Furthermore, she identifies those most entrenched in the pattern of power-through-'knowledge' as male. "They have usually generated the explanations and the schemata and have then checked with each other and vouched for the accuracy and adequacy of their view of the world. They have created men's studies (the academic curriculum), for, by not acknowledging that they are presenting only the explanations of men, they have 'passed off' this knowledge as human knowledge. Women have been excluded as the producers of knowledge and as the subjects of knowledge, for men have often made their own knowledge and their own sex representative of humanity Fundamental to feminism is the premise that women have been 'left out' of codified knowledge; where men have formulated explanations in relation to themselves, they have generally either rendered women invisible or classified them as deviant."

In her Introduction, Spender covers many other issues regarding traditional epistemology and its relationship to women's experience. She devotes some space to the important discussion of "objectivity" and how the criteria of objectivity are often used to discredit women constructing knowledge about themselves: "When men checked with men, their pronouncements were usually seen as credible, but when women checked with women, their explanations were frequently seen as illogical, irrational, emotional and liable to be dismissed by men. The hypothesis arose that legitimacy might be associated with gender rather than with the adequacy of an explanation, and this has led Adrienne Rich ... to comment that in a patriarchal society, objectivity is the name we give to male subjectivity. (Anna Bexall ... has also suggested that males have a great emotional investment in objectivity.)"

Spender ends her Introduction by stating at women are not only constructing knowledge about women, but that we are also changing the 'rules' which apply both to content and production. She claims that Men's Studies Modified documents the extent to which feminist scholarship has been taken into account and to which this scholarship has altered the power configurations of various disciplines.

I have devoted so much space to Spender's Introduction because it is an excellent and coherent piece of work which covers the basic issues a volume of this sort should. The essays themselves are highly variable and do not all deliver a cogent account of the effect of feminism on the production of knowledge or power structure within various disciplines. In many cases, they review current scholarly literature with a view to its focus on women, but because of the enormity of the publishing industry among academics, these reviews tend to focus on one or another subject of study within the discipline. For example, Jane Lewis in her most interesting essay, "Women, Lost and Found: The Impact of Feminism on History," has devoted most of her space to a discussion of treatment of the historical position of women in the family. This is understandable, because this is a huge subject however, Spender leads us to expect a very comprehensive treatment of each discipline, which cannot possibly be offered in a volume of this size and variety.

Most of the essays do cover to some extent the precepts regarding women in their disciplines and some of the ways in which feminist scholars are attempting to effect change. There is usually some treatment of the state of research in the discipline under discussion, and some attempt to deal with the status of women in academic institutions within these disciplines, as well, sometimes, as their status in the publishing and international association circuits.

My own biases make me most interested in those discussions which touch on the epistemological bases of the disciplines. For example, Joni Lovenduski, in her article, "Toward the Emasculation of Political Science: The Impact of Feminism," claims that political scientists themselves have difficulty in defining the parameters of their discipline: "Political Science has been a product of the interplay of its practitioners rather than a set of truths or laws discovered by them Political Science is a construct of Political Scientists." The difficulty of defining the, study itself is compounded when one contemplates the inclusion of women because, there never was any way that the modern study of politics could fail to be sexist. Its empirical concerns have been almost exclusively those of the exercise of public power, aspects of political elites and aspects of the institutions of government. Such studies are bound to exclude women, largely because women usually do not dispose of public power, belong to political elites or hold influential positions in government institutions."