Women's Ways Of Knowing: The Development Of Self, Voice, And Mind 10th Anniversary Edition [Paperback]

Mary Belenky (Author), Blythe Clinchy (Author), Nancy Goldberger (Author), Jill Tarule (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 9, 1997

Despite the progress of the women’s movement, many women still feel silenced in their families and schools. This moving and insightful bestseller, based on in-depth interviews with 135 women, explains why they feel this way. Updated with a new preface exploring how the authors’ collaboration and research developed, this tenth anniversary edition addresses many of the questions that the authors have been asked repeatedly in the years since Women’s Ways of Knowing was originally published.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

From interviews with 135 women (mostly privileged college students) regarding their search for truth and knowledge, the authors (all female faculty members of colleges or universities) determine five learning "perspectives" that characterize "women's way of knowing." The somewhat philosophical text, which skillfully blends narration, documentation, and excerpts from interviews, sees higher education's teaching methods as more responsive to male "impersonalness" than female "connectedness" and recommends ways to improve the situation. On the whole, a work ironically geared more to the dialectician or feminist scholar than to the "integrated constructivist" or "passionate knower." For large public and academic libraries. Janice Arenofsky, formerly with Arizona State Lib., Phoenix
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

Women's Ways of Knowing offers new and useful understandings of the epistemology (methods and basis) of the development of women's knowledge. While this already classic scholarly work is neither easily nor quickly read, there are many excellent reasons to read, use, and appreciate it. Earlier research in this field concentrated on predominately undergraduate middle- and upper-class Caucasian males. Based on interviews with 135 women of various ages from a variety of cultural and economic backgrounds, Women's Ways of Knowing creates five "not necessarily fixed, exhaustive, or universal categories" of how women know what we know. The results of this study are insightful and applicable to everyday life. The authors, instead of speaking from the distant land of "objectivity" and the omnipotent "one," say "we" and talk about their process: how and why they did this study, the details of their planning, what surprised them, how the results affected their thinking, plans, and progress. A good example of what's possible when love informs science, Women's Ways of Knowing illuminates - with warm and welcome light - scholarly theories about how people learn and know. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. -- From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Jesse Larsen

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 10 Anv edition (January 9, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465090990
• ISBN-13: 978-0465090990
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #35,830 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating look at the psychology of the female mind., December 20, 2003

By 

Monika "equestrienne_23" (Davis, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Women's Ways Of Knowing: The Development Of Self, Voice, And Mind 10th Anniversary Edition (Paperback)

Building on the work of previous psychologists interested in the study of the female mind, Mary Belenky and her colleagues have conducted interviews with a sample of 135 women enrolled in various teaching institutions (whether it be a university, community college, or some other institution such as a clinic to aid parents). The authors looked for patterns in the responses they received, and were able to draw together a concept of how women deal with knowledge.

The small size of the sample of women interviewed may be looked upon by some as a weak point of the study, but there are some strong motives behind this conscious choice the authors made. Belenky and her colleagues wished to get to know each woman personally, and to conduct a full, comprehensive interview with each one so that they could provide examples to accompany their theories, rather than simply quizzing an overwhelmingly large study group and giving their supporting evidence only in the form of numbers and statistics.

The authors have identified five different "ways of knowing" that women utilize. The first one addressed is given the name of silence. By "silence" the authors do not mean an absence of speech, but rather a state of being intellectually voiceless. They do not see themselves as beings capable of receiving or retaining knowledge, and are therefore subject to the control of those around them.

The second way of knowing discussed is termed "received knowledge." Received knowers believe themselves able to learn from others, and even to pass on what they have learned, but they do not see themselves as capable of independent, original thought. The authors identify both silent women and received knowers as dualists. They see things in terms of black and white, right and wrong, and one of the two is always seen as superior to the other.

"Subjective knowers" do realize that they have the ability to formulate knowledge for themselves, and rely on a strong inner voice with which they develop their thoughts. They believe all knowledge to be subjective, and every person's opinion to be equally valid, though applicable only to that person. In this sense, subjective knowers are multiplists rather than dualists. They recognize that there are shades of grey and that one answer to a problem may not be better than another.

"Procedural knowers," which might also be called objective knowers, base their development of knowledge solely on objective, scientific procedures. They distrust as fallible any sort of "gut instinct" that the subjective knowers rely so heavily on. Procedural knowers are also multiplists, however, in that they recognize that there may be more than one "right" answer in a particular situation. This way of knowing is identified as more masculine, and that which tends to be advocated in traditional educational institutions.

The last way of knowing is referred to as "constructed knowing." These women see all knowledge as contextual, and rely on both subjective and objective methods to arrive at "truth."

I would like to point out that, while one can get the impression from the text that these five ways of knowing are a sequence that one progresses through in the order they are discussed, this is not always the case. Any given woman may shift between any particular ways of knowing in any order, and over any period of time, and they may not ever experience every single one of them. In fact, I would venture to say that most women do not experience each one. A woman may also fall between two different ways of knowing, or may, at any given point in her life, utilize one way of knowing in one aspect of her life, and a different one in another. For example, a woman may be silent in her home environment, but act procedurally in her workplace.

