This paper investigates Epistemic Injustice (Fricker 2007) as an institutional phenomenon in Feminist Knowledge production. It shows how material and relational conditions of knowledge production shape who gains access to shaping the objects of Gender studies and the social meaning attached to these. It furthermore, and connected, explores which knowledge is ascribed value and legitimacy. I draw on the methodological and conceptual resources of Institutional Ethnography (Smith 2005). More particularly on the concept of Standpoint and Ruling Relations (Smith 1999), to unpack the ways in which feminist knowledge production is socially organized, resulting in some knowledge perspectives or positions being flagged and others downplayed. Institutions are defined as “clusters of text-mediated relations organized around a specific ruling function” such as higher education (Devault & McCoy 2006, 17). Institutions appear in specific local settings and are specialized in particular and purposeful activities, involving sequences of action and concrete coordination of activities (e.g. writing manuscripts, teaching, planning curriculum). At the same time they participate in trans-local (often contradictory) relations, some of which are categorizing, standardizing and generalizing (e.g. rules, regulations, managerial and professional discourse, organizational culture and policies, institutionalized frames and notions of ‘good feminism’). How are the local activities and choices, possibilities and limitations, of feminist scholars’ knowledge production shaped in such translocal relations. The paper is based on data from life-story interviews with 20 feminist academics at different stages of their academic careers, located in different departments and at different universities in Finland.

DeVault, M. & McCoy, L. (2006) ‘Institutional Ethnography’: Using interviews to investigate ruling relations’ in Smith, D. (Ed.) Institutional Ethnography in Practice. Toronto: Rowman & Littlefield Inc. Fricker, M. (2007) Epistemic Injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smith, D. (2005) Institutional Ethnography: A Sociology for People. Lanham: AltaMira Press. Smith, D. (1999) Writing the Social: Critique, Theory and Investigations. Toronto: Toronto University Press.