Join Alison and TL;DR as we look at the epistemology of feminism. The document, an excerpt from Sylvia Walby’s Theorizing Patriarchy (1990), critiques feminist epistemologies—contrasting feminist empiricism (which corrects patriarchal biases in mainstream social science using conventional methods) with feminist standpoint theory (which prioritizes women’s subjective experiences and qualitative approaches over abstract, male-constructed “objective” knowledge)—while favoring a realist epistemology to uncover underlying social structures; it then defines patriarchy as a system of social structures and practices (rejecting biological determinism or generational hierarchies) in which men dominate, oppress, and exploit women through six relatively autonomous, interlocking structures: the patriarchal mode of production in the household, patriarchal relations in paid work, the state, male violence, sexuality, and cultural institutions, allowing analysis of gender inequality’s variations alongside capitalism and racism without reductionism or relativism.
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