Measuring the Effects of Feminist Legal Research: Looking Critically at 'Failure' and 'Success'

Abstract

What is the point of writing? What impact is it meant to have on the world, and what impact does it actually have? These are questions that all academic researchers are called upon to answer, at some point, for themselves or for others. They seem to arise more often and with extra urgency in relation to feminist research. Feminist scholarship must justify itself not only to the usual skeptics who doubt the need for independent, non-instrumental knowledge production, but also to two other audiences.