Abstract
This chapter advocates for building much-needed bridges across the gulf between the historical study of feminist theory and contemporary political psychology, demonstrating the degree to which major historical figures in feminist theory probed problems that contemporary political psychology addresses through empirical experimental and survey research. Sapiro begins by laying out a “grammar of political theory,” an analytical tool for understanding the elements of feminist theory. She then shows how, although the core emphases and methods of historical normative theory and contemporary social science may differ, they are linked together in crucial, but rarely noticed ways. Contemporary research examples include gender questions and dynamics in representation, electoral politics, stereotyping, and sexual harassment.
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Notes
- 1.
The interdisciplinary field called women’s studies in the 1970s has been variously renamed, often to the tune of considerable debate and sometimes acrimony, and it has been transformed substantively and theoretically since that period. Here I refer to feminist studies as that interdisciplinary field marked by feminism and feminist theory, and the self-described “feminist” scholarship in all disciplines.
- 2.
In this essay, I speak of “theory” and “feminist theory” as a shorthand for social or political theory. Some of what I discuss here applies to some literary theory, but not all of it, and probably not most of contemporary feminist literary theory that derives from postmodern approaches.
- 3.
What follows is a very simplified version of the history of social science likely of little interest—and perhaps annoying—to the specialist.
- 4.
It is instructive to review the compilation of data and reports on gender available on the website of the Pew Research Center: www.pewresearch.org/topics/gender/. Accessed 12/2/2018.
- 5.
Saying that political party identification is strengthening in this matter does not deny that a significant minority of Americans define themselves as Independents (i.e., lacking a party identification). It is a statement about the psychological and social function of partisanship for those who do identify with a party, combined with the fact that political parties—and the two major parties in particular—are baked into the American political system as essential structural features of it.
- 6.
My longer discussion and analysis, drawing together empirical and normative analysis, can be found in Sapiro 2018.
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Sapiro, V. (2020). What Is, Could Be, and Should Be: Historical Feminist Theory and Contemporary Political Psychology. In: Fenstermaker, S., Stewart, A.J. (eds) Gender, Considered. Genders and Sexualities in the Social Sciences. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48501-6_11
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