Womens ways of knowing

1
Womens ways of knowing

• Silence
• Received knowledge
• Subjective knowledge
• -- The Inner Voice
• -- The Quest for Self
• Procedural knowledge
• Constructed knowledge

2
Womens ways of knowing

• Silence
• deaf and dumb
• Words as violence
• No one listens
• Passive and dependent
• Sex role stereotypes
• Growing up in isolation
• Describing the self is difficult

3
Womens ways of knowing

• Received knowledge (listening to the voices of
  others)
• Words are central to the knowing process
• Dualistic, right or wrong, one right answer,
  either/or
• Little confidence in own ability to speak
• Peer knowledge confirms own experience
• Truth comes from others (experts, authority)
• Recipients of knowledge
• authority-right-they
• The self described through others views

4
Womens ways of knowing

• Subjective knowledge
• -- The Inner Voice
• from passivity to action
• From silence to a protesting inner voice
• Listening to the voice within (own feelings, what
  works for me)
• Infallible gut
• Truth as personal, private, subjectively known,
  intuited
• Remnants of dichotomous thinking, absolutism
• Truth now resides within the person (not
  external authority) but this is still a dichotomy
• 16 - 60 year women spoke of this way of knowing
• Crisis of trust with failed male authority
  coupled with confirming experience of self
  walk away from the past
• Truth is grounded in first hand experience of
  others like oneself

5
Womens ways of knowing

• Subjective knowledge
• -- The Quest for Self
• Choice between self and other central
• Acting on behalf of self as opposed to denying
  the self for others
• Getting out of negative relationships with men
• Relationships feel unstable
• Propelled into action, break from past future
  appears foggy
• Instability and flux due to lack of enduring
  self-concept without the old relationships
  (negative images)
• Difficult to describe themselves clearly
• Birth of new self, everchanging self, hear
  yourself think
• Going it alone
• Learn best by observing the self and observing
  others
• Good listeners
• Gaining a voice