8/7/2019 Stanford Professor Estelle Freedman: Reflections on teaching. Insights into feminism.

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/stanford-professor-estelle-freedman-reflections-on-teaching-insights-into 1/2

In 1980, four years after she arrived on campus as an assistant

professor, Estelle B. Freedman co-founded Stanford University’s

Program in Feminist Studies. Thirty years later, the program boasts

faculty from twenty-seven different academic disciplines and its

courses draw students from around the campus.

At “Beyond the Stalled Revolution,” a panel event sponsored by the

Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research, Freedman

reflected on her years of experience as a classroom teacher,

particularly her experience teaching the popular course, “Introduction

to Feminist Studies.” By examining the issues that have engaged her

students over the decades, Freedman traced the history of the

feminist movement and issued recommendations for the future.

 

 

Reflections on teaching. Insights into feminism

 by Brenda D. Frink on  01/17/11 at 9:54 am

 

  

Freedman, who is now the Edgar E. Robinson Professor in U.S. History, began teaching Stanford courses about women

and gender in the late 1970s. Her students engaged enthusiastically with women’s issues, in the context of the feminist

movements of the time. Students arrived with a high level of political motivation, and the challenge was to channel that

enthusiasm to complex analysis, rather than to simply “add and stir” women, as a category, to the study of humanities

and social sciences.

    

For example, it was not enough to simply identify “great women”

who had contributed to history, literature, and more. Rather,

Freedman encouraged her students to analyze the intersecting

hierarchies that permitted some women and men, but not

others, to gain positions of power and influence.

In the Reagan Era, the political environment changed, both

inside and outside the classroom. More incoming students

expressed discomfort with the word “feminism”–even as they

largely embraced the feminist movement’s central tenets.  

 

 

 Freedman observed “a seeming paradox of young women who felt entitled to economic and social equality with men yet

expressed an escalating fear of feminism.” Some scholars have correlated this escalating fear of feminism with a “stall” in

the gender revolution.

Many of Freedman’s students expressed faith in American ideals of equality and did not see the need for a feminist

movement. Other students perceived the feminist movement as being solely for lesbian women or solely for the white,

middle-class.

 

8/7/2019 Stanford Professor Estelle Freedman: Reflections on teaching. Insights into feminism.

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/stanford-professor-estelle-freedman-reflections-on-teaching-insights-into 2/2

 

Copyright 2010 Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.

 Professor Londa Schiebinger presenting Gendered

Innovations in Berlin

Indeed, over the years a major goal of Freedman’s has been to ensure that in addition to thinking in terms of gender,

her students consider other social categories such as race, class, and sexuality.

 

 

 

As an example, Freedman pointed to critics of a liberal

feminism that once focused narrowly on encouraging

educated housewives to leave their homes and enter the

workforce. This strategy may improve the lives of middle-class

women but does not address the concerns of their working-

class peers. In fact, the professionalization of middle-class

women (often white) has largely relied on inexpensive

domestic labor provided by working-class women (often non-white), as housecleaners and childcare providers.

 “Hence the question,” asked Freedman, “does women’s liberation liberate the maid?” 

 

By thinking of ways to simultaneously address race, class, and gender issues, Freedman challenges her students to

develop complex solutions to social problems. “I’m often surprised by the number of students who report that the most

important thing they learned in Feminist Studies is that race makes a difference. I ’m delighted they learned that,

surprised it has taken this long.” 

 

Beginning in the 1990s, Freedman has seen a new group of students in her classes: the sons and daughters of second-

wave feminists. Simultaneously, national and international political developmentssuch as the United Nations

Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, the international exposes of sex trafficking of women, and the same-sexmarriage campaignhave made many students sympathetic to movements for gender and sexual equality, even if they

do not personally claim the label “feminist.” 

 

Despite the changes in student concerns over the course of Freedman’s teaching career, there have been some

constants. One is the issue of physical vulnerabilityalthough services and awareness have increased, women as well as

gay men and transgendered students continue to feel vulnerable to physical and sexual assault. Freedman is currently

responding to the issue of sexual violence by writing a book about the political response to rape in American history.

 

 

Another is the need to place the study of gender within contexts of other social issues. In

the lives of women around the world, the hierarchies of race, class, and nationality are as

salient as the hierarchy of gender. Freedman’s books No Turning Back: The History of 

Feminism and the Future of Women and The Essential Feminist Reader , both of which are

used in courses in the United States, analyze gender from complex, global perspectives. 

At the “Beyond the Stalled Revolution” panel, Freedman and other scholars met to

consider the recent history and the future direction of the feminist movement. Asked to

issue her recommendations for the future, Freedman closed her remarks with a caution,

one that echoed a major message of her courses:

 

“Addressing only the status of women will not suffice…. Feminism will fail if we strive

merely to make women the equals of men in their capacities to exploit and to be exploited.

Rather, we need to explore how our insights about women can help us to create a more

egalitarian world.”  

 This article is the third in a five-part series on the “Beyond the Stalled Revolution” panel.

Upcoming issues of Gender News will feature additional scholars who spoke at theevent. More information about Estelle B. Freedman’s courses and research can be found 

at ebf.stanford.edu.