This introductory textbook offers a concise and lucid account ofthe main developments in contemporary feminist thinking, anddemonstrates the centrality of feminist thought to all areas ofintellectual enquiry.In a wide-ranging discussion, Evans argues that most accounts ofthe world since the Enlightenment have been constructed in terms ofa distinction between the public and the private which excludedwomen. Using both historical and more recent examples, she examinesthe breadth and complexity of feminist thinking, focusing on keythemes such as the body, representation, engendering knowledge, andthe relationship between women and the state.Evans argues that feminist thought seeks less to add to existingtheory than to re-theorize the social and symbolic worlds; nocontemporary account of these worlds, she suggests, is completewithout a discussion of the implications of gender difference.This book offers a clear and coherent guide to contemporaryfeminism for students of women's studies, gender studies,sociology, social theory and literary theory.

Acknowledgements.Introduction.1. Enter Women.2. Public and Private: Women and the State.3. Engendering Knowledge.4. Representation.5. The Body.6. Feminism and the Academy.7. Worlds of Difference?.Notes.Bibliography.Index.