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Little of the scholarship that focuses on the professional lives of women faculty addresses how faculty women mobilize or how and with whom they create networks to work in academe. Women now make up more than 50% of the undergraduate student population, and just over 40% of Ph.D. recipients are women. Many campuses house women's centers and other resources for women. There has also been an increase in the numbers of feminist organizations throughout the academy. A study examined organizations that are feminist and activist primarily from a feminist perspective, since power within the academy is primarily patriarchal. The literature review focused on the mechanisms women faculty have pursued to transform higher education. Specifically, the study explored the scholarship on the networks women faculty create and on the activist strategies in which they engage. It used a comparative case study design to intensively investigate, over the course of a semester, two feminist faculty organizations at two public research universities: the Association for Women Faculty (AWF) at the University of Arizona and the Faculty Women's Caucus (FWC) at the University of Nebraska (Lincoln). Findings suggest there is no one model to describe academic feminism and that activist women faculty in campus-based grassroots feminist organizations construct their lives in multiple ways. Based upon the data, the AWF has been labeled a professional organization of feminists, while the FWC is labeled a feminist organization of professionals. (Contains 34 references.) (BT)

This paper discusses the mixing of theories that make up the theoretical framework the researcher uses to apply the systematic method of narrative analysis called the Listening Guide (L. Brown and others, 1991). The Listening Guide, a voice-centered relational method was developed to uncover how girls and women talk about themselves through their relationships while considering research themes. The paper discusses the multitude of discursive theories and practices that guide the researchers current research on female coaches as she explores the coaches sense of themselves as seen through the narratives of their coaching relationship. The Listening Guide asks the researchers to encounter the participants narrative several times, each time listening for different voices, each of which tells a different narrative of the relationships. The Listening Guide is based on many theories, but to the researcher, it is most effective and useful when grounded in the discursive theory of feminism. As a voice-centered methodology the Listening Guide allows the researcher to hear the voices of women, and feminist theory guides the listening to empower the research. (Contains 6 notes and 41 references.) (SLD)

Power frames student-school relations and could be viewed as problematic for student participation. Seeking research methods that reveal the development of student-school relations furthers the understanding of everyday expressions of power and leads to reforms that would improve social relations within and beyond school walls. A project focused on the participation of students in high school video production classes to explore the shifting nature of power as the camera becomes a tool for achieving new forms of participation. The degree to which power and the styles of using, submitting, or avoiding power are revealed in an analysis of how cameras are used. Three schools with video production programs from southern California participated. Ethnographic methods, including weekly observation throughout the targeted courses and interviews with students were used to gather information. Three courses from each of the three schools were observed. Volunteers (n=26) provided video from 15 projects; 18 of the volunteers participated in short interviews, and nine of them narrated some or all of their videos. Work on the rich data generated is in its beginning stages. Overt participation in school video production demonstrates differences among schools and among groups of students based on ethnicity and gender; but to fully understand these differences a microscopic analysis is needed to distinguish how actual events come together to create the distinguishable patterns. A microanalysis begins the journey to discover the intricacies of school contexts that create differences in students. (BT)

Jessica and Elizabeth are two female characters, twins, featured throughout Francine Pascal's Sweet Valley series, the Bantam Publishers popular series for girls from elementary school through junior high, high school, university, and well into adulthood. This paper notes that these books are a part of the same formula that are used for romance novels written for adults (Harvey, 1981; Lane, 1981; Watson, 1981), and as part of a content analysis of approximately 22 fictional romance chapter books written for elementary students, the paper seeks to examine the commonalities and differences among female characters as role models for young girls within a context of Jungian and feminist theory. Discussion related to protagonists' growth, internal versus external locus of control exhibited by the protagonist, strong gender lines, role models of stereotypic "girl-ish" and negative behavior, and the promotion of faux-maturity themes are examined in this paper. Appendixes include a table of results of female protagonists in 22 Sweet Valley Kids novels according to internal or external locus of control, and examples of unchecked negative behavior derived from field notes from the Sweet Valley Kids series. (Contains 30 references.) (Author/AEF)

