Nancy Hartsock is a feminist philosopher. She is known for her work in feminist epistemology

Feminist epistemology

Feminist epistemology is concerned with the way in which gender influences our concept of knowledge and "practices of inquiry and justification". It comes under the umbrella of social epistemology, the broad set of approaches to the study of knowledge. Elisabeth Anderson argues that the concept of...

 and standpoint theory

Standpoint theory

Standpoint theory is a postmodern method for analyzing inter-subjective discourses. "Developed primarily by social scientists, especially sociologists & political theorists. It extends some of the early insights about consciousness that emerged from Marxist/socialist feminist theories and the wider...

, especially the essay

Essay

An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...

 "The Feminist Standpoint", which also integrates Melanie Klein

Melanie Klein

Melanie Reizes Klein was an Austrian-born British psychoanalyst who devised novel therapeutic techniques for children that had an impact on child psychology and contemporary psychoanalysis...

's theories on psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...

 and the Oedipal crisis. Her standpoint theory derives from Marxism

Marxism

Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...

, which claims that the proletariat

Proletariat

The proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class, usually the working class; a member of such a class is proletarian...

 has a distinctive perspective on social relations and that only this perspective reveals the truth. She draws an analogy between the industrial labor of the proletariat and the domestic labor of women to show that women can also have a distinctive standpoint.

Hartsock is currently a professor of political science

Political science

Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...

 at the University of Washington

University of Washington

University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...

.

Books

• Money, Sex, and Power: Toward a Feminist Historical Materialism. Northeastern University Press 1986
• The Feminist Standpoint Revisited. Westview Press 1999, ISBN 0-8133-1558-1
• Postmodernism And Political Change. Routledge 1999
• Building Feminist Theory (co-editor)