The Gender of Knowledge

A comprehensive account of the views of the feminist thinker, Michele Le Doeuff. Le Doeuff's target is the tendency to think that men are more rational than women. To shed light on the depth of the problem, Le Doeuff leads us on a journey through the great texts and authors of the past and present.

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Michele Le Doeuff is a leading French philosopher and an important feminist thinker. This book provides a comprehensive account of her views. Le Doeuff's target is the continuing tendency to think that men are more rational, more analytic than women, a tendency that persists in spite of our thinking we know better. She argues that the conceptual likes between "masculinity" and "rationality" are deeply rooted in the public imagination and institutions of learning and continue to have devastating effects on what women are able to achieve. To shed light on the depth and persistence of the problem, Le Doeuff leads us on provocative journey through the great texts and authors of the past and present from Plato and Descartes to Evelyn Fox Keller and Kate Millet in search of the origins and extent of a set of contemporary reflexes that hold misogynistic thinking in place both in the larger society, and within science and philosophy.