Epistemic advantage is a term used within feminist theory when attempting to acquire knowledge from the individual lives and experiences of different women.
Narayan defines epistemic advantage as "(the oppressed) having knowledge of the practices of both their own contexts and those of their oppressors" (Feminist Theory Reader, p. 315).
Thus these varying perspectives provide different women with 'advantages' in understanding their own specific social locations within a given society's hierarchal power structure.
They write: "We have spent a great deal of energy delving into the cultural and experiential nature of our oppression out of necessity because none of these matters have ever been looked at before.
Karen J. Warren points this out in her book Ecological Feminism in which she explains that we "must avoid the potential glorification of oppression that may accompany the positing of 'epistemic advantage' to marginalized groups" (p. 131).