Knowledge and/as Power: A Feminist Critique of Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights

Abstract

The article defines a research agenda that explores the relationship between gender, knowledge, innovation, and property rights against the backdrop of the recent processes of market liberalization and transformation of the relationship between states’ and the global economy. It suggests that Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights are institutionalizing the historically exclusionary bounded definitions of what counts as knowledge, and thus denying the role of millions of women in the production of knowledge over time. It concludes that this property regime challenges women to engage in the struggle over meanings of knowledge, invention, and property.