This paper shows how literary criticism can enrich the high school English classroom. Specifically, the paper focuses on how an Internet teaching tool called the WebQuest helped one educator's students learn about literary criticism and apply it to "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad. The WebQuest homepage defines a WebQuest as "an inquiry-oriented activity in which most or all of the information used by learners is drawn from the Web." With its emphasis on individual inquiry and analysis, WebQuest seemed a good tool to teach literary criticism. The WebQuest materials in the paper include an introduction, a task, the process, and a resources list. The "Journey to Meaning" section provides research assignments (with instructions) for the students. (NKA)

A study explored the ethical framework of care as a leadership attribute in three female principals at an elementary school, a junior high school, and a high school in northeast Pennsylvania. Recent studies of educational administrators reveal that new leadership models and attributes, identified as the ethic of care, are emerging among both male and female administrators. Carol Gilligan and others demonstrate that there is a continuing need to conduct research regarding the experiences of women. This is the case in educational administration, in part because of a lack of research despite the growing numbers of women in administrative positions. Extended interviews explored four guiding questions related to extending the ethic of care to females in the male sex-typed role of the principal, transferring the personal ethic of care to the professional sphere, enacting the ethic in making decisions, and maintaining the ethic in the bureaucratic structure of schools. The nature of this study is inductive, and the data are provided in descriptive case-study format using the principals' answers to questions derived from the guiding themes. Data from the state regarding the principals were added to those gathered from four interviews of principals and their staffs. Constant comparative analysis was used to identify patterns, code data, and categorize findings. The ethic of care was found in all three principals and was revealed in such areas as teaching, learning, dedication to students, efforts to create child-centered schools, empowering others, listening, and resolving difficult conflicts fairly. The research indicates that female leaders tend to utilize ethical perspectives of care and responsibility, in varying degrees, when dealing with children and adults at schools. (Contains 43 references.) (TEJ)

This paper problematizes the role of caring in women's persistence in literacy programs. The paper draws from the author/researcher's doctoral research, a study of 10 mid-life multi-ethnic Adult Basic Education and English as a Second Language women learners and their lifelong experiences of literacy, schooling, and learning, both inside and outside of a Hawaii literacy program. It explains that since 7 out of the 10 women left the program within a year's time, the author/researcher felt compelled to focus on this issue. The women were interviewed, and their stories were developed in the form of both case study narratives and thematic analysis comparisons. The paper presents five case studies which reveal "caring" amidst the socio-historical and cultural changes taking place in the subjects' lives. A grounded theory approach was used to gain a holistic picture of the women learners' experiences over a life time and of the strategies, internal processes, and pre-conditions of their literacy and persistence experiences. Feminist theories of care were used to highlight the women's caring activities in their families and workplaces and the literacy program. Ethnographic methods were used to uncover the women's experiences with literacy, learning, and schooling. It concludes that literacy programs can help learners persist by paying attention to their histories, their relationships, and the deeper meanings of what they say. (Contains 97 references.) (BT)

This study explored how science and scientists were produced and reproduced within the setting of a university biology department. Building upon recent work in anthropology of education and feminist science studies, the study examined the reflexive questions of whether increased women's representation in science changes science practice and whether changing science practice increases women's representation in science. The methodology was designed to examine both the contextual values and the constitutive values of science in the training of scientists. Results showed some ways in which these values were shifting as more women assumed places of leadership within the department. At the same time, in other ways, the presence of women did not seem to cause the types of changes that feminist science studies have hypothesized. In terms of changing practices leading to changing representation, some evidence was found to support this assertion and other evidence that this might not always be the case. These findings can be interpreted through the anthropological perspective of practice theory in which individuals are seen as exerting agency both within and against institutional structures. (Contains 47 references.) (PVD)

