Feminist Phase Theory

Feminist Phase Theory

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Feminist Phase Theory

Feminist phase theory was developed by Tetreault (1985) that is used to categorize and classify evolution of thought about women. Their history, traditions and experiences and how they can be integrated into various disciplines.

The feminist phase theory is concerned with the study of women and how they can be included in the book of history. It holds that women have an important role to play in our culture and helps us to trace the changes in thought about this. The feminist phase theory has five stages: male defined-curriculum, contribution curriculum, bifocal curriculum, women’s curriculum and gender-balanced curriculum (Banks, 2010).

One of the problems with the contribution phase is that though women are added to the history but not to the content. It helps to compensate for the previous omission of women but it doesn’t solve the real problem because women are not added to the content. Men are still held as the standard upon which excellence is to be measured. Women even those who are exceptional aren’t regarded as equal to men.

On the other hand, bifocal curriculum focuses on both men and women but it doesn’t enough because interaction between the two isn’t considered. It focuses on the two as equal, complimentary groups that are homogeneous .The women’s curriculum helps to solve the problem of women’s omission from the content because it focuses not just on the place of women in history but also uses women as a measure of significant. Women are studied and hence they are not lumped together and viewed as a homogenous group. While the gender-balanced phase looks at the wholeness of an experience but not as male or female. It brings the interaction between the two genders and the experiences holistically. Though progress has been made in terms of integrating women but still their role has been majorly that of compensatory or contribution rather than the main focus of a disciplined research (Banks,2010).

References

Banks, J. (2010). Multicultural education: Issues and perspectives (7th ed.). Hoboken, N.J.:

Wiley.

Tetreault, M. (1985). Feminist phase theory: An experience-derived evaluation model. The

Journal of Higher Education, 56(4), 363-384