ABSTRACT
Compared to the longer history of feminist political activism, policy studies within a feminist frame are a comparatively new focus for political inquiry. With the recognition of gender as an analytical category, feminist scholars have sought to institutionalize women’s voices in their respective disciplines. After recently reviewing the state of policy study within a feminist frame, Mary Hawksworth (1994) observes that ‘the goal of feminist scholarship is to transform traditional disciplines, purging them of androcentric bias, reshaping dominant paradigms so that women’s needs, interests, activities, and concerns can be analyzed and understood systematically’ (1994:98). Of the traditional disciplines political science, the grandparent of policy studies, has been slower than most social sciences in incorporating feminism into its conceptual storehouse. Compounding the effect of this hesitancy has been a tendency for feminist political analysts to argue among themselves. In their recent analysis of gender power, leadership and governance, feminist political scientists Georgia Duerst-Lahti and Rita Mae Kelly observe:
debates occur around how to treat difference. Should we recognize gender differences, acknowledge their consequences, and in strategies for change seek special treatment that accounts for differences? Or should we concentrate on treating women and men exactly the same and advocate only equal pay for equal work, for example, arguing that to do anything else is to reimpose gender demarcations where none need exist? Or, alternatively, should we advocate comparable pay for comparable worth on the grounds that men and women differ, particularly in their working situations? (1995:2)
Unfortunately, while these positions weave through the important conceptual debates among feminist political theorists, gender effects continue to disadvantage and even harm women in their private and public lives. The new generation of feminist scholarship in education has shown that despite their dominance in the teaching profession, and the emergence of a new awareness of gender effects, women teachers continue to suffer disadvantages created by gender effects (Acker, 1989; Arnot and Weiler, 1993; Bell and Chase, 1993; Blackmore and Kenway, 1993; Marshall, 1993; Marshall and Anderson, 1994). Accounting for the issues of difference that Durest-Lahti and Kelly (1995) have identified is of critical importance for a new feminist policy analysis.
