1. WWK
• Thinking about knowledge
• How do you know something is true?
• What is the process you use to get to what is true?
• In what ways do you use your voice?
• How do you know if someone is an authority?
• In what ways do you question authority?
• Your answers to questions in Appendix A
• Choose readings from Without A Net and
Colonize This!

2. Women’s Ways of Knowing
• Silence
• Received knowledge
• Subjective knowledge
-- The Inner Voice
-- The Quest for Self
• Procedural knowledge
-- The Voice of Reason
-- Separate and Connected Knowing
• Constructed knowledge

3. Women’s 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

4. Women’s 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

5. Women’s 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

6. Women’s 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

7. Women’s ways of knowing
Procedural knowledge
-- The Voice of Reason
• college educated, privileged, grads of women’s college
•in a small room one tends to speak softly
• humbler voice
•Old ways of knowing challenged
•Authority benign and knowledgeable
• intuition may deceive
• no one’s gut feeling is infallible
•Truth can be shared
•Expertise can be respected
•Obtaining procedures, skills, techniques for knowing what is true
•Increasing sense of control through using reason
•Knowledge as a process; ways of looking, what and how people think
•More objective than subjective knowledge
•Practical, pragmatic problem solvers

8. Women’s ways of knowing
Procedural knowledge
-- Separate and Connected Knowing
• Separate = impersonal rules to understand truth, justice
(justice orientation)
•Critical thinking “the doubting game”
•Tough minded
•Everyone may be wrong (including oneself)
•Argument feels less risky but still difficult to give voice
•Keep self out of the argument
• Connected = approach to truth which seeks to connect with
others to understand their experience (care orientation)
•Build on subjectivist ; most trustworthy knowledge comes from
self
• requires patience because of listening to others and caring about
what they say
•“the believing game”

9. Women’s ways of knowing
Constructed Knowledge
• all knowledge is constructed and the knower is
an intimate part of the known. Situation and context are central.
•An integration of voice, reason, intuition, and expertise of
others.
•Not troubled by ambiguity, enticed by complexity
•Passionate knower = never ending search for truth, the journey
is the key.
•Opening the heart, mind, to embrace the world
• Very self-aware of how they think
•Attentive caring = to feel related to another despite enormous
differences
•“really talking” = listening and speaking
•Responded to the Heinz Dilemma with further questions
•Aspire to work that contributes to empowerment and
improvement of others as well as themselves.

10. Women’s ways of knowing
Constructed Knowledge
• all knowledge is constructed and the knower is
an intimate part of the known. Situation and context are central.
•An integration of voice, reason, intuition, and expertise of
others.
•Not troubled by ambiguity, enticed by complexity
•Passionate knower = never ending search for truth, the journey
is the key.
•Opening the heart, mind, to embrace the world
• Very self-aware of how they think
•Attentive caring = to feel related to another despite enormous
differences
•“really talking” = listening and speaking
•Responded to the Heinz Dilemma with further questions
•Aspire to work that contributes to empowerment and
improvement of others as well as themselves.