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GENDER AND FAMILIES: FEMINIST PERSPECTIVES AND FAMILY RESEARCH Litton Fox, Greer; Mcbride Murry, Velma In family studies, as in many other scholarly disciplines, feminist perspectives have reshaped traditional approaches to theorizing about and conducting and interpreting research. In this review, we describe several characteristics of feminist approaches to scholarship and then suggest how feminist sensibilities are reflected in contemporary research with families. Many labels have been used to depict the orientation to social thought that we refer to as "feminism,'' including feminism, feminist perspective, gender lens, and gender perspective. In this review, we use the labels feminism, gender perspective, feminist perspective, or feminist approach interchangeably to refer in the most general terms to an intellectual orientation to scholarship that makes certain assumptions about the importance of men and women to social life, the connectedness of structures and processes found in macro and micro settings, and the interdependence of one's personal orientation and professional concerns. Specifically, feminism assumes that women and men are of equal importance in social action, that structures and processes at work in the larger social arena have impact on relations in intimate environments and vice versa, and that one's personal experiences and sensibilities are not separable from the conduct of one's professional life. Across varied disciplinary fields, feminism as an intellectual orientation has taken a critical eye to received traditions of scholarship and epistemology (Reinharz, 1992). Wood (1995) further defines feminist approaches as follows: Encompassing diverse, sometimes conflicting intellectual traditions, feminist enquiry is unified by the belief that females and males, femininity and masculinity are equally valuable. Feminist scholars seek to identify, critique and alter structures and practices that actively or passively hinder equality. Participating in a broadly based critique of received notions of knowledge and cultural life, feminist enquiry typically supplants grand theory with tentative, situated and interpretive analyses .... The axis of feminist enquiry is gender, which consists of deeply ensconced social meanings and their derivative, power. Not a code word for women, gender is a cultural construction that profoundly affects women, men, and relationships between them. (p. 104) CHARACTERISTICS OF FEMINIST APPROACHES TO SCHOLARSHIP Despite the variety of feminist traditions (for example, Marxist feminism, radical lesbian feminism, neotraditionalist feminism, Black feminism), it is possible to isolate several elements that are commonly characteristic of feminist approaches to scholarship. We discuss four of these: reflexivity, the centrality of practice, a focus on social processes, and a critical stance toward traditional paradigms and theories. Reflexivity in Scholarship Reflexivity refers to a self-conscious reflection about the part one plays in the generation of knowledge (Gouldner, 1970; Mills, 1959). One of the hallmarks of reflexivity is recognition by the scholar that he or she is an actor intimately involved in the generation of knowledge, rather than simply a recorder and reporter of what is seen outside oneself. Such a self-aware stance on the part of a researcher fosters a critical approach to epistemology. For example, reflexivity calls into question the notion that objectivity is the only orientation a scholar may legitimately take to his or her study. Thus, it opens the door to the recognition that subjectivity not only is a valid and valuable orientation to research but may also be a necessary stance for good research. An example of the impact of a researcher's awareness of self on the research process and product comes from Stacey's (1990) ethnography of two Silicon Valley families in which she describes her struggles with her own biases about evangelical Christian groups as an impediment to her ability to hear, see, interpret, and reflect--in other words, conduct accurate research with--her primary respondents. Another hallmark of reflexivity as a research orientation is the willingness to engage in continuous self-criticism, that is, a conscious second guessing of one's expertness, a questioning of the traditional posture of the researcher as the "knower,'' apart from and unrelated to those whom he or she is studying. This kind of self-critical orientation opens the doors to recognition of the ways in which scholars and the products of their research (as well as the institutional structures that support research) can foster and perpetuate a knowledge-based hierarchy in which the voices and views of some participants (the researchers) are valued more highly than those of the researched or in which the researched may be valued only as objects of study. Reflexivity is notable as well in the self consciousness of feminist researchers in relation to their research participants. Feminists take issue with the concept of the researcher as somehow standing beyond the perimeter of the research arena, apart from the research frame. Instead of conceptualizing research as something done to (or for) research subjects by an objective observer outside the research setting, feminists acknowledge that their orientations, actions, interpretations, biases, and interests will become integral to the research process and its outcomes, and they seek to understand how it happens as it is happening during the process of their research. We make no claim that feminist scholarship is the only place one finds self-critical