When Women Ask the Questions: Creating Women's Studies in America

In When Women Ask the Questions, Marilyn Boxer traces the successes and failures of women's studies, examines the field's enduring impact on the world of higher education, and concludes that the rise of women's studies has challenged the university in the same way that feminism has challenged society at large.

Drawing on her experiences as a historian, feminist, academic administrator, and former chair of a women's studies program, Boxer observes that by working for justice -- and for changes necessary to make the attainment of justice a practical possibility -- women's studies ensures that women are heard in the processes and places where knowledge is created, taught, and preserved. The intellectual transformation behind the emergence of women's studies, Boxer concludes, is one of historic proportions. Like other great moments in human experience, it has given rise to a flowering of art, literature, and science, and to the challenging of previously accepted authorities of text and tradition.

Marilyn Jacoby Boxer is a professor of history at San Francisco StateUniversity and an Affiliated Scholar at Stanford University's Institute for Research on Women and Gender.