The Impact of Feminist Research in the Academy

Women's studies programs, as the academic arm of the feminist movement, are central to the development and elaboration of feminist theory as well as being the locus for much of the research presently being done in the United States on women. But perhaps the single most important function of these programs is that of conservator of feminist learning-a sort of bureaucratic bastion against the suppression of the feminist perspective-so that history will not be forced to repeat itself, the wheel to be reinvented, before future generations come to realize, like those who came of age in the nineteen fifties, that there is more to feminism than gaining the vote.