This paper describes an alternative art education methodology grounded in feminist emancipatory epistemology and poststructuralist theory. The paper takes a short journey through the author's research, touching on concerns about epistemology and methodology, and by looking more closely at the application of discourse analysis to the research data. It concludes by addressing implications for art education curriculum. (Contains 22 references.) (BT)

This study analyzed girls' reactions to Disney's animated feature film "Pocahontas" in light of conclusions drawn from a previous critical textual analysis of the movie. The research addressed three questions: (1) how do Disney's claims to creation of positive prosocial representations of women and Native Americans in the movie "Pocahontas" hold up or collapse when viewed from a critical perspective which takes gender and class into account? (2) how do girls of different ethnic, socioeconomic, and geographic backgrounds relate to the romanticized story Disney has chosen to tell? and (3) how do the girls' responses to the movie compare between groups and with those of the researcher? Participants, ages 9 to 13, were middle-class Euro-American girls from a midwestern university town, urban working-class Native American girls from a large midwestern city, and girls of working-class families from a rural reservation in the southwest with one Native American parent and one Euro-American parent. Results from the focus groups with participants indicated that although there were points of agreement, in general, the girls' responses and attitudes toward the movie varied widely both between the groups and with respect to the researcher's conclusions about the movie. While the Euro-American girls produced a reading that could be labeled as "negotiated" in some respects, they appeared to accept the colonialist lessons learned about U.S. history and to view the movie as somewhat comical. For the urban Native American girls, "Pocahontas" was an important movie to which they related strongly. The Native American girls from the rural reservation were not as enthusiastic about the movie, perhaps because the culture of their daily lives strengthens their personal and cultural identities in such a way as to make media representations of Native Americans less significant for them. (This report includes background information concerning the story of the historical figure Pocahontas and the Disney movie based on her, followed by a textual analysis of the movie. Contains 19 references.) (EV)

An exploratory, interview-based qualitative study explored the self-concepts of culturally relevant women teachers. Few studies have taken an explicitly psychological approach toward understanding these teachers and their pedagogy. It was expected that this study would offer insight into how a particular pedagogy might be rooted in a specific psychological world view and not simply in an individual teacher's personal preferences or experiences. Data collection consisted of three rounds of individual life-history interviews with six African American women who taught in northeastern urban junior and high schools. "Purposeful sampling" was engaged in by locating potential participants from the African American members of the social justice, curriculum development, and teacher training organization, "Facing History and Ourselves." Teachers were mixed in age and teaching experience. Analysis employed the Listener's Guide (Brown and Gilligan, 1990), a feminist interpretive tool that approaches interviews as "texts" and directs the researcher to read the texts for the viewpoints or "voices" they contain. The teachers'"voices" did in fact describe aspects of both a relational and an extended or sociocentric self. In their portrayals of the self concepts from which their pedagogy emerged, the women recounted how they saw teaching as a personal and relationship-oriented, rather than strictly professional, activity. In particular, they likened teaching to "mothering" and strove to provide each child in their classrooms with intense care and attention. In addition, they demonstrated an extended self as they evaluated pedagogical decisions in terms of the political consequences for the children they taught. Contains 25 references. (BT)

The call for submissions from girls for a book, "Girls Talk," (Finch Publishing, Sydney, 1998) was based on the premise that girls have much to teach about the realities of negotiating ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Using the published written and visual contributions, and drawing from postcolonial, "mestizaje," and feminist theories, this paper explores the processes of "coming out" and "going home" in the lives of young women and the location of their schools and teachers in the processes of acknowledging, negotiating, and reclaiming their cultural backgrounds and diverse sexualities. The paper illustrates public and private strategies girls and young women are adopting and devising to resist ethnocentric, racist, and heterosexist educational structures and pedagogies. It also recommends pedagogical strategies that can assist all students in the recognition and engagement with difference and with multi-placed persons in schools who are constantly undertaking "coming out/going home" journeys. Contains 18 references. (Author/BT)