sensitivity in the conduct of scholarship. Indeed, it has been the searing critiques of the scholarship of White, middle-class feminists by women of color that has fostered an awareness of what has been labeled "academic colonialism" (Collins, 1986). Academic colonialism is a reference to the potential for the academic research enterprise to exploit rather than'to empower those who are the subject of study (Baca Zinn & Dill, 1994). In response to such critiques, feminist scholars have attempted to be more deliberately conscious of how scholarly practices affect those whose lives are studied and to attend to patterns of inclusion and exclusion. One of the implications for family research has been to broaden the base of research with families of color, as will be described in a later section. This has also renewed attention to one of the central characteristics of feminist approaches, and that is an emphasis on praxis. The Centrality of Practice Wood (1995) describes a "vibrant dialectic" in feminist scholarship between theorizing and practice, a dialectical tension that arises from the recognition that scholarship about the structures and processes that give rise to inequality is inherently political. The knowledge gained from feminist research must be applied not solely in the reshaping of theory but also in arenas of social change so as to reshape existing social conditions toward greater equality for men and women. Some feminists argue that the feminist scholar has a compelling involvement in implementation of his or her research and suggest a seamlessness between research and practice, including advocacy for change (Allen & Baber, 1992a; Reinharz, 1992). Research for what? The concern with practice, that is, with the application and implementation of research findings beyond the academic environment, promotes a conscious attention to the relative importance of research questions and topics. Feminist scholars value the lives of women, and this concern is reflected in their choices of topics, settings, and approaches for study. Feminist scholarship has illuminated the dynamics of inequality and power through studies that have focused on the mundane aspects of women's everyday routines, including housework, caregiving, serving and allocating food, and balancing work and home (Hertz, 1997; Marks, 1998; Ribbens, 1994). Research that focuses on the physical, economic, and legal vulnerabilities of women has also been characteristic of choices of feminist scholars (Jarrett, 1994; Johnson, 1995; Konradi, 1996; Margolin, 1992; McCloskey, 1996). Teaching. During the early years of this decade, attention turned to the incorporation of feminist perspectives and sensibilities into conventional materials on "the traditional family" and into conventional classroom teaching styles. One finds concern not only with what to teach (Allen & Baber, 1992b; Dilworth-Anderson, Burton, & Turner, 1993; Walker, 1993) but how (Lewis, 1995). Both content and practice concerns are reflected in articles that discuss the need for sensitivity to diverse student experiences and the value in building connections among and empowering students (MacDermid, Jurich, Myers-Walls, & Pelo, 1992), the planned use of reflexivity (Allen & Faresworth, 1993), empathy (Thompson & Walker, 1995), self-disclosure (Allen, 1995), and restraint (Marks, 1995). Others focused beyond the content and pedagogy in family studies courses to address feminist pedagogy in family therapy training programs (Leslie & Clossick, 1992). As the decade has progressed, attention continues to be given to sexist practices in the classroom and their effects on both women and men students and faculty (Maher & Tetrault, 1994; Myers & Dugan, 1996). In addition, new concerns have surfaced about student hostility toward women teachers and faculty in both secondary and higher education classrooms and with the combined effects of racism and sexism on classroom environments (Jarrett et al., 1999). The attention given by feminist scholars to the practice of the profession, with the correlative placement of the self in both research and teaching activities, legitimates this area of the professional literature. It also illustrates a central component of feminist thought on the artificiality of role segregation into professional and personal spheres. A Central Focus on Process A third characteristic of feminist research is its concern with process, as reflected both in the focus and conduct of research. Feminist research interest lies not solely in describing and analyzing current empirical realities in the lives of women and men and the associated inequalities, constraints, and privileges that accompany their different statuses. A feminist approach takes as centrally problematic the social processes through which the described patterns are generated, sustained over time, and come to reproduce themselves. A focus on the centrality of studying process is exemplified by Chafetz's (1991) work on the persistence of gender stratification. The choice to focus on understanding process is a strategic one. Knowledge of processes of gender differentiation and stratification can be used for intervention in and change of those processes and the inequalities they produce. The focus on process also grows out of a sense that life, more particularly the lives of men and women, may be more adequately captured with a sense of time that is ongoing and seamless rather than divided into intervals or stages or marked by discrete events, roles, and achievements. There is interest in the unfolding of the processes themselves as objects of study. Thus, feminist approaches to parenting, for