By Goh Yi Xiang

WOMAN SOCIOLOGISTS

Classical Feminist Theory

Female sociologists have generally been overlooked

While male sociologists focused on objective grand-narratives …

Female sociologists focused on the lives and work of women through gendered perspectives

Engages social problems like social inequality

Offered solutions to ameliorate social problems

Harriet Martineau (1802-1876)

“Founding mother" of sociology Published twenty-five didactic novels in a series called “Illustrations of Political Economy”

First sociological research text: “How to Observe Morals and Manners”

3 volumes of field work in the USA: “Society in America”

Research in the Middle East: “Eastern Life: Present and Past”

Translated Comte's “Positive Philosophy”

1500+ newspaper columns

Method and Core Foundations

Avoided ahistorical, ideal-typical, generalised theories

Viewed the central concern of sociology to be "social life in society”: social patterns, causes, consequences, and social problems

Believed in social laws, progressive evolution, and positivism

Goal of human life is happiness Researched human "morals and manners" to achieve this end

Used a comparative methodological approach to study the moral progression in various societies

Focus on Individual Social Groups Concerned with gender, racial, and class inequality

Emphasized patriarchal domination of women

Focused on marriage patterns and slavery when researching the moral condition of America

Focused on the conditions of wage-earning women in Great Britain and the lives of the poor in “Eastern Life: Present and Past”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935)

Born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1860

Unconventional mindset Wrote over 2000 works – novels, poetry, journals, commentaries, autobiographies on women’s lives

Wrote “Women and Economics” Founded the academic journal “The Forerunner”

Died of breast cancer in 1935

Method and Core Foundations Economic arrangements led to Excessive sex distinction in America (gendered division of labor)

“Sexuo-economic arrangement” led to a master class of men and a subordinate class of women.

The need for men to be recognized by an Other, is the foundation of man’s need to dominate women

Meaningful work is the essence of self-realization.

Unlike Marx, was concerned with how women, rather than the working class, were alienated from their species being

Androcentric Culture

Her Solutions to Social Problems

The economic emancipation of women: By opening up opportunities for women to work for wages in the public sphere

The rational dismantling of the household’s androcentric culture:

By professionalizing household work, such as child care and food service.

Jane Addams (1860-1935) Labeled by FBI as among the “most dangerous radicals”

Won the Nobel Prize in 1931 Created the Hull House for social reforms

Wrote “Twenty Years at Hull House” (1910)

Democracy and Social Ethics (1902)

Peace and Bread in Times of War (1922)

The Second Twenty Years at Hull-House (1930)

Method and Core Concepts

Privileged personal experiences over pure theory by personally visited the communities that she had helped

Like Simmel and Mead, she was more interested in micro-level social interaction than in social structures and institutions.

Viewed the individual as an embodied subject with a mind capable of reason and emotion in a body that materially experiences the social world.

Concerned with the emotion of kindness and with how individuals desired sociality.

Believed that emotions, not just material conditions, could affect social change

Social Reformism Viewed sociological theory as a means to reform society, particularly in ameliorating social problems intensified by immigration, urbanization, and industrialization.

The social ethic: individual action geared towards the welfare of the community.

Example: Educating consumers on how to use their purchasing power to help improve the working conditions of women wage earners

Created the Hull House, in a Chicago working-class, immigrant neighborhood for purposes of social reform

Her Solutions to Social Problems

Movement towards social democracy faced 2 issues: (1) Overcoming individualism and (2) the difficulty of understanding each other’s vantage point.

Offered three strategies to solve these tensions:

Formal education to recognize the importance of social democracy

Informally encouraging people to interact with other classes, genders, and ethnicities

Use the historical memories of individuals to help people to re-discover their relationship with society

Anna Julia Cooper (1859-1964)

Born a slave in Raleigh, North Carolina

Highly precocious Studied at St. Augustine’s Normal and Collegiate Institute, and Oberlin College

Wrote “A Voice from the South from a Black Women from the South”

“Slavery and the French Revolutionists” (1788)

Ida Wells-Barnett (1862-1931)

Born to slave parents in Holy Springs, Mississippi

Studied at Fiske and LeMoyne Institute

Lifelong African American activist

Found the National Association of Colored Women, National Afro-American Council, and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Wrote “On Lynchings” (1894)

Methods and Core Concepts Ida Wells-Barnett: Uses qualitative methods: statistics, interviews, and secondary accounts

Cooper: Explicitly engaged in theoretical work Both focused on the role power plays in social life towards sexism and racism in American society

Both rarely touched the themes of social evolution Argued that domination and stratification are structurally pervasive in modern society.

Example: Cooper viewed society as a system of institutions, stratified groups, and cultural aspirations characterized by domination or equilibrium, and it is never free of conflict.

Marianne Schnitger Weber (1870-1954)

The wife of Max Weber President of the Federation of German Women's Organizations

Central aim: create a sociology from the standpoint of women through (1) the emphasis on female autonomy, (2) the reproduction of culture through women’s works, and (3) the unique perspectives of women

Concerned with institutional constraints towards women in these three issues.

Example: Studied marriage and found that women do not achieve much autonomy and self-fulfillment in conventional marriages, unlike men.

Methods and Core Concepts

Critiqued Simmel's notion that men and women occupied different culture spheres: the objective external male world of achievement and the inner personal female world of self-development.

Failed to explain women's work in the household Suggested a new “middle ground of immediate daily life” of cultural production

Debated the notion that women becoming wage earners is the only path to equality

Believed that the patriarchal ideology, and not the capitalist structure, must be reformed

Beatrice Potter Webb (1858-1943)

A student of Herbert Spencer,

Leading Fabian socialist in Great Britain

Concerned with the problem of poverty and inequality

Became a charity worker to study poverty

Wrote “The Life and Labour of the People of London” (1892)

Methods and Core Concepts

Believed that by studying the working class, one can reform the capitalist economic system better

Concerned with the relationship between class, economy, institutions, and states

Argued that state intervention was needed to control the economy

Preferred gradual rather than swift revolutionary change

Formulated a “critical empiricism” method of using qualitative and quantitative methods to advocate social change

Conclusion Each of the female sociologists covered had their theories distinctively framed by their intellectual and social influences

However, they were similar in that they spoke from the “vantage point” of women

And maintained that research is a means to social reform

Their works would found the basis of various forms of feminist theories