Criticisms of women's studies
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[edit] Criticism
A number of independent authors from both within and without academia have criticized scholarship standards within most women's studies programs. These authors include feminists like Camille Paglia, Christina Hoff-Sommers and Phyllis Chesler; misandry researchers; journalists; and social commentators such as Karen Lerhman.[citation needed]
Researchers Patai and Koertge note that the type of feminism espoused in the vast majority of women's studies departments in the United States "bids to be a totalizing scheme resting on a grand theory, one that is as all-inclusive as Marxism, as assured of its ability to unmask hidden meanings as Freudian psychology, and as fervent in its condemnation of apostates as evangelical fundamentalism."[citation needed]
Lerhman asserts that feminist writers "by squelching all internal dissent" have "allowed hyperbolic rhetoric, false statistics, politicized scholarship, reverse sexism, and general silliness free reign".[citation needed]
Criticism has also arisen from within various schools of feminism itself, including allegations that academic women's studies has been too tied to a middle-class white American feminist movement; that is has become too theoretical and dissociated from the realities of women's lives; and that it favors a "victimization" reading of sexism over an "empowerment" model.[citation needed]
[edit] Response
Women's studies academics respond, that as in all academic fields, scholarly and pedagogical methods vary across individuals, institutions, and schools of thought.[citation needed] In response to the charge of anti-male discrimination, they point out that a significant amount of the valuable scholarship done on women's history, feminist philosophy, and the feminist movement, has been done by women, thus explaining any apparent discrimination.[citation needed]
