What do women know? The intersection of critical realism and feminism
You don’t have to be a philosopher to have asked the question ‘How do we know what we know?’ There’s a pretty good chance we’ve all been that toddler incessantly asking their parents ‘But, whyyy?’ In academic terms the toddler is referring to epistemology, the study of knowledge. As a branch of philosophy, epistemology is concerned with what can be known and how we can know it.
If we are feeling even more adventurous, we might ask a bigger, metaphysical question such as ‘How do we know what is real?’ This question falls to the field of philosophy called ontology, the study of the nature of reality. English philosopher, Roy Bhaskar (1944-2014) was the first to identify what he referred to as the ‘epistemic fallacy’, the reduction of ontology to epistemology, noting that the dominant research paradigms of the times limited the study of the nature of reality (ontology) to only that which humans know (epistemology) and “did not allow for a comparison between a body of theory and the world” [1].
The philosophies of Hume and Kant, Bhaskar determined, ignored ontology and constrained the study of reality, leading to the birth of Bhaskar’s paradigm ‘critical realism’ [1]. Critical realism argues that there is a reality that exists beyond what human beings know, otherwise scientific discoveries could not theoretically eventuate, because they are discoveries of what humans had not known previously.
Before seeking to add to the body of human knowledge, researchers must elaborate on their research paradigm, that is, the ontology and epistemology which form the researcher’s worldview, or lens, that will be applied to the gathering of knowledge. In rationalising critical realism, Bhaskar argued that a research paradigm must be flexible enough to allow the researcher to wander, to ascertain a version of reality that is more refined than previous versions. This aspect has opened critical realism up to criticism about the level of qualitative abstraction required to conceptualise causal relationships between empirical observation and social phenomena; on the other hand, Bhaskar’s paradigm has introduced an intellectually rigorous method that values subjective knowledge, or lived experience, that when considered alongside objective, scientific knowledge produces a deeper understanding of reality [2].
Critical realism has been, historically, a male-dominated field, meaning that the lived experiences enlightening the body of knowledge far have been filtered predominantly through a male lens. Where women’s experiences diverge from men’s, women’s stories and narratives are often ignored. A feminist approach to critical realism would argue that what humans know (epistemology) has been historically dominated by men, and thus men have designed the social world based on their own epistemic fallacy in which the nature of reality is limited to what men know. This gendered epistemic fallacy is itself an underlying mechanism that reinforces men’s power in the social world.
Although critical realism and feminist theory are both “inherently critical-emancipatory”, the alignment of the critical realist and feminist paradigms is a relatively new research approach [6]. From a critical-emancipatory perspective it could be argued that men sustain their hegemonic power by forming barriers to women’s participation, creating social identity threat in women via the illusion of male superiority and preventing women from accessing knowledge which may aid them in their emancipation.
Male domination of a field of knowledge is as much the way as it is an obstacle, and when women do infiltrate these fields, they risk learning the path to emancipation. The fields where men congregate are the seats of power and the exclusion of women (and also people of colour, Indigenous peoples and people of disadvantaged background) from fields such as in science, politics, philosophy, medicine and mathematics has limited human progress. An example demonstrating this point lies in the recent mathematical discovery by two young women of colour, Calcea Johnson and Ne’Kiya Jackson, in their senior year of high school who found a new way to solve the 2000-year old Pythagoras’ theorem by debunking the initial assumption of Elisha Scott Loomis (1852-1940), an American male Mathematician, that Pythagorean Theorem cannot be proved by trigonometry because it is the founding principle of trigonometry. Progress happens when we learn to question the authority of white men.
A feminist critical realism recognises a gendered epistemic fallacy, that is, the reduction of the nature of reality to only that which men know. The recognition that “reality exists independently of our knowledge of it” that critical realism delivers detaches us from ego for long enough to consider whose lived experiences have been disregarded and unaccounted for historically and what knowledge is contained in this reality that can yet contribute to humanity’s body of knowledge [4].
Feminist standpoint theory is a theory which privileges the perspective of the marginalised and is grounded in postpositivist realism and critical-emancipatory perspectives [6]. Through storytelling and narratives relaying the realities of women’s experiences, feminist standpoint theory can provide a central philosophy to conceive of women-centric theories of power. Coupled with critical realism, whose primary concern is to develop a theoretical account of events based on observation, to uncover the underlying mechanisms of social phenomena, and discover causal powers that relate social entities (e.g., organisms, individuals, groups, families, governments) to each other, these paradigms is a powerful way to validate lived experiences whose realities are consistently denied under Patriarchal oppression [4][3].
What do women know? Well, through their encounters with various social entities, women have experience of oppression, subjugation and exploitation, that narratives of which can enlighten the body of knowledge to how causal powers reproduce oppressive social structures.
“The social map in an individual’s mind will be at best and often mistaken, sometimes systematically so, because some social structures must be misunderstood to be reproduced.” [5]
The key to maintaining oppression of ‘others’ is to ensure that the causal mechanism remain hidden from view, so by aligning empirical research with subjective accounts to posit a theory of a causal relationship, critical realism makes “unobservable hierarchical structures” indirectly observable.
Critical realism also addresses epistemic relativism, the position that knowledge is only legitimate relative to a particular social context, present in social constructivism and interpretivist paradigms [7]. This is significant in feminism as cultural and moral relativism is often used to justify violence against women, where a localised moral compass, often scripted by religious groups, determines how women are treated by their geographical location. Critical realism provides a universal approach to truth and value orientation that rejects asymmetries of power. Critical perspectives traditionally aim to liberate individuals from suffering caused by power inequalities embedded in social structures, so a feminist approach prioritising women’s voices as human beings, historically silenced by objectivity, will deliver strategies of resistance and ultimately, emancipation.
References:
[1] Bhaskar, R. (2016) Enlightened Common Sense, The Philosophy of Critical Realism. New York: Routledge.
[2] Danermark, B. Ekström, M. and and Karlsson, J. C. (2019) ‘Theory in the Methodology of Social Science’, in Explaining Society: Critical realism in the social sciences, 2nd Edition, Routledge, pp 135-164.
[3] Fletcher, A. (2017) Applying critical realism in qualitative research: methodology meets method. International journal of social research methodology, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp 181 – 194.
[4] Gillman, L. (2016). Critical Realist and Postpositivist Realist Feminisms: Towards a Feminist Dialectical Realism. Journal of Critical Realism, 15(5), 458–475. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767430.2016.1191005
[5] Gorski, Philip. (2013). "What is Critical Realism? And Why Should You Care?". Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews. 42. 658-670. 10.1177/0094306113499533.
[6] Gunnarsson, L., Martinez Dy, A., & van Ingen, M. (2016). Critical Realism, Gender and Feminism: Exchanges, Challenges, Synergies. Journal of Critical Realism, 15(5), 433–439. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767430.2016.1211442
[7] Vincent, S. & O’Mahoney, J. (2019) ‘Critical Realism and Qualitative Research: An Introductory Overview’, in Cassell, C., Cuncliffe, A., Grandy, G. (ed.) The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Business and Management Research Methods: History and Traditions, London: SAGE Publications, pp 201-216.
