June 22, 2010

Women's Ways of Knowing

Women's Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind by Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule.

My scholar self really enjoyed this book.

"People discourse to one another; they gossip with . . ." (p. 116)

"Patience," says the writer Simone de Beauvoir, is one of those "'feminine' qualities which have their origin in our oppression but should be preserved after our liberation." (p. 117)

"The pattern of discourse that women have developed, however, may best be considered as an appropriate response to women's work.  The care of children, or maternal practice, gives rise to maternal thought . . . Many mothers interview their children, rather than lecture . . . Question posing . . . is central to maternal practice in its most evolved form . . . at the heart of connected knowing."  (p. 189)

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