I think feminist studies it is useful to the society in much more substanative ways, than what women want.
when i worked for BT I found 'feminist' studies of technology to be a very useful resource when trying to shock middle-aged, middle-income (and predominantly male) research engineers out of their ego centric view of what real people do with technology, how they value it and what difference it makes to them. Whilst in a sense this was trying to get them to see 'what women want' (as a market) it was really an exercise in seeing the world differently and thus trying to 'engineer innovation'. Cynthia Cockburn and Judy Wajcman's work was useful here... I am not sure that this conceptual shock approach worked but that's another story :-)
marginalized both within and outside of the academy? I, personally, sometimes find the content so inaccessible that even I, as a somewhat
this is a problem that is not unique to feminist studies... /B -- Dr Ben Anderson www.essex.ac.uk/chimera +44 17710 187 806