Go Figure: Feminist Sociological Analysis of Diverse Jewish Households

Abstract

Recent scholarly articles and popular op-eds assert that male scholars employing demography dominate Jewish family studies, and that scholarly analysis of marriage and fertility reflects controlling male scrutiny. This paper presents a very different factual intellectual history of female scholars’ pioneering and ongoing contributions to Jewish family studies since the 1980s, including the study of fertility and marriage patterns along with a broad range of household types. It demonstrates female scholars’ explicitly feminist approach to family research and shows that contrasting scholarly views of the sequelae of intermarriage have not been particularly divided by gender. We argue that the intellectual fissure is not about feminism per se, but rather about epistemology: current criticisms of quantitative research on the Jewish family draw heavily on feminist standpoint theory, while many scholars of the Jewish family operate with the alternative tradition of feminist empiricism. The paper concludes by addressing the so-called “paradigm wars,” arguing that comprehensive and useful discussions about the interests of Jewish women require both quantitative and qualitative methods of inquiry. Finally, it recommends that social scientists studying Jewish populations utilize the term “households,” which functions more inclusively than the term “families.”