When teachers try to dramatically change the "pedagogic contract" - the prevailing classroom norms - their efforts are frequently met by resistance from students. My central question is: what do students' and teachers' voices tell us about breaking the pedagogic contract through the use of creative/imaginative writing in science classrooms? This paper draws only on the analyzed interviews of five teachers and twelve students from their schools. It will show that it takes considerable strategic effort on the part of teachers to establish a new pedagogic contract. These teachers addressed resistance by being explicit about purposes, classroom processes and assessment practices. The voices of these students illustrate that the efforts of their teachers have been instrumental in re-framing the boundaries of the pedagogic contract: students will accept a shift in pedagogy if they can see a pay-off for themselves in terms of their learning outcomes and/or their enjoyment of the learning experience. (Contains 43 references.) (Author/ASK)

The contemporary women's movement, communicating largely through the written word, mistakenly ignored or failed to notice the following: (1) almost one quarter of American women (23%) had severely limited literacy skills; (2) for female heads of households, 75% of those with less than a high school diploma lived in poverty; (3) nearly 40% of female single parents had an eighth-grade education; and (4) almost 35% of displaced homemakers had an eighth-grade education. Literacy was equated with personal power and opportunity, something denied to those with low literacy skills. The majority of feminist writings is largely theoretical and too scholarly for adult basic education students. Organizations such as Women Leading Through Reading pioneered a more politicized approach to feminist adult education by sponsoring groups for adult women working to improve their literacy skills. (About two thirds of the document is an annotated bibliography, directed at learning center coordinators and adult educators, that aims to provide a listing of feminist resources and reading materials for women with low literacy. It describes 24 books and curriculum materials published by feminist, university, and independent presses. Seven other resources, including non-profit foundations and focus groups in the United States and Canada, are listed). (AJ)

This exploration of what feminism has to contribute to pragmatism, and vice versa, considers the idea of contextuality through an examination of the role of current pragmatists, such as Cornel West and Richard Rorty, and current feminists, including Charlene Haddock Siegfried, Maxine Greene, and Seyla Benhabib. To set the stage historically for the discussion, the ways in which C. S. Peirce and John Dewey defined the role of context are explored. Peirce and Dewey's concepts of experience in relation to knowing are significant to the discussion of pragmatism and feminism. They open up space for feminists to argue that when women's experiences are taken into consideration, philosophy and science are transformed. It is important to consider how pragmatists and feminists can appeal to experience in a nonessentialized manner, for immediate experiences help accent contextuality. Cornel West recommends a prophetic pragmatism that sees pragmatism as a form of cultural criticism and locates politics in the everyday experiences of ordinary people. However, West focuses on race and social class at the expense of women's experiences. Richard Rorty's form of pragmatism calls for the foregoing of experience in favor of language. Rorty claims that pragmatism is neutral to feminism and masculinism, but Charlene Haddock Siegfried, a pragmatist feminist, argues that pragmatism begins and ends with experience, as does feminism. The feminist Seyla Benhabib also offers some insight on how we gain awareness of our own contextuality through her discussion of enlarged thinking and the generalized other and concrete other. Maxine Greene, a feminist greatly influenced by Dewey's work, turns to the arts, especially literature, to help explain how we can develop our abilities to respond to experiences and to recognize patterns that exist in the diverse world. The ability to attend to our own contextuality and to others is an act of care. Caring relationships help people achieve alertness, cooperative intelligence, and enlarged thinking. (SLD)

