ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the significant impact that second-wave feminism has had on traditional epistemology and knowledge production. Many feminists have focused on developing perspectives which have a different starting point in so far as they reject Enlightenment values in various degrees and instead attempt to carve out their own epistemological priorities. The ability of standpoint feminism to evade dominant knowledges and generate new knowledges from repressed common senses' is precisely what highlights feminist epistemology's ability to directly and far-reachingly challenge non-feminist frameworks and ways of working'. Second-wave feminism generated a comprehensive theoretical framework on the subject of the double standard' which revealed that criminal women are judged not only according to the crime they have committed. Following the development of feminist epistemologies a number of authors have been highly successful in generating alternative truths' about key issues within both the state and civil society which impact on women's daily lives.
