“…In a discussion on women's progress toward engendering a feminist academic practice, one researcher states that "we know that alternative academic orientation--and genderrelated or feminist politics--still risk being branded as polemics rather than scholarship" (Self, 1988, p. 3 (Steeves, 1988, p. 12 (Treichler and Wartella, 1986;Wood, 1988). Communication researcher Self (1988) This study is grounded in feminist theory which gives primacy to 1) the assertion that gender is socially constructed; 2) the need for a balance of power between the sexes; 3) the validity of women's experiences and women's ways of knowing and 4) the importance of communication in defining and reshaping reality to include women in all aspects of the production of social life.…”