Belenky and her co-authors go on to look at how these ways of knowing appear within family structures, and what the consequences of each on both parents and children are. They conclude by evaluating modern academic institutions and proposing a method of education that would be more suited to women.

The authors do not compare and contrast male and female ways of knowing in this study - male ways of knowing really aren't looked at at all, except to point out the influence traditional male thought has had on women. Neither do the authors hold one or the other up as being superior. They simply recognize that men and women tend to approach knowledge differently, and that ways of knowing that work for men may not work for women. This is certainly not any sort of final word in female psychology, and even the authors make note of the fact that others may interpret the results of their study differently, but it is a very worthwhile and thought-provoking read and I would highly recommend it.

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Letting the woman's voice roar..., December 22, 1998

By 

Andrea M.. Ahlsen - See all my reviews

This review is from: Women's Ways Of Knowing: The Development Of Self, Voice, And Mind 10th Anniversary Edition (Paperback)

"Women's Ways of Knowing" is an outstanding book based on experiential studies and interviews of 130+ women in varying fields, roles, and capacities. It explores the different "voices" or lack thereof that women hide and/or exhibit. This book not only looks at how women "learn" in formal and informal settings yet it looks at the challenges that women face in a masculine-structured society and educational settings. I found this book to elicit varying emotions from anger to happiness to loneliness. I recommend this book for any woman who is trying to discover who she is, what she's about, and how she got there. I also recommend this book for men to, at the very least, contemplate from a factual standpoint the challenges and ambiguous positions that women face today and tomorrow.

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A refreshing point of view, March 28, 2003

By 

FrKurt Messick "FrKurt Messick" (Bloomington, IN USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Women's Ways Of Knowing: The Development Of Self, Voice, And Mind 10th Anniversary Edition (Paperback)

Starting from the awareness that much of the way education (both formal and informal) is carried out in society is very male-dominated and the voice and experience of women is largely absent, Belenky and her co-authors make a case for examining ways of knowing and learning that is unique to women. The authors recognise early differences in studies that have included women as a primary or central focus, such as those of Carol Gilligan. One strong tendency of women's ways of knowing in these early studies is the presence of responsibility and connectedness that significantly exceeds those of men. After exploring different aspects of knowledge and how women come to acquire, use, produce, and disseminate this knowledge, the authors work to put these insights in context for the family and academia. The authors work largely in the area of developing for women a means of gaining a greater sense of self (also see Howard Gardner's section on personal intelligence in his book, Frames of Mind). This sense of self enables women to construct meaning for themselves, and find their own voices for both teaching and learning.

Perhaps one criticism I would hold is that, while this work looks at women's experience, it still seems to remain very Euro-centric. I am reminded of the arguments of black women against feminist theological processes, which led to the development of womanist theological discourse.

Recently I received an email from a friend with a link to an on-line quiz, which was attempting in a Turing-machine sort of way to be able to determine one's gender from the answers given to a set of questions. As I was taking the test, I thought about it in the context of women's ways of knowing and learning, and realised that this test was very objective, non-connected, largely non-feeling, and very masculine in approach. Certainly this test did not have the kind of objectivity called for in the text. 'Objectivity in connected teaching, as in connected knowing, means seeing the other, the student, in the student's own terms.' (p. 224) This test was seeing everyone in terms of a standard model, a model derived from male-dominant considerations.

For the sake of liturgy and learning, which is my particular field of study, and the purpose behind reading this book, the kinds of issues raised here are important. The authors begin with the idea of silence. This is not a silence like monastic silence or the silence between prayers, hymns and readings, but rather a silence of voices from the shaping and practice of the community. Too often liturgy is viewed, by laity and clergy, as something handed to them from 'authority' with little or no room for adaptation or adjustment to context. When liturgical practice becomes this rigid or this 'unlistening', it can cease to have any many or validity for the community of worshippers.

The authors also develop ideas of received, subjective and procedural knowledge, all of which can be used in liturgical practice. There can be, particularly in my prayer-book-heavy tradition, a tendency to emphasise received knowledge and some aspects of procedural knowledge, while confining other types of knowledge to secondary or tertiary roles in the liturgy. Dialogue sermons and opening up the participation to others can enhance the service, broadening it to other forms of learning styles.

Applying the principles of connected teaching to liturgy can have important results. 'Connected teachers try to discern the truth inside the students.' (p. 223) Perhaps this same kind of constructed style of shaping the liturgy to be more inclusive, more sensitive to the voices of the members of the community while still paying respect to the overall shape and intention of the community, can lead to greater connectivity of the community amongst itself, and of the community members to the experience of the liturgy.

Overall, this book can yield insights into many types of practices, learning, and knowledge. While it does not constitute the final word on intelligence by any means, it is a valuable conversation partner.