ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book provides valuable examples of history-writing being able to make the already-dead speak and walk amongst us', such knowledge from the past can also be utilised to disturb contemporary conceptions and help bring about change'. It examines the past' have been those processes, policies and practices built around gender, power and punishment as well as the subsequent truths' which spring from the didactical relationship between them. The book illustrates the continued existence of the chasm between the success in achieving formal gender equality, and the failure to put this into practice in order to also achieve substantive equality for women. It outlines the processes through which official state truths presided over what was in effect an unsafe conviction. Official state power has been able to taketh' away with one hand what it has giveth' with the other.