example, have focused on the myriad processes involved in caregiving (Cowan & Cowan, 1990), the unfolding nature of a parent's sense of himself or herself as part of and distinct from parenting activities (Cohen, 1987), and the processes through which a parent incorporates others into a scaffold of care for the child (Ribbens, 1994). A third way in which process is central to feminist research is in the conduct of the research itself, regardless of the particular methodological approach taken by the researcher. Emphasis on the process of research is consistent with and part of a broader questioning of the nature and conduct of research, fueled by postmodernist and antipositivist trends in social philosophy (Lemert, 1999). Along with reflexivity, characteristics of feminist research practices include the conscious articulation of values, awareness of and attendance to the sensibilities of research participants, attention to the ethics of research, especially the linkages between the purpose of the basic research and its application to human need and the grounding of research questions and insights in human experience (Reinharz, 1992; Thompson, 1992; Thompson & Walker, 1995). Small (1995) considers feminist research as action research and compares feminist methods with three other forms of action-oriented research. He notes particularly the concern of feminist research with advocacy on behalf of women (see Allen & Baber, 1992b). By contrast, in an extensive review of feminist methods in social research, Reinharz (1992) notes that although feminist research is concerned ultimately with change in inequitable structures, not all feminist researchers are activists or advocates. Moreover, the earlier debates about whether qualitative or quantitative approaches were able not only to capture more faithfully the voices of research participants but also to reflect the values and orientations of feminist scholars have been largely superseded by the publication of Reinharz's encyclopedic assessment of the diversity of research techniques employed by feminist scholars across the social sciences. Reinharz observes that feminist scholars work simultaneously from two vantage points--their disciplinary methodology plus the insights of feminism. Re&inking Received Paradigms A fourth characteristic of feminist scholarship is the questioning of received disciplinary wisdom, including prevailing epistemologies (Ferree, 1990; Thompson & Walker, 1995). It is of concern to feminist scholars that the accepted canon has largely been produced in an academy heretofore dominated by men and by masculinist ideologies about what is of importance. Scholarship that has been conducted outside a feminist perspective becomes suspect, given the understanding that knowledge is a product of the producer and that values about what to study and how have been determined by those in positions of power, that is, predominantly by men (Lemert, 1999; Wood, 1995). Moreover, the realization that the works of women and of men of color have largely been ignored and omitted from the accepted bodies of classic knowledge in the social science disciplines underlines the concern that the canon is partial and that understandings of the nature of the phenomena we study are incomplete and therefore need careful reassessment (Allen, 2000; Baca Zinn & Dill, 1994; Lemert). Fostering the critical stance toward the social science canon is the articulation of standpoint theory. Standpoint theory is succinctly expressed by Gubrium and Holstein (1990) in their aphorism, "truth = fact + perspective." That is, what is seen or experienced as authentic and real depends upon one's standpoint, one's perspective (Haraway, 1999). Acknowledgment of the centrality of gender to perspective and incorporation into research designs of the idea that gender shapes one's reality are two of the signal contributions of feminist scholarship to family research over the past decade. Gender Roles and "Doing Gender Two formulations of the nature of gender are dominant, the gender roles perspective and the social constructionist approach. Stemming from role theory and with linkages to structure-functionalism, the first approach treats gender as a social role, characterized by a distinct and well integrated set of attitudes and behaviors. Viewed as a social role, gender is enacted or played out according to scripts that are carefully taught and repeatedly rehearsed until behavior govemed by one's gender role script becomes so natural as to be seen as an integral part of oneself--second nature, as it were. This taken-for-granted quality, the imperceptible slide from gender as role into gender as the essence of the self, has given rise to critiques of the role approach to gender. The role perspective encourages the social analyst to ignore the difference between the sex of the person playing a role and the gendered nature of the role, a critical omission if the goal is to understand how gender can shape perspective, structure social action, and express cultural values. When gender is conceptualized as a role, women and men are seen as enacting roles that are separable, often complementary, and necessary elements to the integrity of the social settings or structures in which the roles are embedded. The role perspective on gender, with an emphasis on the content of roles and the processes by which they are learned and expressed, continues to characterize much contemporary work on gender in families, perhaps finding its fullest expression in textbooks on marriage and family relations (Glenn, 1997). The second approach views gender as a social construct embodying cultural