A major tenet of feminist rhetorical theory is that there exists a "women's way" of writing. At the same time, much writing deals with the strong shift in the relationship between theory and practice in the fields of literature, composition, and cultural rhetoric. A study examined the intersection of genre and gender theory with the actual writing of students, and results indicated that practitioners have to be cautious when translating theory into their classrooms. In two sophomore writing sections ("205-one"), for a variety of genres encompassing the personal narrative (diary, letter, speech, etc.) students created a reader/writer's history of themselves at the start and the end of the course. In two other sophomore sections ("205-two"), concentration was on going deeply into only three genres--the personal essay, the argument essay, and the academic research essay. With the initial inventories of 205-one, while roughly half of the students fit traditional stereotypes (females preferring the diary and males preferring argument) the other half broke the mold; findings were similar in 205-two. Excerpts from student writings illustrate student voices and teacherly response. One tentative conclusion can be reached: most students found an extra thrill in writing "new" genres for them. Females took to the public speech; males plunged into the private diary. In these student reflections, theory and practice met in a post-theory classroom; the instructor was prompted to re-design the curriculum to explore current ideas on gender and genre. (NKA)

This paper examines the charges made in the highly publicized report, "How Schools Shortchange Girls," published by the American Association of University Women (1992). The paper shows how the findings in this report are based on a selective review of the research and how findings contrary to the report's message were suppressed. The paper reviews the best available information on a variety of measures to see how boys and girls fare in the schools. Such measures as school grades, class rank, honors and prizes in academic competitions, scores on standardized achievement tests, college entrance and graduation rates, and attainment of professional and doctoral degrees are considered. The paper questions the interpretations of much of the data and concludes that research on gender differences in class participation, school climate, and self-confidence provides a welter of conflicting findings, sometimes favoring girls, sometimes favoring boys, and sometimes showing no gender differences at all. The paper charges political propaganda was used in the findings that schools shortchange girls. The paper contends that such a "noble lie" (Plato) draws attention away from the group that schools actually do fail, that of African-American males, who fall far behind African-American females in educational success. The paper questions the distortion that masks the educational progress women have made and focuses on goals of raising self-esteem of teen-age girls, instead of goals of increasing performance of students on international tests in mathematics and science. (EH)

The starting point of this study is a post-structural feminist position that asks questions in order to examine the social conditions of a group from the participants' perspective and experience. The five participants in this study were working in a traditionally feminized field (teaching), but their subject matter (science) has been traditionally masculinized. Four recurring themes appeared in the data from transcribed interviews: (1) contradictory self-descriptions, i.e., the teachers described how they perceived themselves by explaining what they were not; (2) issues of control, i.e., control over students, control over their jobs, and even loss of control; (3) notions of autonomy, which centered around the teachers' movement into the profession, decision making, and the politics of their departments relative to other departments; (4) these teachers' views about the epistemology of science and their place within science. All five teachers described science in a mechanistic, experiment-driven way, akin to the traditional masculinist representations of the domain. (Contains 33 references). (SM)

This paper presents a brief overview of behavioral and biological research that implicates real gender differences as a basis for stereotypical behavior patterns of men and women. A commentary follows that addresses the reactions to the findings by some feminist psychologists and by those feminists who advocate women's rights in the popular press and other media. The focus is on the potentially damaging results to women's causes already losing ground in some quarters of society. The popular feminist leaderships' refusal to acknowledge the research as useful and valid adds to a growing belief in many young women that the Feminist Movement is too radical and irrational for them. The paper concludes with suggestions for mitigating the negative backlash that is occurring as a result. Contains 15 references. (EH)

This report focuses on ways constructions of gender inform teacher education students' curriculum experiences and teaching performance in primary schools, in particular regarding a gender inclusive curriculum. The remarks of eight students from a longitudinal study were analyzed using feminist post-structural theory as a means of understanding contradictory discourses and the process by which gender relations become "normalized." By examining "taken for granted" beliefs concerning gender, students were challenged to reexamine their own values and see the importance of gender inclusive pedagogy and curriculum planning. Students were asked to explain their own understanding of gender relations, how they would address gender equity in their own classrooms, and how their course work enhanced or limited their understanding. Most students were able to demonstrate an awareness of ways gender relations were constituted in their lives and to "problematize" gender relations. Although students requested practical gender inclusive strategies for the classroom, during the interviews it became clear to the research team that providing courses and strategies might be a "band-aid" approach and so hinder students from achieving a deeper analysis. It also became clear that the researchers' commitment to feminism had made them somewhat "hard of hearing" when it came to the students and their interpretation of gender relations. (Contains 29 references.) (LH)

