What is a brief description of gynocriticism in literary theory and criticism?

Gynocriticism is best understood by starting with Elaine
Showalter's major phases of the development of subcultures in literature, with the
understanding that women writers comprise a subculture. As explained by title="Notes on Gynocriticism and Showalter. Susan Spaull, Clemson University"
href="http://virtual.clemson.edu/caah/women/flc436/notesgynocrit.html">Susan
Spaull, Showalter indicates the first phase for the subculture of women
writers was the Feminine, during which female writers imitated the established male form
of writing. The second phase is the Feminist, during which women writers rebelled
against governing male standards and values while eschewing negative stereotypes
relating to women and women's function, talents, skills, and ability; it is the phase
with the emergence of the critique. The third phase is the Female, during which women
writers undergo self-discovery whereby they try for a literature of their own and stop
being imitators; it is the current phase and has witnessed the emergence of
gynocriticism.

According to Spaull's explanation of
Showalter, one of the questions asked in gynocriticism is whether there is a separate
and definable female aesthetic deriving from biological differences in cognition that
result in differences between how men and women create the art of literature. Others are
whether there is a female usage of language leading to a "woman's sentence"; whether
there are specific female archetypes of plot and character; whether women's literature
actually does (or does not) fit an objective measure for good literature--and whether
the measure for women's literature ought to be different from that for men's
literature.  Still other questions are do women emphasize different universal themes
than men; do women use metaphor and imagery differently than men; how do women portray
characters in relation to how men do it; and do women select different subject matter
from those selected by men.

In summary, according to title="Contribution of gynocriticism to feminist criticism. Xu Yue, Zhejiang university,
China" href="http://www.linguist.org.cn/doc/uc200705/uc20070513.pdf">Xu Yue
of Zhejang University, Hangzhou, China, gynocriticism concerns itself with developing a
specifically female criticism that critiques works written by women, with the aim of
identifying the uniqueness between women's and men's writing in order to forge a path
toward the next generation of women writers who do not need to rely upon male templates
and models because the women writers are free to know and develop their own female
literary greatness. To quote Xu Yue:

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The main concerns of gynocriticism are to
identify what are taken to be the distinctively feminine subject matters in literature
written by women; to uncover in literary history a female tradition, ... and to show
that there is a distinctive feminine mode of experience, or “subjectivity,” in thinking,
valuing, and perceiving oneself and the outer
world.