meanings of masculinity and femininity. Here, gender is defined as a constituent element of social structures, intricately interwoven with other elements of social structures such as class and race. Gender not only expresses cultural values but--as do class and race--also organizes the social distribution of societal resources. Gender, then, is centrally tied to distributions of merit, privilege, power, autonomy, and the resources they command. Ferree's (1990) description of the social constructionist perspective on gender appeared early in this decade and continues to stand as an excellent account of this approach. This perspective specifically directs attention to the covert and overt processes that differentiate and then assign value and privilege on the basis of sex. This perspective reveals the systematic privileging of men relative to women, or less often, of women relative to men. Differential gender privilege, in turn, reinforces the establishment and maintenance of a culturally constructed, shared understanding of the differentness of men from women. This perspective on gender thus attends to processes in ongoing social interactions, as well as the resulting microstmctures of power and privilege that result from those social interactions. The social constructionist perspective on gender suggests that despite gender role socialization and because gender is not synonymous with the self, men and women not only vary in their degree of masculinity and femininity but have to be constantly persuaded or reminded to be masculine and feminine. That is, men and women have to "do" gender rather than "be" a gender. West and Zimmerman (1987) provided one of the first uses of this perspective in their analysis of the ways that individuals construct gender continuously in their ongoing social interactions. More recent work that follows in this tradition would include Martin's study (1998) of the creation of gendered children. Through careful ethnographic work in preschool settings, the author shows how child care personnel create children's identities as gendered boys and girls through typical preschool practices. Examples included teachers' disciplining girls' voices differently than boys' voices. The boys were allowed to be louder, and teachers' instructions were given to boys in groups rather than individually directed, as they were toward girls. Children's bodies were also disciplined such that more freedom of action and expression was allowed to boys than to girls. These practices were then incorporated by the children to provide a gendered structure to their subsequent interactions. Heimer and Staffen (1995) describe how nursing practices in newborn intensive care units result in gendered parenting. Specifically, young unwed fathers become left out of the newborn baby's circle of care by both intentional and unintentional acts of hospital staff. McGuffey and Rich (1999) used ethnographic procedures to analyze the strategies used by boys and girls in middle childhood to mark and maintain gender boundaries in both social and physical playground space. Their work is especially notable for the incorporation of social class and race into their analyses of children's coalitions and behaviors. Thompson and Walker (1995) concluded that researchers and practitioners in the family field have yet to appreciate fully the power of this approach to gender. Relative to the more common role perspective, social constructionism remains on the margins of mainstream work on families and is used more often as a sensitizing framework rather than as a guide for research on families and family processes. Nonetheless, the impact of both this and the role perspective on gender can be traced in family research over the decade. REFLECTIONS OF FEMINIST SENSITIVITIES IN FAMILY RESEARCH Distinction between Sex and Gender One of the most important reflections of feminist sensitivities in family research is the distinction between sex and gender. When gender is understood as the product of social processes and as embodying cultural meanings of masculinity and femininity, then it becomes possible to distinguish a person's gender from his or her sex. The former can be understood as sociocultural, the latter as biological; and while the two are correlated, they are not synonymous or isomorphic. This distinction offers clarity on often-confusing matters of measurement and interpretation of data by sex and gender Relative to measurement, one implication is to question the unexamined, often unstated, assumption that the meanings of attitudinal and behavioral measurement items (such as Likert-type questions) are the same for all male and female respondents. In other words, gender neutrality and within-gender homogeneity are assumed in much family studies research. With few exceptions, little attention has been given to the validity of the same measures for women and men. Notable exceptions are efforts to explore the differential meanings attached to fertility intentions (Thomson & Brandreth, 1995), money (Zelizer, 1989) and breadwinning (Potuchek, 1997). Far more common is research that employs measures without regard to the potential for differential meaning to men. and women. For example, Sabatelli and Waldron (1995) provide an otherwise excellent discussion of issues in the measurement of parenting, but they do not discuss the problem of gender validity. Likewise, the conflict tactics scale (Straus, Hamby, Boney-McCoy, & Sugarman, 1996), widely used in studies of domestic violence, assumes that such terms as conflict, argue, and hit are interpreted in similar ways by men and women. To assume cross-gender validity and