The supportive role of the research supervisor in an action research study is explored. This critical account of a relationship between a research supervisor and a postgraduate research student was prompted by a sense of disquiet and lack of harmony that developed during a year-long action research study. In the role of a teacher-researcher with a critical constructivist perspective, the student had attempted to transform radically the epistemology of her Year 10 Bioethics class. Despite the supervisor's emancipatory intentions, the student felt that she was being disempowered as a result of his demands to conform to normative expectations and standards. Drawing on the student's dissertation and reflective journal, and on their subsequent separate writings, the student and supervisor jointly conducted a critical inquiry into the problematic aspects of their relationship. The writings of J. Habermas and feminist scholars assisted with their new understandings of the need for a rich communicative student-supervisor relationship, especially in situations where the student is undertaking emancipatory action research and the supervisor wishes to adopt a collaborative research role. (Author/SLD)

This study followed six "culturally aware" teachers through student teaching and their first three years of teaching. It looks at how their life experiences or life stories affect classroom practices. Using collaborative methodology, the findings suggest the role of "gate opener" which represents the common as well as the diverse ways all the participants see themselves. All the teachers, including the researchers/teacher educators, can be seen as keeping watch at the "gates" of schooling and educational opportunities (in the traditional sense). As "gate openers" they look for ways to let students into success in school and access to middle class. They also see the need to change the perceived norm for acceptance. This has particular significance for teacher educators reminding them of the opportunities to be informed by their students who have alternative perspectives. It points to the need to make room for culturally aware students perspectives in university classrooms and to take seriously the responsibility to work toward equity in universities as well as elementary and high school classrooms. (Contains 43 references.) (Author/ND)

In ethnographic research, silence can be probed as a filter through which to understand metaphors present and absent in conversations. The question posited in this study is how to account for silence as deliberate. From analysis of conversational interactions with classroom teachers, it became apparent that the silences also had meaning, that they were "inhabited." Probing of the silences revealed that although the focus of the conversations was race, the teachers' awareness of themselves as raced (i.e., as having a racial identity) was absent from the conversations. When asked how they described themselves, the teachers included many non-racial descriptors; race was also absent from written biographies. Because whiteness continues to be construcd as the norm, it is rendered invisible. Additionally, when asked how they saw themselves racially, the responses focused not on their race but rather on their identity as white women. Reversing the polarities of silence and talk, or treating talk as the ground and silence as the figure for analysis, results in making the familiar strange and the strange familiar. It is suggested that researchers can become more open to the possibility of multiple meanings in silences and thus find new areas for research. (Contains 26 references.) (JLS)

This is a qualitative inquiry based on reciprocal and interactive relationships. Seven associate deans or former associate deans were engaged in conversations about their roles in colleges of education. All are women from five public and two private universities. Through analysis of the conversations, five themes emerged: the role of associate dean as faculty member; the limits and expectations of the role of associate dean; the lack of intrinsic power in the position; the shadow nature of the role as the subordinate to the dean; and the associate dean's role as communicator and mediator. A critical incident technique was used to gain further insights into the nature of the associate dean's role and sources of conflict in the role. Some of the situations that were used dealt with: academic freedom and the undergraduate curriculum; racially insensitive practices by adjunct faculty; the rumor mill; and perceptions of authority. Among the implications are: gender is a factor in individuals' perceptions of themselves and of the role; peacemaker, a frequent sub-role for associate deans, is seen as a sex-related role for women; for women of color, race and ethnicity are often more salient than gender; and the dean influences feelings of role dissonance. (Contains 13 references.) (JLS)

