Nancy Hartsock

Nancy Hartsock (1943 – March 19, 2015) was a feminist philosopher. She was known for her work in feminist epistemology and standpoint theory, especially the essay "The Feminist Standpoint", which also integrated Melanie Klein's theories on psychoanalysis and the Oedipal crisis. Her standpoint theory derived from Marxism, which claims that the proletariat has a distinctive perspective on social relations and that only this perspective reveals the truth. She drew 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 was professor of political science at the University of Washington.