within-gender homogeneity ignores the impact of social position on social perception, which the feminist perspective would hold to be an inadequate representation of social reality. The conventions of social survey research require that researchers measure attitudes, beliefs, values, or behaviors by exposing all respondents to the same stimuli, that is, by asking them all the same questions. When both partners in a couple dyad are included, it is possible to compare their responses and determine the degree of couple consistency in response patterns as well as patterns of under- and overreporting (Melby, Ge, Conger, & Warner, 1995; Svinovacz & Egley, 1995). But it is not possible to assert that the meanings attached to the items (that is, the subjective context out of which the respondents responded to the same items) were invariant across gender. Indeed, the recognition of gender bias in measures deserves the kind of attention that race and class bias has received (McGuire & Earls, 1993). To the extent that the empirical base in family studies increasingly comes to rest on analyses of large-scale, national-sample, survey data sets, which presume gender, class, and race neutrality in their measures, then to that extent, our knowledge base is problematic. A second implication of distinguishing between sex and gender can be seen in the interpretation of data that demonstrate attitudinal or behavioral differences between men and women. How one interprets such empirical differences depends to some extent on one's perspective toward gender. For example, Mason's (1999) narrative analysis of men and women convicted of white-collar felonies showed that women described themselves as motivated by family need. They minimized their criminality by references to the small sums of money involved and its use for family necessities, such as groceries. Men, by contrast, described themselves as motivated by high achievement goals and felt their desire for a faster track to success justified embezzling large sums of money. There are sharp differences between men and women in the narrative accounts of their crimes, despite conspicuous similarities in their actual family situations and class backgrounds. One might interpret the empirical differences in their stories as reflective of an essential difference between men and women, or, alternatively, as a reflection of the different (gendered) cultural materials available to men and women from which they constructed their accounts. Similarly, one might interpret the difference in the economic value of their crimes as reflective of some kind of essential sex difference in criminal expression, such as a greater capacity of men for risk taking, or, alternatively, as an artifact of the gendered structure of corporate hierarchies that give more men than women unscrutinized access to large sums of money. The choice among these interpretations is less important than that they illustrate the interpretive richness that becomes available by viewing empirical differences between men and women not solely as evidence of biological or "essential'" differences between the sexes but also as reflective of sociocultural and political processes of gender. Recognition of Gendered Standpoints The sensitivity of feminist scholarship to gendered standpoints is also reflected in family research. Safilios-Rothschild (1969), in the now-classic article entitled "Family sociology or wives' family sociology?'', three decades ago called attention of family researchers to the importance of standpoint. Subsequent scholarship has continued to emphasize the influence of the researcher's standpoint on research. Wood (1995,pp. 111-112) suggests, "Scholars who rely on any single standpoint risk (mis)interpreting data in ways that overlook and therefore, distort some participants' motives and meanings .... "Wood continues, "Because Western culture defines men and masculine perspectives as normative, an androcentric point of view is often assumed and imposed, yet not acknowledged in either social life or research practice". Interpretations of research findings. We highlight three examples in which scholars used multiple standpoints to advantage in interpreting their research on one of the most persistent work-family issues over the decade, the management of dependent care. Recent family research recognizes that the way in which family members provide care for one another is a political issue within the family. Hertz's (1997) analysis of the management of child care in dual-earner families is exemplary. Approaches used by couples in her study to construct their family lives included mothering, which maximized the working mother's time spent in parenting; parenting, in which the couple restructured their jobs to maximize both parents' involvement with parenting; and a market approach, in which couples allocated economic resources to replace the mother-as-parent by professional caregivers and left intact the father's limited role in family work. By viewing both employment and parenting as functions that could vary in the degree to which the couples gendered the roles, Hertz was able to discover a complex array of outcomes resulting from couple negotiations. That negotiations within the family about how to provide care are centrally affected by larger societal trends and conditions has received some attention. Within the context of culture conflicts that impinge upon the availability of options for child care, Ross and Van Willigen (1996) track the impact of such societal inconsistencies in their analysis of gender, parenthood, and anger. In this study, the higher levels of anger among mothers than