How Gender Can Transform the Social Sciences

“This brilliant volume applies a gender lens to the knowledge-production process, revealing the distortions in what we thought we knew. The authors move beyond critique to suggest high-impact ways to remedy these shortcomings, a smart concept carried out consistently well. By using feminist interventions into the scholarship in each specific area they show how both knowledge and policy dramatically differ when inclusive science is done.” — Myra Marx Ferree, Alice H. Cook Professor of Sociology Emerita at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Local Affiliate at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University, USA


This collection turns a spotlight on gender innovation in the social sciences. Eighteen short and accessibly written case studies show how feminist and gender perspectives bring new concepts, theories and policy solutions. Scholars across five disciplines– economics, history, philosophy, political science and sociology – demonstratehow paying attention to gender can sharpen the focus of the social sciences, improve the public policy they inform, and change the way we measure things. Gender innovation provokes rethinking at both the core and the margins of established disciplines, sometimes developing alternative fields of research that chart new territory. These case studies celebrate the contribution of feminist and gender scholars and span topics ranging from budgeting, electoral systems and security studies to the ethics of care, emotional labor and climate change.