Feminists have re-visioned women as active subjects in knowledge by granting them agency and diversity and by challenging divisions like public versus private. But both feminist and traditional knowledge remain deeply adult centered. Adult perspectives infuse three contemporary images of children: as threats to adult society, as victims of adults, and as learners of adult culture. We can bring children more fully into knowledge by clarifying ideological constructions, with attention to the diversity of children's actual lives and circumstances; by emphasizing (...) children's agency as well as their subordination; and by challenging their conceptual privatization. The re-visioning of children involves complex issues of gender, generation, autonomy, and relatedness. (shrink)

What happened to the feminist movement of the optimistic 1970s during the 1980s? Was it stifled by the political and economic changes associated with Thatcherism, or did it help bring those changes about? Will the 1990s see a new generation of feminists who will not tolerate the conditions under which their mothers work and live? Joni Lovenduski and Vicky Randall trace the movement's accomplishments and defeats over four successive Conservative governments. They argue that its development can only be understood in (...) the context of a rapidly changing social and economic environment and that the movement's deradicalization and apparent decline have in fact been accompanied by a greater involvement with state agencies and the growing presence of feminists in mainstream institutions. The central section examines five key areas for feminist politics: political representation and citizenship, equal employment opportunities, reproductive rights and health, motherhood and childcare, and male violence. For all of these it explores both the main preoccupations of feminist theory and important grass-roots developments. It concludes that a feminist-influenced British Women's Movement is a changed but unmistakably significant political force in the 1990s. (shrink)