This essay examines the ways in which sociology, as a discipline, has been influenced by feminist scholarship in the field, and three major contributions of feminist scholarship are presented: the introduction of women into sociological theory and research during the era of "sex role" analysis; the shift to analyzing gender as a basic axis of stratification built into social organization; and a more inclusive sociological perspective that focuses on the simultaneous operation of gender, race, and class in people's lives. The essay notes that in addition to critiques of traditional sociology, feminist scholarship has transformed the discipline by developing the study of sex and gender as a subfield of sociology. It concludes by noting that feminist sociologists are currently exploring the ways that researchers can understand gender as multifaceted, supporting, reinforcing, and intersecting with many other forms of inequality. An 89-item bibliography contains information on background readings for faculty; suggested readings for undergraduate courses; curriculum resources; and professional organizations. (MDM)

This essay examines the ways in which U.S. history, as a discipline, has been influenced by feminist scholarship in the field and by research on gender and sexuality. It notes that the recognition that gender matters revolutionized the thinking of scholars who forged the field of women's history. Feminist scholars have expanded the definition of historically significant topics to include the private domain of family, domesticity, reproduction, sexuality, and public activities such as voluntary social service. Studies of women, particularly working-class women and women of color, are central to reconceptualizing the actors, events, sources, chronologies, and vocabularies in U.S. history. The essay also wonders whether women have "experienced" the great events of the nation's past in the same way as men, asking whether women did in fact have an American Revolution, an Age of Jackson, or a Reconstruction. Also noted are two issues in the experiences of women that continue to be debated: the first is the question of continuity versus change; the second is that of commonality versus differences. A 71-item bibliography contains information on works cited in the essay; selected readings for faculty on frameworks and overviews, work, politics, conquest and colonization, and women and revolution; selected readings for students; electronic resources; and other resources. (MDM)

This essay examines the ways in which health, as a discipline, has been influenced by feminist scholarship in the field. It explains that feminist scientists in the field have recognized and sought to address gender bias in traditional approaches to health research, including the androcentric bias in defining priorities for medical research, the lack of funding for clinical research on women, failure to recognize the effects of gender, and interactions between gender, ethnicity, and class in research. There is growing evidence to support the assertion that access to health care differs in accordance with gender, race, class, and age, and excessive focus on male research subjects and the definition of some diseases as "male" diseases has led to the underdiagnosis and undertreatment of these diseases in older women. It also notes that the exclusion of women of color and lesbians (and their health care needs) from clinical research has often resulted in inadequate or inappropriate theories and conclusions being drawn from the data. (Contains 110 references.) (MDM)

This essay examines the ways in which psychology, as a discipline, has been influenced by feminist scholarship in the field. Noting that feminist psychologists have challenged the assumption that psychological science is value-free, it cites ways in which values have affected psychological theory and method. The view that men's behavior is normative underlies the historic marginalization of research on women in psychology. The best example of androcentrism and devaluation of women is found in Freudian theory, which defines being female as both different and deficient. Many "gender effects" on behavior can be accounted for by power differences between women and men; feminist psychologists have pointed to the usefulness of descriptive research that does not seek to generalize about all human behavior. An appendix includes eight principles of feminist curriculum development that focus on diversity, egalitarianism and empowerment, self-determination, complexity, connection, social action, self-reflection, and integrative perspectives. A 129-item bibliography contains information on cognitive psychology; developmental psychology; social psychology; physical health and reproduction; mental health; women in the history of psychology; research methodologies and publication issues; gender and other forms of diversity; feminist theory; scientific theory; curriculum transformation resources; pedagogy; electronic resources; and organizational resources. (MDM)