fathers and nonparents were accounted for by a combination of economic strain, status as the primary care provider, and the difficulties of finding, arranging, and paying for child care outside the home. In other words, the heightened levels of anger among mothers were not seen as characterological flaws or as personal weakness but as an outgrowth of situational demands and structural constraints that themselves were differentially distributed by gender. Marks (1998) compared the impact of dependent-care providing, including the provision of care at home for a disabled child, spouse, or parent and care for neighbors or friends, on indicators of emotional well-being of middle-aged men and women. In general, more men than women reported reaping large benefits from providing care. The one exception was that men who provided care for a spouse reported experiencing significantly more hostility than women who provided spousal care, even after controlling for spillover stress from work and family. Androcentric ideologies of caregiving suggest that providing dependent care is a family domain in which women dominate because of their greater capacities for nurturance and self-sacrifice and the lower market value of their time relative to that of other adult family members. Among the outcomes of Marks' study is evidence that men are more involved in caregiving than such ideologies might suggest and that men are neither ill-equipped emotionally to care nor unable to gain satisfaction from caring for others. Omission in problem definition. The use of gendered standpoints can cause researchers to overlook certain issues as research problems. Such was the case with family violence, which was not systematically studied until the 1970s (Gelles, 1980). We would argue that family security is also an issue that has been overlooked in part because of gendered standpoints. Ensuring the safety of family members from external threats is only occasionally studied and primarily only among families living in extreme environments. Research attention to family safety over the past two decades has given priority to recognition of the threat that family members themselves pose to one another. Thus, studies of intrafamilial violence, especially the serious violence of men against women, have appropriately dominated the focus of studies of family security, and gender and gender stratification are centrally involved in these patterns of intrafamilial violence. However, given the high levels of concern with crime, family, and personal safety voiced in national opinion surveys, the relative lack of attention to ensuring family safety from external threats is surprising. Family security is stereotypically gendered work, and the male as family protector has been described as an enduring gender myth. Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that both men and women take seriously and support the assignment of family security to men. The male protector myth is mythical only in that it obscures the work that women do to secure the safety of their homes and children and in that it fails to suggest that the work that most men do to secure their families often endangers rather than protects them. The work women do to protect their children from harm takes on heroic proportions in certain circumstances (Fox, Von Bargen, & Jester, 1996; Garbarino, Dubrow, Kostelney, & Pardo, 1992). More commonly, family security is a byproduct of women's common, daily community activities (Hunter, Pearson, Ialongo, & Kellam, 1998). Ribbens (1994) describes in detail how mothers carefully construct a web of social relationships in their neighborhoods, primarily to provide a base of friendships for their children and in part to scaffold their children's security. Furstenberg et al. (1993) describe how the social relationships in which women envelop their children vary from one community to another, so that depending upon the characteristics of the community, those social relationships can complement, compensate for, or detract from the resources--including safety-that mothers on their own provide. Others, too, have found stark social class differences in the safety strategies women teach to their children and in the extent to which women can draw on neighborhood resources to help secure their children's safety (Brodsky, 1996; Fox, 2000; Hunter et al.; Jarrett, 1994). In contrast to security strategies embedded in community-based social relationships, which have been uncovered in studies of mothers, there is much less evidence that fathers are involved in family safety work beyond the confines of the privatized household. In their own homes, men are more likely than women to purchase guns and to justify gun ownership in terms of family security needs and self-defense (Reiss & Roth, 1993). That such weapons-based family security strategies are often counterproductive is suggested by studies that show that both homicide and suicide are more likely in homes with guns than in comparable gun-free homes (Kellerman et al., 1992, 1993). The National Crime Victimization surveys suggest that victims rarely defend themselves with guns. In fewer than 5% of residential burglaries did homeowners defend themselves with firearms, and self-defense rates were even lower for other categories of personal crime (Reiss & Roth). In addition to posing inadvertent threats to their families, there is plentiful evidence that men are more likely to use firearms to kill family members intentionally than to be similarly victimized by family members (Daly & Wilson, 1988; Reiss & Roth). Finally, there is evidence that unrelated men in the household, such as boyfriends