alright, so social science is different. For other for reasons, as I've suggested, the issue of consciousness is one that I want to work on. And I would like for people to have ideas about it to throw it in. There is no sociology of the white male. And I don't think that's an oversight at all. I think that's true for exactly the same reason, at working, the reasoning about is exactly the same as Kuhn uses when he talks about the paradigm within normal science, that is to say, that which is not problematic does not get discussed. When you have no variation on a variable, it's not a variable in the sense in which we use that term in science. And what that means aside from a perhaps Lamma, double lack of studies in the sociology of white males is that is extraordinarily difficult to get those people to pay attention to a systematic sociology just to take an example of women, blacks, gay people are what you will. Alright, the problem one of the things I talked about is as as patriarchal science is that oh, that the male is considered normal. You know, somebody said that this morning, it's not that we have two groups, you have to gender classes, which is how we know it is it's that you know, thinking as scientists, there is humankind. And then there is those others or the other if you happen to be from a humanistic traditions, the other cap c cap, oh, kiss Beauvoir remarks, it matters not, whether the characterizations of the other are benevolent or hostile. That matters not that doesn't affect the logic of you, some of you may be aware of the work that Suzanne Prescott and others have done on authorship of scientific articles in Suzanne's work is is addresses the question of when do authors generalize from their study sample. And it perhaps might surprise you to know that when experiment is run on males, they generalize to a person's when the experiment is when females they say female subjects, and they don't generalize at all. This is an old old point, but it's absolutely pervasive. Okay. I have a section on a sociology of knowledge perspective.

Unknown Speaker  33:30
And this is where I really depart from Kuhn, because I think that Kuhn tells us a great deal about what John Stuart Mill called the herd of studious men, a nice phrase, but he's completely oblivious to their hardness and to their madness. And I think those are the two critical factors for understanding how how scholarly communities work, particularly the curtains. This is something that I've just become aware of, from recently reviewing McCabe and Jacqueline's book, they don't become aware of this. And I would like to keep checking, check my objectivity on this interrater reliability. But I observed an awful lot of studies that demonstrate a much greater sensitivity of male, young males, most of the research they review is basically for people who are adolescent or younger, to their peers, to their male peers. And then the group, the peer group as a context for male activity I'm very familiar with because of my work in human sexuality, but I think is terribly, terribly important when I try to unravel some of the specific puzzles I'm interested in. For example, I'm interested in the study of personal violation. I've been studying right now setting wife abuse, and I find that one of the critical factors is that men expect social support from other men for doing these kinds of acts for rehearsing them and fantasy for bragging about them. Now that you cannot understand it intellectually or deal with a social problem if you don't realize that there is an audience and supportive group that male solidarity is one of the basic facts of the social world that we live in. And it's one that we haven't studied, nearly enough for the hardness of academic men. Sociologists of knowledge say, where you stand depends on where you sit. These concepts are very fascinating, beautiful, subtle, and would take me too long to go through them. But the bottom line, I've relied a great deal on Berger and luckmann in my work, which is 1967 book called the social construction, social construction of reality, right? The bottom line from that approach is that sociology of knowledge teaches us to ask says cool. Now remember, was it wasn't minute this morning, who said suddenly got the thorat Ativ role of knowledge and society and how academic types have monopolized the definition of knowledge in society. We really given that that analysis, which I agree with, we really have to ask says, and the answer from the studies of the academic profession and all the professions is fairly unambiguous. Now that has something systematic to say, the kinds of theory the kinds of data, the kinds of research priorities becomes epistemology, the kinds of collegial relationships that are established or reflect the maleness and the burdens of people who are responsible for authoritative statements. So I say then, therefore, with this great surprise, everyone, I then say normal social sciences, patriarchal, humanist, Patriarch, and the whole his whole tradition in social science of value neutrality, objectivity. So with Vabre, you know, this same student of mine, caught my attention by by revealing to me the history of how Vabre let's see what kind of bargain it was for vapor to cop into that value neutral kind of position, he did it in order to gain space to do the work, he wanted to do in a situation where social science was expected to have some social utility and tie up with the political world. And he didn't want to do that. So he invented a handy concept that would get him out of it. And that's when we've inherited quite critically. In general, what I think is patriarchal. And I have not finished the list at all, is, first of all, a denial of value. That's what objectivity is. It's a line. But it's, it's put forward, the value neutrality is put forth as a value. Secondly, the denial of feelings, particularly own and others, own and others. And I invite you to look at all of you who read professional journals have thereby been trained to edit. And I invite you to look at your own writing and others and see the kinds of things that you circle with a blue pencil. There are almost always expressive and unprofessional rules. Right? When I do that, or I put puns following the brilliant example of falling burned, I usually put puns in various places I have

