WOMEN, FEMINISM, GENDER, AND LAW IN POLITICAL-SCIENCE - RUMINATIONS OF A FEMINIST ACADEMIC

Research on women and the law within the discipline of Political Scien ce has advanced from inserting women into conventional legal paradigms , to attacking law itself as male, to understanding law as gendered. O bstacles within the discipline, however, hinder scholars in incorporat ing the latest and most sophisticated work in feminist theory. Underst anding the conditions of the production of knowledge within our discip line leads to an accounting of the most frequent problems: appropriati ng a conservative reading of the work of Carol Gilligan or importing a circumscribed version of the insights of Catharine MacKinnon. After d iagnosing some problems with scholarship in our subfield and accountin g in part for why that occurs, I offer some tentative suggestions for improvement.