and stepfathers, may expose women and children to special risk (Margolin, 1992); and that fathers, when asked, give voice to concerns about the potential risk that other men pose to their children (Fox & Bruce, 1999). In sum, we suggest that family safety, as a topic of study, merits more explicit attention from family scholars, particularly as it relates to the well-researched and theorized area of family violence. Further, taking a gender perspective to the study of family security would help make explicit how women and men can be differentially steered into the use of strategies that play out gendered stereotypical behaviors and, similarly, are steered away from strategies that could prove to be more effective approaches to ensuring family safety. Model misspecification. The use of gendered, androcentric standpoints can also foster model misspecification. The increasingly widespread use of the concept of social capital in family studies provides an example. Social capital as articulated by Coleman (1988) refers to the ways that social relationships are cumulated, stored, and utilized in the service of one's ends or goals, much as human capital, financial capital, and physical capital. Social capital inheres in social relationships characterized by ties of obligation, expectation, and trustworthiness and that serve as information channels. Coleman suggested that social norms that carry effective sanctions within a community are also a form of social capital. Interestingly, Coleman drew on family examples for both his abstract and empirical illustrations of the concept, showing how parents can build social capital and expend it in the service of their children's human capital accumulation. Social capital conceptualizes the work that members of families do in building and using ties of mutual obligation, expectation, and trust with one another and with others in their neighborhoods and communities. It also conceptualizes how social relations in communities and neighborhoods can facilitate or hamper family work (Furstenberg & Hughes, 1995; Hunter et al., 1998; Murry & Brody, 1999; Sampson, Morenoff, & Earls, 1999). Thus, the concept stands as a useful addition to the theoretical work on the familycommunity interface because it makes visible the work that men and women do to build social supports around their families in order to accomplish or secure certain ends. By conceptualizing such family work within a broader set of microeconomic theories that have credence with those in the disciplinary mainstreams, it links the analysis of this kind of family work with central theoretical concerns of the field. At the same time, the concept of social capital has been used without regard to its gender implications. A gender perspective raises several questions that need to be addressed by those who would use the concept of social capital. First, the implicit presumption of symmetry in the ties of mutual obligation and expectation (the social relations in which social capital inheres) may be inappropriate and misleading. Blumberg and Coleman's (1989) concept of net economic value, which takes into account a variety of discount factors that enhance or diminish the value of women's contributions, is relevant here. As with women's financial and human capital, it is likely that women's activities in the generation of social capital are subject to discounting or devaluation (for example, women's informational channels are disparaged as "mere gossip"). It is likely that women must expend or cash in relatively more social capital than men in transactions to accomplish similar ends. It is likely that men will tend to underinvest in social relations with women, both in the family and the community, because of the devaluation or underestimation of the capital value of such social relations. Finally, women may be as likely as men to devalue their social relations with other women and to discount or underestimate the power and effectiveness of their neighbody ties with women to secure valued social ends (Komter, 1989). Contextualizing Family Relationships Sensitizing family scholars to the importance of placing their studies of families within a broader social context has been one of the most important influences of feminist perspectives in family research. This has been reflected in family scholarship over the decade in several ways. First, there is greater sensitivity to the inclusion of people of color in study samples. The increased use of largescale national sample surveys relevant to familyrelated phenomena, such as the National Survey of Families and Households, that include sufficient numbers of families of color to allow for both within-group and cross-group analyses has facilitated attention to families of color. Likewise, smaller surveys and ethnographies focused on specific ethnic family groups have increased understanding of contextual influences on families (Murry & Brody, 1999). Moreover, the increased emphasis on ethnic diversity across the academic curriculum, including the emergence of courses and texts focused on family diversity, has also fostered, indeed necessitated, new research on underrepresented ethnic groups (McAdoo, 1993; Mindel, Habenstein, & Wright, 1999; Pedraza & Rumbaut, 1996). Second, there is recognition of the importance of the challenge posed by Collins' (1986) articulation of the matrix of domination as the context out of which family life is constructed. That is, race, class, and gender are relational categories of domination. To understand how family life is structured, each must be studied in relation to the others, not alone. Studies have emerged that seek the