Feminist theories

Marie Withers Osmond

Barrie Thorne

pp. 591-625

in: Pauline Boss, Ralph LaRossa, Walter R. Schumm, Suzanne Steinmetz (eds), Sourcebook of family theories and methods, Berlin, Springer, 1993

Abstract

Where are the women? That short question, raised and put forward by feminist movements, has opened fresh perspectives on social and historical life. Clearly, women were not absent from traditional research on families, as they were from studies of politics and paid work. In fact, women have often been equated with and conceptually confined to "family." But that assumption, like others basic to traditional ways of thinking about families, has distorted women's—and men's—experiences. Feminist theories ask us to step back and to rethink our assumptions, especially about issues of gender, power, and the very nature and boundaries of "family." These are, of course, fundamental concerns, and one of our main goals in this chapter is to dislodge feminist theory and research on gender from the rubric of marginalized 'special issues' and to place these perspectives where they belong: at the center of thinking about families.