Unknown Speaker  38:22
I usually I have a paper in which I have a section that's called the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. And of course, I spell a Ph. D. No, just take that out. It's got to be an Arabic clearly has a chapter in my book, which has a running head. That is that on the page proofs came out as factor friction. Now, I'm not sure what you intend out that ghost, people couldn't possibly be talking about what they appear to be talking about. You think about all the taboo topics, and the vocabulary that denotes denial feelings, is extremely important. If you look at the professional literature on rape, you find what I've just said. exemplified are much more serious. I only know wants to work with the students. You're studying nope, no, I should if I had to do this too. Okay. Denial of injury. I have a definition somewhere here, which I ought to try out on you probably can't find. So basically, I say something about patriarchy. By patriarchy, I mean a social system which actualizes dominance of women by men, together with ideology, knowledge in quotes, as sociologists of knowledge use that term and socialization practices which renders such dominance expected natural and real. Now I haven't developed that definition. To be specific to the way social science is conducted, allow me to do that. But consider, if you will, for a minute. The other problem that I can't get into, which is the theory of affirmative action I wanted to set I wanted to analyze in parallel in history, women's studies, and history from the bench and universities. But I consider women's studies, among many other things to be, perhaps a threat background is what we've learned about occupational segregation. I believe that the greatest threats that women can pose to man is economic competition. And that's a career that most men have not yet experienced. Because more than 70% of all workers in America are in occupations where most of their co workers are of the same gender. That is one of the basic social arrangements of our society. If you can get a wise women scholars, you would essentially compete. And if you look at capital and D, which is an old old study of, of academia, it's never been effectively disputed. And what they say about women is Empire one if you want, it can't hurt you, it can help you. Because the game is about prestige, and women are outside the prestige, period. Women are others. Can't hurt you, but it can't be. Okay, so obviously, if you can get you know how University of Chicago, which is where I taught before I went to Cornell, they used to have a home economics department. There you had your female political scientists, your female philosophers, your female mathematicians, female sociologists, and guess what? They got rid of home economics? And guess what? Get rid of all the women faculty members? Yes, there is if you look at the pathetic statistics on the proportion of women on the faculty at University Chicago, this awful trough, you know, down from 10%. And what that represents. what that represents is the eclipse of home economics. I am, by the way, have been for a long time, a strong proponent of women's studies, but I do recognize that one of the functions for instance, serves for larger academic communities and getting the zation of what would otherwise be perhaps an uncontainable versus competitive group. All right. One more, you know, I think what I'm going to do is leave you with my final point for discussion and try to say a little bit about the the challenge from feminist scholarship. Yes.

Unknown Speaker  43:06
I also have a definition here, which I'm not satisfied with. But perhaps we'll we'll start some thinking about why the champion Family Scholarship is different. Here I say a feminist scholarship is that scholarly work which one takes the study of women as its central focus to which is committed to going beyond simple description of the status quo? And three, which is concerned with the social uses of knowledge about women that can't begin to say what feminist scholarship is, but you could see right away that it's quite different. One is, it takes the study of women as a central focus, not an add on not this ridiculous double standard, that we find the most of the scholarly disciplines. Second, which is committed to going beyond simple description of the status quo. Study of sex differences is not the scholarship simple description of the status quo. And three, which is concerned with the social uses of knowledge about women. This is not very ivory towers. Okay, what other things I thought about, first of all,

Unknown Speaker  44:32
if there is such a thing as intervention,

Unknown Speaker  44:36
because I don't know yet whether there is such a thing. I think we are trending in that direction. That I hope that I hope that the discussion here will will give me a little content it's very

