ABSTRACT
When I was approached to contribute to these essays on ‘Women in the field revisited’, my first impulse was to turn down the invitation with the genuine excuse that I was very busy with other projects. My feeling was: What is the use? Where would I begin to reach a common understanding with ‘privileged bourgeois white women’ on any of the issues? It was only after an extensive discussion with an African-Caribbean friend whose political views I respect very much that I was persuaded to write something. She felt that it was important that we put our views across, no matter how controversial these were. It was up to the people we criticise to decide whether our views should be published or not. They are still our teachers, supervisors and editors.
