Feminism: Dorothy Smith (1926 - )

Gynocentric feminism

Women share a common identity

Everything social and psychological structured by gender

Women’s lives center around domesiticity

Women’s Knowledge

Women’s unique situation leads to unique ways of knowing

Women’s knowledge grounded in specific, detailed, daily activities

Women’s knowledge likewise particularistic, not general

Such knowledge is discounted by the male social universe

Sexist Sociology?

Sociology by and for men Women’s issues ignored Problem of public world

– Impersonal, abstract and general– Thought of as rational

Sociology as a ruling ideology

Smith’s Feminist Sociology

Central aim: free women from patriarchal relations

Mary O’Brien

Why Patriarchy?

Men’s relation to reproduction

Alienation of the male seed– Paternity uncertain– No natural relationship between man and

child Relations with child social and

ideological– Right to child mediated by right to woman– Requires agreement among men

Manifestations of Patriarchy

Marriage Public/private spheres of life Downfall of patriarchy through control

of fertility