What impact, if any, has feminism had on science?1

The women’s movement of the 1970’s and ‘80’s, or, as it is often referred to, second wave feminism2, was first and foremost a political movement. It aimed at changing the conditions of women, recognizing full well that to do so meant changing the world. Out of the vertly political pro-ject soon emerged an intellectual – and even academic – project: feminist theory. Feminist theory was generally understood, at least by its early cont ibut rs, as itself a form of politics – i.e. as “politics by other means. ” It aimed to facilitate change in the world of every-day life by an-lysing – and exposing – the role that ideologies of gender play (and have played) in the abstract schema underlying our modes of organiztion. This meant re-examining our basic assumptions in all the traditional fields of scholarship – history, literature, political science, anthropology, socio