Recent retrieval of pre-nineteenth century feminist thought provides a telling lesson in the politics of knowledge creation and control. From a feminist perspective, very little research carried out within the critical research paradigm questions the "basic assumptions, conventional wisdom, media myths and the accepted way of doing things" that are embedded in and contribute to the structure of gender relations. Women, from the most to the least developed parts of the world, have become a fulcrum for the interpenetration of male-dominated transnational economics and communication, a phenomenon largely ignored by the media. In the matter of whose interests are being served in these various presences and absences of women in the international flow of capital and communication, it is impossible to ignore the role of national governments or international agencies, and at the level of national economic and information systems, the relationship between women and communications is analogous. An increase in the number of women media gatekeepers would not necessarily result in a solution to these problems. The United Nations Mid-Decade Conference on Women and the MacBride Report of the International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems are two examples highlighting the mechanisms of control that exclude women from opportunities to direct changes for their benefit. With the balance of power--in terms of political control, economics, communication, and knowledge--so skewed, it is little wonder that the analyses of feminists who lived prior to the eighteenth century are still relevant and radical 300 years later. (HTH)