Women's Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind (1986) refers to the seminal work of Mary Field Belenky, Blythe McVicker Clinchy, Nancy Rule Goldberger, and Jill Mattuck Tarule on women's development theory. This work describes the process of cognitive development and voice in women as five knowledge positions (or perspectives) through which women view themselves and their relationship to knowledge. The study and writing of "Women's Ways of Knowing" was a shared process of authorship, which the authors describe in the 1997 10th anniversary addition of the book.
Women's ways of knowing Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule examined the epistemology, or "ways of knowing", of a diverse group of women, with a focus on identity and intellectual development across a broad range of contexts including but not limited to the formal educational system. While conceptually grounded originally in the work of William G. Perry in cognitive (or intellectual) development and Carol Gilligan in moral/personal development in women, the Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule discovered that existing developmental theories at the time did not address some issues and experiences that were common and significant in the lives and cognitive development of women. While the developmental positions described in "Women's Ways of Knowing" overlap to a large degree with Perry's cognitive developmental scheme, the authors describe additional knowledge perspectives not observed in Perry's study and report gender-related influences on cognitive development in women. The 135 women who participated in Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule's study ranged from age 16 to over 60, came from rural and urban populations, and varied in socioeconomic class, ethnicity and educational history. As such, they represented a more diverse group than was included in Perry's 1970 study of male students at Harvard. The authors illustrated how the epistemological assumptions of the participating women were intimately linked to their perceptions of themselves and their relationship to their world. Each of the five "ways of knowing", or knowledge perspectives, represents a different point in the women's cognitive development, dependent on conceptions of self (self), relationship with others (voice) and understanding of the origins and identity of authority, truth and knowledge (mind).
Ways of Knowing
Silence Silence is the name given to the first epistemological position, and describes women who felt disconnected from knowledge, the sources of knowledge and their relationship to knowledge. This knowledge perspective, while relatively rare in the women studied and not a necessary precursor to other positions, was absent in Perry's scheme (1970) and not represented in other cognitive developmental theories of the time. Women describing this position were notable for their extreme sense of isolation and fear of authorities, their fragile sense of self, and feelings of being "deaf and dumb", i.e., having no independent voice. Women in this knowledge position were often young, of limited education, and socioeconomically poor, and very often had experienced a history of abuse. These women viewed themselves as being incapable of knowing or thinking, appeared to conduct little or no internal dialogue and generally felt no sense of connection with others. Their "acts of knowing" involved only specific actions and behaviors occurring in the present. Notably, amongst these women, words were viewed as weapons used to inflict harm, to isolate and to diminish others. Authorities of knowledge were viewed as all-powerful and experiences with authority were overwhelmingly negative for these women. Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule emphasize that women who are characterized by the position of silence were overwhelmingly raised "in profound isolation under the most demeaning circumstances" and that their feelings of being "deaf and dumb" originate in a profound lack of confidence in their own "meaning-making and meaning-sharing abilities", rather than a lack of intellectual endowment.
Received Knowledge: Listening to the voices of others Received knowledge describes the epistemological position in which women in the study perceived knowledge as a set of absolute truths received from infallible authorities. The process of learning, as understood by received knowers, involves receiving and repeating the knowledge and words of authorities. In this sense words are no longer viewed as weapons, and are seen as critical to the learning process, but the origin and meaning of words and knowledge remain external. Women characterizing this position lacked confidence in their own ability to speak and generally defined themselves externally, usually in relation to social norms, gender roles and expectations of others, i.e., cultural ideals of women as set forth by external authorities. Received knowers tended to find disagreement, paradox or ambiguity intolerable since these violated the black-and-white absolutist nature of knowledge. The authors note that in their study received knowers generally had little experience with female role models in authority positions and often emphasized selflessness and care of others as their primary role in life. However, Love and Guthrie emphasize Belenky et al.'s finding that the experience of giving birth provided an important stimulus in moving women from a position of silence to a position of received knowledge.
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