Feminist Academic Journals

What does it mean to be a feminist scholar today? To get a sense of the shape of contemporary feminist research, I looked at the last three years of Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Feminist Studies, Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, and differences. I was especially interested in examining which topics were centrally featured, the methods of analysis and argument that the authors employed, and the usefulness of those methods for our understanding of gender inequity. The best writing in these journals underscore both the intellectual power and the diversity of feminism today. Still, some of this research seems to carry troubling practical and theoretical implications. In addition, as a philosopher concerned with issues of economic justice, I am disappointed that only a small number of articles address the “political economy” of sexism: questions of the distribution of work, income, and wealth.

These four journals share a con...