social and political movement; thus, feminism clearly and unabashedly
brings a particular set of interests to the table. If this is true, then it would
make sense to ask ourselves at the outset "What interests feminists when
we are interested in power?" ⁴ My initial answer to this question is the fol-
lowing: Insofar as feminists are interested in studying power, it is be-
cause we have an interest in understanding, criticizing, challenging, sub-
verting, and ultimately overturning the multiple axes of stratification
affecting women in contemporary Western societies, including (but not
limited to) sexism, racism, heterosexism, and class oppression. ⁵

If I am right in suggesting that this is the general motivation that femi-
nist theorists bring to the analysis of power, then it follows that there are
at least three specific interests that a feminist account of power must at-
tempt to address. First, feminists have an interest in making visible and
making sense of the systematic relations of sexist, racist, heterosexist, and
class-based domination and subordination that characterize late capital-
ist Western pluralist societies. This concern requires an adequate feminist
conception of power to shed light on power understood as domination.
Indeed, it is this interest that motivates much of feminist research.

However, as both academic feminists and popular writers such as
Katie Roiphe and Naomi Wolf have pointed out, a discussion of domina-
tion will not satisfy all of the interests that feminists have in studying
power. By focusing too narrowly on domination, these critics maintain,
feminists have obscured the power that women can exercise and have
unwittingly portrayed women as victims. ⁶ Let me set aside for the mo-
ment the validity of these claims about feminist theory (I shall return to
consider them in detail in Chapter 1) and note that they highlight a sec-
ond interest that feminists have in studying power: specifically, the inter-
est in thinking about the power that women are able to exercise even in
spite of their subordination, a power that not only makes day-to-day liv-
ing bearable and even pleasurable, but also makes resistance to domina-
tion possible. This interest requires a feminist conception of power to be
able to adequately theorize empowerment and resistance.

However, given the incredibly complex and insidious forms that the
subordination of women takes, it seems clear that the overturning of such
subordination cannot be achieved simply through a bunch of individual
acts of resistance. A collective feminist movement is also necessary; such a
movement is made possible by the individual acts of resistance that go
into putting it together and, in turn, provides conceptual and normative
resources for individual women who are struggling to resist domination.
Thus, feminists bring a third interest to the study of power, the interest in
thinking about the collective power that binds the feminist movement to-
gether and allies it with related social movements. This interest requires a
feminist conception to theorize power understood as solidarity.

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