Feminist Thought: Implications for Consumer Research

This article applies three distinct feminist perspectives to critique scientific objectivity, and the problematics, theories, methods of data collection, and methods of data analysis in consumer research. Each feminist perspective helps heighten sensitivity to gender biases in current research and offers insights on new directions for con-sumer scholarship. T he premise of this article is that consumer research, like other bodies of knowledge, has sometimes misrepresented women. More fundamentally, we will argue that a portion of consumer researchs theory and knowledge are gendered in unrecognized ways, and that feminist critique is required to clarify the implicit as-sumptions. Such critiques have been directed at many other disciplines and exposed pervasive, systemic as-sumptions about women and about gender that reflect ungrounded stereotypes and beliefs (Cahis and Smircich 1992; Langland and Gove 1981). Feminist reappraisals