Faced with the a choice of more hospitable disciplines and the disdain of the profession, why did some feminists persist with political science? Partly of course because we had already invested in it, but there was more. Despite successive take over projects (behaviourism, game theory, rational choice etc.) the political science of the 1970s and 1980s was wide ranging, drawing on a number of different cognate disciplines. It was also committed to important political goals, demonstrating that the discipline could be (and frequently was) harnessed to political goals. These two dimensions, combined with a focus on power are at root of my case that feminism has much to gain from political science.
