Women inside and outside Academia: a struggle to access knowledge, legitimacy, and influence

Starting from the observation that women still represent a minority in the higher echelons of universities and scientific institutions, the article discusses a number of strategies used to 'keep them out'. Historically the main strategy was to refuse to admit women. This refusal was accompanied by discourses devaluing women's intellectual capacities, while stressing their domestic and motherly duties, and by the actual burdening of women with these duties. When women succeeded in entering universities, subsequent strategies have been the appropriation by men of women's scientific production, sexual harassment (going as far as physical elimination) and anti-feminist intellectual harassment. Notwithstanding this strong opposition, during the last 30 years scientific production by women and feminists has been extensive, of high quality and innovative. This knowledge has advanced our understanding of important scientific and social problems, benefited both men and women, and contributed in some cases to a limitation of traditional male privileges.