Gendered Innovation in the Social Sciences

Abstract

There have been significant levels of gendered innovation across the social sciences. This chapter argues that such new norms and new knowledge are important in understanding the gendered realities of the worlds that social sciences seek to explain. In addition, they provide the wide lens we need for assessing progress towards goals of gender equality. Examining the relationship between advances in knowledge and the diversity brought by women to the academy, as well as the specifically critical approaches of feminist work, the chapter also discusses the uneven adoption of gender scholarship into mainstream social science disciplines, identifying factors such as methodological approaches and hegemonic assumptions that affect the rate of uptake.