Varieties of Feminism Revisited: Measuring Contemporary Feminist Thinking

• In Event: Poster Session: Gender and Comparative and International Politics & International Relations Theory
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Gender and Comparative and International Politics

Abstract

The measurement of feminist attitudes has come a long way since the first instruments were developed during the 1930ies. Newer instruments do not only seek to integrate the growing complexity of feminist thinking and discourse but are also reflections or “archival records of feminist attitudes of the[ir] era” (Frieze & McHugh, 1998, p. 349). As feminism seeks to address contemporary political and social issues, instruments to measure it are in constant need to evolve and to satisfy psychometric criteria at the same time. The conceptual typologies of feminism which empirical measurements are based on are decisive for scale development. While (early) binary instruments that range between support and rejection of gender equality have been found too coarse to effectively capture the theoretical and activist breadth and diversity of contemporary feminisms, typologies of six or more subtypes appear to not show enough discriminant validity among the differential paradigms to ensure valid measurement. Generally, very few instruments have been tested rigorously and over time to allow for their application in surveys across time and political or cultural context. Building on prior typologies and research on feminism scales, I propose a new parsimonious 9-item scale to measure three paradigms of contemporary feminist thinking in a German sample: Liberal-egalitarian, radical-differentialist and poststructuralist-queer. To ensure both content and discriminant validity of the subscales, the items reflect differential feminist standpoints on wedge issues in contemporary political and social debates around gender. Among others, these issues include gender quotas, the headscarf, prostitution and gender-equal language. The scale was tested and re-tested in 2018, 2021 and 2022 in both online and computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI) surveys in non-probability and probability samples representative of the German population. The data presented is from a probability sample (n = 2023) from a dual-frame random digit dialing CATI survey from 2022. It is validated by means of a confirmatory factor analysis and shows good model fit under maximum likelihood estimation with robust standard errors (RMSEA = .032 (CI: .019 - .044; RMSEA <= .05 = .993), CFI = .980, TLI = .968, SRMR = .028). Discriminant validity and content validity is ensured. However, while the instrument covers a broad range of feminisms, it is neglective of others, such as intersectionalist perspectives. And even though the wedge issues at stake are applicable across many political and cultural contexts, making the scale an eligible too for research on feminism in a number of countries, they are arguably limited to Western industrial nations. Epistemological as well as methodological consequences of these shortcomings are discussed. The study contributes to our scholarly knowledge about the current state of feminist attitudes in Western societies. It additionally delivers a conceptual and methodological framework that enables researchers to tie in additional topical developments with the existing scale. This yields the potential to integrate feminisms that emanate from other cultural, political and social contexts, and to effectively research the transnational dispersion and development of feminisms.

Author

• Katharina Heger, Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society