Feminist Theory in

Sociology
Classical Sociology – Where are the
women?
 Auguste Comte
 Women were either almost completely ignored, or briefly discussed and then
dismissed, or located within specific social locations such as the family.
 Woman as the private reproductive "body", taking care of the home and
hearth, and man as the public rational, political, and noble "mind" living in the
larger world of commerce and politics. Women's mission was to humanize
men.
 Sociology will prove that the equality of sexes of this so much is said, is
incompatible with all social existence’. It is incompatible because women’s
life is essentially domestic, public life being confined to men
 Women lack intellectual capabilities…her moral and physical sensibility are
hostile to scientific abstraction
Durkheim and Simmel

 For Durkheim, women were needed to control the passions of men, and
the site for this was the family.
 "Must one of the sexes necessarily be sacrificed, and is the solution only
to choose the lesser of the two evils."
 Simmel
 Man was differentiated, because of the division of labor, and his "home"
was beyond himself, resulting in a dualistic nature for men, but not for
women. In order to solve that split, men had to live more creatively than
women (Celia Winkler).
 Weber – more sophisticated
 Social hierarchies displaced. Patriarchal household subordinated
women. He analyzed the changed domestic relations attendant upon
the modem secularisation process, replacing status with contract.
Three Waves of Feminism
First Wave – In the 1830s, the main issues were abolition of
slavery and women’s rights. 1848 – Women’s Rights
Convention held in Seneca Falls, NY. 1920 – the 19th
Amendment guaranteed women the right to vote.

Second Wave – In the years, 1966-1979, there was heightened

feminist consciousness. The movement was linked to the Civil
Rights movement begun in the late ’50s. Key issues:
antidiscrimination policies and equal privileges.

Third Wave –…What characterizes the third wave?!

(Inclusive, eclectic, beyond thinking in dualities).
 Feminist Perspective?
FEMINISM FIRST EMERGED AS A CRITIQUE OF TRADITIONAL
SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY, SAYING THAT SOCIOLOGY DIDN’T
ACKNOWLEDGE THE EXPERIENCES OF WOMEN

FEMINIST SCHOLARS ARGUED THAT SOCIOLOGY STUDIED MEN –

NOT HUMAN BEINGS – SO IT REALLY ONLY ANALYZED THE “MALE
SOCIAL UNIVERSE”
IF WOMEN WERE STUDIED, IT WAS THROUGH MEN’S EYES. IN THIS
WAY, THEY ARGUED FURTHERMORE THAT SOCIOLOGY
CONTRIBUTED TO THE SUBORDINATION AND EXPLOITATION OF
WOMEN
 Feminist Perspective
THE FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE FOCUSES ON THE SIGNIFICANCE
OF GENDER IN UNDERSTANDING AND EXPLAINING
INEQUALITIES THAT EXISTS BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN IN
THE HOUSEHOLD, IN THE PAID LABOUR FORCE AND IN THE
REALMS OF POLITICS, LAW AND CULTURE

FEMINIST SOCIOLOGY ATTEMPTS TO BRING TO LIGHT

WOMEN’S PROBLEMS

For example: violence against women

poverty of women
invisibility of women’s role in
reproduction
Gender Difference

Cultural +ve aspects of

feminine Not concerned with promoting values of
personality
Feminism Ethics of Care
women's difference

Theories De Beauvoir’s call for women to

of Sexual reject their status in masculine
culture as the existential Other
Difference
Culture created by
One is not born a men; constructs
Womens ways of being should be infused
woman, one women as the
in Public life – for freedom and safer world
other (object not
becomes one agent)
Gender Inequality – Liberal
Feminism
 Women and men – not only different but also unequal  affects self
actualization of women; Women as situationally less empowered
then men
 Liberal Feminism rest on (1) all human beings have certain essential
features—capacities for reason, moral agency, and self-
actualization—(2) the exercise of these capacities can be secured
through legal recognition of universal rights, (3) the inequalities
between men and women assigned by sex are social constructions
having no basis in “nature,” and (4) social change for equality can
be produced by an organized appeal to a reasonable public and
the use of the state
 Marriage as cultural (women) and Institutional (Men – more power)
 CHANGE POSSIBLE – INDIVIDUAL AS FREE
 Gender Oppression Theory
 Domination of men over women = patriarchy  Patriarchy as the promary
power structure (not unintended); Gender Difference and Inequality are by-
products of Patriarchy – Two key forms
Psychoanalytic Feminism Radical Feminism

All men want to sustain patriarchy, Why?
Men have fear of death and Socio-
emotional environment of child
Fear of death: Man is envy of women’s
reproductive role Socio-emotional: Woman
becomes mother; Man gets wife
Fail to explore the intermediate social
arrangements that link emotion to
oppression.
Patriarchy is historically the first structure of
domination and submission, it
continues…Patriarchy as VIOLENCE
practiced by men and male dominated
organisations against women
Men survive patriarchy because they
have resources and power.
Lesbian Feminism as a major strand of in
radical feminism – erotic/emotion
commitment to women as part of
resistance
Structural Oppression
Socialist Feminism
The relational basis for women’s subordination lies in the family, an institution aptly named
from the Latin word for servant, because the family as it exists in complex societies is
overwhelmingly a system in which men command women’s services.

Way Out: Socialist feminists’ program for change calls for global solidarity among women to
combat the abuses capitalism works in their lives, in the lives of their communi- ties, and in
the environment
Structural Oppression
Intersectionality
While all women potentially experience oppression on the basis of gender, women are,
nevertheless, differentially oppressed by the varied intersections of other arrangements of
social inequality.

These vectors of oppression and privilege, which include not only gender but also class, race,
global location, sexual preference, and age

The privilege exercised by some women and men turns on the oppression of other women
and men

Way Out: Give Voice to group knowledges worked out in specific life experience created by
historic intersections

“heterogeneous commonality”; “shared circumstances directly encountered, given, and

transmitted from the past.’” -- Turn to knowledge of oppressed people
Feminist?

 Meaning of feminist change over time – those who critique female

disadvantage? Disadvantage is contextual.
 We cannot talk about a single feminism, it is similarly impossible to
describe a unified approach to feminist sociological theory
 Are you a Feminist?
What Kind?
 Who can be a feminist? Who cannot?
 Can men be Feminist?