The ballot should privilege questions of epistemology and method- failure to do so allows bias to taint the policy making process

(Mary, Prof @ Rutgers, Policy discourse as sanctioned ignorance: theorizing the erasure of feminist knowledge Critical Policy Studies Vol. 3, Nos. 3–4, October–December 2009 )

It is possible to generate many hypotheses to account for the exclusion of feminist knowledge from mainstream discourses. Perhaps the most blatant hypothesis might give explanatory weight to changing configurations of power over the past four decades as neoliberalism gained ascendancy in Western nations. On this view, policy studies simply mirror prevailing power relations. Rather than ‘speaking truth to power’, policy studies accredit views that are useful to those in power. If, however, as the prevailing norms in social science suggest, truth is independent of power, then other grounds for the neglect of feminist scholarship should be considered. At a slightly less cynical level, one might posit fundamental incompatibilities between mainstream scholars’ desire to work within the system and the incrementalism and commitment to stability that accompany that stance, and feminist scholars’ emphasis on social change. One might consider disciplinary definitions of what counts as policy issues worthy of investigation and probe the complex ways that the rational actor model, the organizational process model, and the bureaucratic politics model of policy-making (Allison 1971) render women in particular, and race and gender more generally, invisible or insignificant. One might examine the continuing effects of Western demarcations of public and private spheres, as well as formal versus informal sectors of the economy, on the definition of institutional practices warranting policy investigation. At a methodological level, one might look at the potent consequences of treating race and sex as control variables in a quest for universal explanation, which both naturalizes and renders invisible processes of racialization and gendering that reproduce and preserve hierarchies within the current world order. Much could be learned from sustained investigation of each of these hypotheses. In addition to presumptions concerning incrementalism, policy questions worthy of investigation, the fruitfulness of particular models of policy-making, and understandings of race and sex as demographic variables rather than socio-political processes, I would like to suggest that fundamental epistemological assumptions, which inform policy studies, contribute to the erasure of feminist knowledge. Fundamental disagreements about ‘the politics of knowledge’ give rise to sanctioned ignorance. Dominant approaches to policy studies remain committed to the principle that ‘scientific policy analysis is and ought to be value neutral, ethically detached, and confined to predicting the consequences of alternative policy actions’ (Dunn 1983, p. 1, see also Hawkesworth 1988). Value neutrality as a regulative ideal is intended to free policy research from bias, distortion, and willful manipulation, to enable policy scholars to capture ‘the world as it is’. Yet it is precisely this assumption about the possibility of valueneutral inquiry that feminist scholars have called into question. Feminist scholars have devoted a good deal of attention to the examination of methodological ‘neutrality’ in the natural and social sciences. Their investigations have revealed extensive androcentrism in diverse research methods manifested in the selection of problems deemed worthy of investigation, research design, definition of key terms and concepts, decisions concerning relevant evidence and counter-examples, data collection and analysis, interpretations of results, and assessments of practical falsifications (Bleier 1979, 1984, Fausto-Sterling 1986, Hubbard et al. 1982, Eichler 1980, Westkott 1979, Stanley and Wise 1983). Contrary to claims of neutrality, feminist research has demonstrated a pervasive level of sexism in scientific research that renders women invisible, ignores women’s concerns, precludes elicitation of certain kinds of information about women, reproduces gender stereotypes in the operationalization of terms, denies that gender might serve as an explanatory variable in any instance, and reverts to functionalist explanations that accredit the status quo (Kelly et al. 1987, Benston 1982, Vickers 1982, Farganis 1989). Sandra Harding has suggested that not only are the concepts, methods, and conclusions of inquiry permeated by androcentrism, but sexism also influences the recruitment of personnel in science and the evaluation of the significance of scientists’ research. ‘If women are systematically excluded from the design and management of science and their work devalued, then it appears that neither the assignment of status to persons within science nor the assessment of the value of the results of inquiry is, or is intended to be, valueneutral, objective, socially impartial’ (Harding 1986, p. 67). And Margaret Benston (1982, p. 59) has concluded that ‘present science practices a kind of “pseudo-objectivity” where because they are not taken explicitly into account, subjective factors are uncontrolled and unaccounted for.’ In contrast to methodologies developed in accordance with positivist assumptions about knowledge production, which explicitly deny any political dimension to ‘scientific’ inquiry, feminist research acknowledges that particular political convictions inspire its existence. Feminist convictions attune scholars to power dynamics that structure women’s and men’s lives. By making power dynamics visible, probing silences, absences, and distortions in dominant paradigms, feminist inquiry challenges established explanatory accounts and identifies new questions for research. ‘It is the political commitment that feminists bring to diverse fields that motivates them to focus attention on lines of evidence others have not sought out or thought important; to discern patterns others have ignored; to question androcentric or sexist framework assumptions that have gone unnoticed or unchallenged; and sometimes to significantly reframe the research agenda of their discipline in light of different questions or an expanded repertoire of explanatory hypotheses’ (Wylie 2000, p. 16). Noting that methodologies involve philosophical questions about the nature of knowledge, as well as practical questions concerning strategies of inquiry, feminist scholars have pointed out that methodologies are group-specific and as such political. The appropriate methodology for any particular inquiry is a matter of contestation as scholars often disagree about the ‘way to truth’. Strategies that are accredited as legitimate means to acquire truth gain their force from decisions of particular humans; thus there is a power element in the accreditation of knowledge. Power is never the only factor involved, but neither is it a negligible factor. Feminist scholarship suggests not only that politics is embedded in the research process, but that particular political commitments improve the quality of analysis, heighten objectivity, and enhance the sophistication of research findings. Far from being a source of bias and distortion, feminist convictions and principles are deemed an asset to research. In marked contrast to positivist conceptions of science, feminist scholarship suggests that a commitment to struggle against coercive hierarchies linked to gender, race, and sexuality, a commitment to promote women’s freedom and empowerment, and a commitment to revolt against institutions, practices, values, and knowledge systems that subordinate and denigrate women, enhance the truth content and deepen the insights of feminist accounts of the world. Thus feminist scholarship not only breaks with but denies the possibility of guiding precepts of positivism, such as value-neutrality, norms of distanced, dispassionate research, and the quest for universal explanations. (276-8)