Experiments in Knowing: Gender and Method in the Social Sciences

by Ann Oakley

Ann Oakley came to widespread attention as part of the new school of British feminists to emerge in the 1960s, and has since earned a reputation as one of the most innovative feminist thinkers and social scientists writing today. In Experiments in Knowing , a major new work, Oakley integrates her personal and professional thinking to examine the historical development of methodology in the social and natural sciences, demonstrating how both fields have been subject to a process of "gendering." Oakley not only reconciles the long-standing opposition between the quantitative and the qualitative methods but shows that the experimental and intuitive approaches must be used in tandem to provide a full understanding of any subject of scientific inquiry. Written in accessible language, Experiments in Knowing addresses themes of common interest across such diverse fields as social policy, education, health, and women's studies. Certain to generate considerable debate, it is both a fascinating history of the practice of social science from a feminist perspective, as well as an argument for a new way of thinking about our ways of knowing.

402 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[Rahul Jacob]

The book explores the paradigm war between quantitative and qualitative approaches in the social sciences (and to an extent in the other sciences too) and how gender has influenced the development of these methodologies and the paradigm war itself.

A significant portion of this book is dedicated to the history of quantitative approaches in the social sciences, the development of the social sciences, the important contributions of oft forgotten women like Beatrice Webb, Henriette Martineau and many others to the social sciences.

The book also deals with issues that plague both approaches(the ethics of consent in RCT trials, the role of researcher bias in qualitative approaches) and argues for a middle road that synthesises both approaches to identify where they are appropriate.