source of differences in family patterns within the structural matrix formed by these three axes of hierarchy (Baca Zinn, 1994; Dill, 1994; Glenn, 1992; Segura, 1994). Finally, family scholars have contextualized their research on family relationships by recognition of the myriad ways in which intimate family interactions are shaped by broader social currents, prevailing power relations, and dominant ideologies (Komter, 1989; Mullings, 1994). Examples include studies of men's decisions about time allocation between work and parent roles (Berry & Rao, 1997; Daly, 1996), decisions about marriage timing and family formation (Adler, 1997; Albrecht, Fossett, Cready, & Kiecolt, 1997; Koball, 1998), husband-to-wife violence (Macmillan & Gartner, 1999), the use of money (Treas, 1991), and household division of labor (Gallagher & Smith, 1999; Hossain & Roopnarine, 1993; Orbuch & Eyster, 1997). Attending to Power Processes Attending to the importance of process is one of the sensitizing influences of feminist scholarship in family research. Power processes, both oven and coven, have been an important focus of study. Kudson-Martin and Mahoney (1998) sought to identify marital processes that foster equal marriages, which they defined as those in which each partner held equal status, in which accommodation in the relationship was mutual, in which attention to the other in the relationship was mutual, and in which there was mutual well-being of partners. In equal marriages, each spouse has roughly the same capacity to get the other to cooperate in attaining goals and attending to his or her needs, desires, and wants. Couples were selected for study who viewed themselves as having a marriage they characterized as equal and who described their roles as non-gender specific. They found, however, that despite the couples' self-descriptions as egalitarian, gender inequality was perpetuated by subtle power processes that were both visible and latent. Wives were more likely than husbands to accommodate their partners' needs or desires and to speak of fitting their lives around their partner's schedule. In addition, wives were more likely than husbands to describe attending to their partners' needs, worrying about upsetting or offending their partners, and doing what their partner wanted or needed. Other researchers have reported similar gender inequalities in marriages in terms of the subtle power processes involved in determining the direction of conversations and problems that get discussed in marriages (Ball, Cowan, & Cowan, 1995; Zvonkovic, Schmiege, & Hall, 1994). Viewing one's marriage as equal and family roles as egalitarian, despite experiencing marital inequality, serves several functions in preserving marriages (Gallagher & Smith, 1999; Rosenbluth, Steil, & Whitcomb, 1998). It conceals the existence of male domination and female submission in modem couple relationships and keeps partners from recognizing the existence of covert power, which if acknowledged could create marital conflict (HareMustin, 1991; Komter, 1989). CONCLUSION In this review, we have outlined four characteristics of feminist scholarship and have suggested how each is reflected in contemporary research in family studies. Throughout the review, we have tried to suggest areas of continuity with earlier work on gender--specifically, in the work that focuses on division of labor, work-family issues, and providing care for family members. We have also suggested areas that merit continued exploration through the perspective of gender, such as validity assessments of measures, the conceptualization of social capital, and family safety. We choose to close with our vague sense of discomfort with the seeming disjuncture between the body of work on family and gender as represented in some areas of academic study of the family and evidence of a strong antifeminism, antiwoman backlash that has surfaced in many parts of the contemporary U.S. culture. Both overt and covert expressions that in the quest for gender equality, women have stepped beyond their proper place can be found among religious activist groups, privately funded think tanks, and even in academia and academic and professional organizations. Anecdotal reports of suspected censorship of feminist scholarship by journal reviewers, editors, and funding agencies circulate in the informal information channels of academia (e.g., listservs, newsletters, e-mails). The concerns are reminiscent of a similar concern about the selectivity of research on race reported more than a decade ago (Baptiste, 1986). Gamson (1999) has spoken of the social knowledge process of "facticity;" that is, the validation of certain information as "factual." Information that is consistent with hegemonic story-lines is privileged, and alternative information is ignored, suppressed, unseen, and unheard. Family scholars need to exercise oversight and caution about the knowledge processes in our field, and we would suggest that a study of the typical career of feminist scholarship in family studies might be timely. For example, rates of funding of research, presentation and publication of family scholarship utilizing feminist perspectives might be tracked over time. Beyond academia, we suggest that the growing antifeminist sensibility in the culture at large deserves study in its own fight, especially as the organizations that give voice to it claim to speak in the best interests of families. It also merits attention because it will be part of the sociocultural context out of which new social theories of families and gender will be born. 文章来源:Journal of Marriage & Family, Nov2000, Vol. 62 Issue 4, p1160, 13p