This essay examines the ways in which geography, as a discipline, has been influenced by feminist scholarship in the field. It explains that early feminist critiques of the discipline examined the extent to which geography had overwhelmingly dealt with the lives of men and the ways in which its theories, methods, and content reflected men's experiences. Geographers are paying increasing attention to the ways in which gender interacts with other social categories, such as race, ethnicity, class, nationality, immigrant status, and life course stage, to understand the complexities of relationships between women and men and among women. Feminist geography is pluralistic in its theoretical and methodological stances. A great deal of research has been done using in-depth interview strategies. (Contains 17 references.) (MDM)

This essay examines the ways in which music, as a discipline, has been influenced by feminist scholarship in the field. It explains that during the 1970s, music scholars began to recover the history of women composers and musicians, and that by the 1980s scholars such as Susan McClary had begun to explore such issues as musical semiotics and constructions of femininity and masculinity; sexual differences within the vocabulary of music theory; and aspects of desire as mapped onto tonality. Feminist scholars' rejection of the mind-body split has modified several areas of musical understanding, such as the recognition that "real" women (and men) perform music; acknowledging the physical response to music; linking musicality with sexuality or pleasure; and admitting the physical experience of performance as significant to music's meaning. Feminist musicology has challenged conventional wisdom in regard to the concept of musical greatness or genius, the primacy of Western art music in the canon, the periodization of music history, and the musical form's relation to (gender) ideology. Includes a list of electronic resources. A 195-item bibliography contains information on books and articles; special journal issues; specialized journals; and electronic resources. (MDM)

This essay examines the ways in which political science, as a discipline, has been influenced by feminist scholarship in the field. It explains that gender politics theory and research have grown tremendously since the late 1960s, focusing not only on including women in research on political behavior and policy, but also reevaluating the theories, models, and methods of the discipline. The essay goes on to offer examples of some of the contributions of gender politics research, emphasizing questions that would be easy to integrate into the typical undergraduate political science program, including examples from the subfields of American government and politics, comparative politics, international relations, methodology, political theory and philosophy, and political behavior and political psychology. It is concluded that gender is an element of the organization of political structures and processes in most political systems that is too important to ignore. The document includes a list of related electronic resources. (Contains 225 references.) (MDM)

This essay examines the ways in which philosophy, as a discipline, has been influenced by feminist scholarship in the field. It explains that in the 1970s feminist philosophers introduced questions regarding personal life and sexuality as matters for philosophical analysis, and that scholars began to challenge the notions of the Western canon. Feminists argued that understanding philosophical texts required reading symbolic and metaphorical language to discover subtexts that held philosophical reasoning in place. The essay goes on to discuss the radical interpretive techniques, such as deconstruction, used by feminist philosophers, and explains that scholars have begun to question the very identity and root impulse of the discipline of philosophy. The essay concludes that the use of feminist materials in philosophy courses can lead to deep change in the way that philosophy is conceived of and taught, because women's work in philosophy has tended to be grounded in existential issues, critically self-reflective of its methodology, and open to interdisciplinary enrichment. The document includes a list of related electronic resources. (Contains 48 references.) (MDM)

This essay examines the ways in which European history, as a discipline, has been influenced by feminist scholarship in the field and by research on gender and sexuality. It explains that historians continue to challenge assumptions that have long obscured women's places in the economic, social, and political histories of Europe, especially in regard to ideological and economic factors that shaped the gender division of labor. The essay goes on to report that feminist historians have been active participants in efforts to rethink European history through the lens of cultural analysis, using the tools of anthropology, literary theory, and cultural studies. It examines recent scholarship on the body, sexuality, and identity in European history, noting that the new literature on sexuality has also included many studies of homosexuality. The essay notes that feminist scholarship has led to critiques of such historical conceptual paradigms as the "golden age" of classical Athens, the Italian Renaissance, and the French Enlightenment, and that women's history has also called other standard historical categories and paradigms--class, modernity, capitalism--into question. A 175-item bibliography contains information on general surveys and collections; historiography and theory; economy, society and politics; culture and power; bodies, identities and subjectivities; Internet resources; and other resources. (MDM)