Belenky, M. F., Clinchy, B. M., Goldgerger, N. R., & Tarule, J. M. (1986). Women's Way of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind. Basic Books.
1.	Reminiscences of college by two ordinary women (page 190-193).
	a.	Each recalling an hour during her first year of college
		1.	One of them, now middle aged, remembered the first meeting of an introductory science course.
		2.	The second women, in her first year at college, told a superficially similar but profoundly different story about a philosophy class she had attended just a month or two before the interview.
2.	Level One: Silence or absence of voice.
	a.	Passive and reactive.
	b.	There is a dependence on external authority.
	c.	Words are seen as weapons, not to explain, but to direct or punish.
	d.	To speak out is "to court danger and retaliation."
	e.	These women do not know the power of their own words.
	f.	Words are not for connecting with others.
	g.	Silence is best.
3.	Discussion of Level One.
	a.	Ann was locked into a world of silence throughout her childhood and early adult years.
	b.	These were the youngest and the most socially, economically, and educationally deprived of all those interviewed.
		1.	These women were met at social agencies for parents, not on college campuses.
		2.	"Silence" was used to characterize these women because absence of voice was so salient.
		3.	Thus Level One served as an anchoring point for the authors' epistemological scheme.
	c.	Words are perceived as weapons. Words are used to separate and diminish people, not to connect and empower them. The silent women worried that they would be punished for using words--any words.
		1.	Examples.
	d.	The silent women lived cut off from others in a world full of rumor and innuendo. Words arise out of wrath, and they provoke wrath.
	e.	There were no indications of dialogue with "the self." There were no words that suggested an awareness of mental acts, consciousness, or introspection.
4.	Level Two: Received Knowledge: Listening to the voices of others.
	a.	Authority lies outside of self.
	b.	Can listen carefully and receive, but cannot create knowledge.
	c.	Self concept is organized around social expectations and roles
	d.	. . . around cultural stereotypes and expectations of women.
	e.	Listens, but is voiceless.
	f.	Subordinates.
	g.	Unassertive: Truth is found in the words of outside authorities.
	h.	Remain selfless and devoted to the care of others.
5.	Discussion of Level Two.
	a.	For Ann, becoming a mother--rather than having a mother--provided the first profound experience of human connection.
		1.	She said "My life was really, really dull. The only thing that really stands out is the birth of my children. That's the only important thing that has happened to me, ever. So that is about it."
	b.	Many women, like Ann, experience giving birth to their children as a major turning point in their lives. Often parenthood initiates an epistemological revolution. In response to the question "What was the most important learning experience you have ever had?" many mothers selected childbirth. It is as if this act of creation ushers in a whole new view of one' creative capacities.
	c.	Ann had to reassess herself as a knower when she anxiously assumed responsibilities of parenthood. Needing help, Ann turned to experts at a children's health center and found with relief that they knew everything. They were easily available and highly responsive:
		1.	"They were wonderful. It just seems that they know all the answers to everything that has to do with children. They have been just everything to me. They've been like a security blanket. You know, I can call anytime something happens--even at night time. They are always friendly and cheerful. You don't have to be afraid.
	d.	Finding that she could hear, understand, and remember things they taught her, she began to think of herself as a learner for the first time.
	e.	They learn by listening. As Rachel, a college freshman, said, "I enjoy listening to discussions. I find I am doing okay, just through listening."
	f.	A young student who had moved from jail to a community college was exhilarated to hear from other students--"those who know."
		1.	"For women who are students here know so much and I know nothing. I like to sit back and just listen to what they have to say. A lot of times I feel that way. When I started college I knew nothing and it was for me to get from both the students as well as the professor. Because when I walked into the classroom, I was twenty-one years old and these grown people sitting in the room--they had to know something."
	g.	The woman experiences listening as a very active and demanding process. "You get a real taste, putting your mind to work--sitting in class concentrating--listening and really getting something from it. Unless you're taking something in, it is not worth it."
6.	Level Three: Subjective knowing.
	a.	Transitions to the inner voice
	b.	. . . to the authority that comes from within
	c.	. . . not from the mind, but from intuition, from the gut.
	d.	Outside power loses its "all knowingness."
	e.	Truth emerges, "it feels right."
	f.	Truth is personal, not universal.
	g.	Truth is not imposed: Each one must believe what is right for each.
	h.	Distrust for logic, analysis, abstraction, even language.
	i.	Connecting with people as in "I can relate to that."
7.	Discussion of Level Three
	a.	Inez, a Colombian-American woman who grew up in a family with an abusive and alcoholic father and a mother who avoided the truth about her father.
	b.	She felt she spent years as the "dummy on the bottom" of family relationships.
	c.	Inez had come to equate authority with physical power and assertiveness with destructiveness.
	d.	She felt unloved and unlovable; she doubted that anyone could ever care for her.
	e.	Her father and brothers showed her over and over again that women were supposed to remain in a position of silence and servitude.
	f.	She did not trust her own judgment nor did she believe that any woman could "think and be smart."
	g.	She married a man much like her father. She depended upon him, and he abused her and their children.
	h.	Inez told a story of a woman of silence trapped in a world of brutal and belittling external authorities.
		1.	A story that Belinky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule often encountered.
	i.	Inez's story changed.
		1.	She felt she had grown beyond the person she had been for twenty-some years
		2.	She described her current self as "stubborn, opinionated, mouthy, and generous."
	j.	The emergence of subjective knowledge.
		1.	A change that the authors characterize as subjective knowledge.
			a.	from passivity to action.
			b.	from self as static to self as becoming.
			c.	from silence to a protesting inner voice and infallible gut.
		2.	For many women, the move away from silence and an externally oriented perspective on knowledge and truth leads to a new conception of truth as:
			a.	personal.
			b.	private.
			c.	subjectively known or intuited.
		3.	Thus Belinky et al. called this position subjectivism or subjective knowing.
		4.	The shift into subjectivism is a particularly significant shift for women when and if it occurs.
			a.	The authors reading of stories lead them to conclude that as women become more aware of their inner resources for knowing and valuing, they find an inner source of strength.
			b.	A developmental transition that has major repercussions in her relationships, self-concept, morality, and behavior.
8.	Level four: Procedural knowing: Separate.
	a.	To construct arguments powerful enough to meet the standards of impersonal authority.
	b.	To think "like men," like the public professional world.
	c.	To evaluate, question, put on trial, doubt, and analyze knowledge.
	d.	To depersonalize, objectify, and separate from knowledge.
	e.	To distrust one's own authority (again) and trust external authority and the authority of procedure.
	f.	The gut (subjective)voice is overshadowed.
9.	Level four: Procedural knowing: Connected
	a.	Develops procedures for gaining access to others' knowledge: Uses empathy and believing, listening.
	b.	Entails acceptance, equity, and precludes evaluation and judgment.
	c.	The listener experiences vicariously and expends her own knowledge.
	d.	Understanding is personal and intimate.
10.	Constructed knowing
	a.	Learns to speak in a unique, authentic voice.
	b.	Jumps outside the framework of other authorities and constructs her own.
	c.	Both rational and emotive.
	d.	Both objective and subjective.
	e.	Tolerance for internal contradiction and ambiguity.
	f.	Sees conflict and stress as inevitable.
	g.	All knowledge is constructed and the knower is an intimate part of the known.
	h.	Everything is relative and context is the key to understanding.
11.	Learning to be assertive has everything to do with "gaining a voice," gaining a sense of having something worthwhile to say, an authority on self, and feeling the procedural security within, the sense of self in context, to say it.