ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the emerging field of childhood studies from the viewpoint of the established discipline of women’s studies. Women and children are, of course, linked socially, but the development of these specialist academic studies also poses interesting methodological and political questions about the relationship between the status of women and children as social minority groups and their constitution as objects of the academic gaze. Are childhood and women’s studies the same kinds of activities, or are they essentially different? What is the relationship between them? Are there insights that can be transferred from one to the other? Why are we studying children as a separate social group? Are these the same reasons as were used to justify the development of women’s studies? Are they good reasons?