Unknown Speaker  44:58
interesting because I A lot of the feminist psychologists I know, have taken the teaching of methodology as their entree, it never occurred, it never occurred to them. methods of teaching, no, no, I mean methods of doing research, we then you get to select what examples you use for my deal with professional ethics feature? Ah I haven't thought of it. I mean, this is obviously a category that needs to be expanded. Let me say something that I think is very important I really agree with with Mary when she said this morning, I don't think we're at a place yet where we can elegantly define in a exclusive way what is found the scholarship, but we're working on it. I believe that the conflict over naming is absolutely central to this challenge. And to what constitutes feminist scholarship. You can see a connection with what I said before about dirty. Kuhn never uses a sectional. In any case, marginality is by the way, those of you who are optimistic about the future feminist scholarship marginality is one of the things we have going for us. I'm not optimistic because I think that marginality facilitates discovery, but impedes being persuasive visa vie the existing community, which is actual people you have to sell. But that's the final question that I'm getting to is what is the future? What models can be used to predict? You know, what is I got tell us? Feminist scholarship is interdisciplinary. And it runs counter to the tradition which Kuhn, I think describes accurately necessary and accepted parochialism. In Scotland fields, is bound to run off against that. Feminist scholarship is political, in quotes. And when I started playing around with what on earth does that mean? I mean, I know what it means men politicize my world. But consider these possibilities. A man's home is no longer his castle, as his wife has become politicized. The profession is no longer a man's club. As women are becoming professional, the personal could become professional. If we insist on if the insistence on hard methodology is surrender. That's really, the politics of methodology is pivotal. The professional becomes personalized, if you have to consider people's feelings, or rights as human beings, which has nothing to do. The politics of private life becomes an object of study. I'm thinking particularly with domestic violence, but there are many, many things nasty hundreds of things, which are filled with doubt and scholarship does is names things which are denied and the fake science and reaffirms things that are distorted, and claims things having to do with women that are ignored. All those things are part of the concept of naming. And ignore I believe, and I haven't done, I haven't done anything adequate with content, a feminist scholarship, but some of the examples that I've been working with what seems to be in common among them is the study of unacknowledged power relations. That, of course, goes with what I said about patriarchy, that most power relations should be unacknowledged. And of course go into their interest in the class that we should study them and study them effectively. Feminist scholarship studies women on their own terms, and here my speculation is that more and more Oh, it this will lead us toward our Orthodox methodology, and sociology, that's likely to be something in the neighborhood of phenomenon. part because there is a challenge to the to the kind of dualistic epistemology of subject and object and so on. I think there may be better. But that's clearly there is an affinity between questions and methods that we shouldn't be on inspecting the different kinds of questions that scholars are now asking. They're going toward other methodologies, I should say, by the way, that in the process by which a woman scholar becomes a traitor to her discipline.

Unknown Speaker  49:31
I think that probably abandoning message Orthodoxy is a more potent threat than just studying women. Now, I don't consider all studies of women to be feminine scholarship. If they don't challenge a patriarchal paradigm. I don't consider them to be feminist scholarship. But my analysis of the of the academic community is that if you do work on women, it's not on the research agenda. It doesn't help anything. I'm going to help you advance professionally, it's not going to hurt anybody, unless it's political. So you're not going to get punished severely by doing that, as you will if you start to challenge the methods, orthodoxy, and given the fact that social science is basically not monistic, in methodology, you can float around and find yourself a methodological community. The way to get your head chopped off, was to do work that challenges the patriarchal paradigm. There are there are, what I'm saying is this, I see if there are degrees of risk you can expose yourself to. Okay, I have some thoughts about what feminist scholars studies everyone does. So I would like to end up with a question of what is future feminist scholarship? How much of my analysis? Are you moved or obligated to buy? And if you do, what applications? And if you don't? What are the additional options that can be generated? Is it our thought that we should take our break? First, Mr. Trump?

Unknown Speaker  51:02
How do people feel? Because after three o'clock we thought that we would take a break after an hour when he was just getting into as well. But I haven't been sitting listening all this time. I can't. Yeah, I think we can we have a lot of time?

Unknown Speaker  51:37
I have a question. I'm coming from a different place. Because a lot of women are here. Already scholars, from what I've heard, I'm on the way to scholar, I'm not quite sure how to do that. Because I'm an undergraduate at a very patriarchal School, which is fine, and I'm angry, a great deal of the time and I'm also gonna come out it really I mean, it was it shaping up a lot of, but it's good because it's leaving, I can see. However, my field of study that I am basically interested in today background is agency of engineering history, studying women, for 3000. Different kinds of Goddess. And I don't know how to do that. And I want to say I'm talking to general now, I don't want to get too specific reason I don't know how to do that. Because my options are as follows. I can go towards some of the best students of ancient Near East engineering system programs such as University of Pennsylvania, University of Chicago, Yale, whatever it is, and then I am stressed into a whole patriarchal system. I know some of the people who are involved. You know, in these studies, I don't want to go through seven, eight years of my life, the staging and being angry and frustrated and the other man, I want to get into the graduate work in women's studies, the options, I mean, I don't have that much to choose from, you know, there's a women's history Sarah Lawrence, and if there isn't anything happening, I mean, I'm very excited about everything that's going on here today, but where do you go to become a feminist scholar?

Unknown Speaker  53:32
Does anybody have any ideas? There, there's a woman's history

Unknown Speaker  53:43
just to name people who might be able to answer your question. I don't think there was a situation