4.1 Chapter Introduction
Chapter Overview: Women in Sociology
“We have already gathered the empirical facts concerning the distribution of women among students and faculty of graduate sociology departments. What we seek is effective and dramatic action: an unbiased policy in the selection of stipend support of students; a concerted commitment to the hiring and promotion of women sociologists to right the imbalance that is represented by the current situation in which 67 percent of the women graduate students in this country do not have a single woman sociology professor of senior rank during the course of their graduate training, and when we participate in an association of sociologists in which:
- NO woman will sit on the 1970 council,
- NO woman is included among the associate editors of the American Sociological Review, or the advisory board of the American Journal of Sociology, and
- NO woman sits on the committees on publications and nominations.
We urge [that] every sociology department give priority to the hiring and promotion of women faculty until the proportion and rank distribution of women faculty at least equals the sex ratio among graduate students with a long-range goal of increasing the proportion of women among graduate students. In working toward such a goal, this must supplement rather than detract from department efforts to train, hire, and promote black and Third World personnel and students.”
- Excerpt from the Women’s Caucus Statement and Resolutions American Sociological Association General Business Meeting, September 3, 1970
During the 1968 annual business meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA), sociologist Cynthia Fuchs Epstein (she/her) proposed that the ASA “address discrimination against women.” Her proposal was met with dismissive laughter from the male-dominated assembly. The following year, 200 feminist scholars—students, researchers, and faculty—held an alternate event during the ASA annual meeting to support each other and to draft the Women’s Caucus Statement and Resolutions (excerpted above). Out of this collective action, Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS) was organized:
a nonprofit professional feminist organization dedicated to encouraging the development of sociological feminist theory and scholarship; transforming the academy through feminist leadership, career development, and institutional diversity; promoting social justice through local, national, and international activism; and supporting the publication and dissemination of cutting-edge feminist social science. (Sociologists for Women in Society, n.d.)
Feminism is an interdisciplinary approach to issues of equality and equity based on gender, gender expression, gender identity, sex, and sexuality, as understood through social theories and political activism (Eastern Kentucky University, n.d.). Feminist sociologists have pushed for the inclusion of people and perspectives previously excluded from the field, including women and people who identify as LGBTQIA+, people who are disabled, and People of the Global Majority (PGM). Applying the tools of sociology to the study of gender and sexuality, they have pioneered innovative research practices and produced a robust body of research and scholarship to support our evolving, expansive, and inclusive understanding of gender and sexuality.
Recall from Chapter Two that gender is socially constructed and that the social construction of gender is an ongoing process for individuals and societies. To understand how feminist theory has revealed and described the many ways that gender is socially constructed, this chapter sketches out the development of feminist theory across three historical “waves” of feminism.
As you work through the chapter, notice how social theory is a way of making sense of social conditions. It is impossible to separate a theory from current political and economic power structures. Notice also how theories change as activism and organizing shifts power within social science disciplines.
The chapter also introduces you to a diverse group of interdisciplinary scholars, each working from a feminist standpoint within gender and sexuality studies, and to four contemporary theories related to gender: post-structuralism, queer theory, crip theory, and postcolonial studies. The final section demonstrates how each of these theories reveals a different aspect of the gender pay gap introduced in Chapter One.
Key Terms
- abjection: a reaction (horror, vomit) to a threatened breakdown in meaning caused by the loss of the distinction between subject and object or between self and other (Kristeva, 2010).
- coalitional politics: refers to political association with those who have differing identities, around shared experiences of oppression (Taylor, 2017).
- conflict theory: is a macro-level theory that proposes conflict is a basic fact of social life, which argues that the institutions of society benefit the powerful.
- crip theory: a subfield of sociology that reveals and interrupts the harmful social pressures and social norms of ableism and heteronormativity.
- embodiment: refers to the shape of a person’s body, the feeling of a person’s body, and what a person’s body can do (Herbert and Pollatos, 2012).
- emotional labor: to describe work that requires managing personal emotions and the emotions of other people (Hochschild, 1983).
- feminism: is an interdisciplinary approach to issues of equality and equity based on gender, gender expression, gender identity, sex, and sexuality as understood through social theories and political activism (Eastern Kentucky University, n.d.).
- identity politics: which refers to organizing politically around the experiences and needs of people who share a particular identity.
- macro-sociology: studies how systems interact with individuals or with other systems.
- micro-sociology: is the study of small groups and individual interactions.
- occupational segregation: is a form of social stratification in the labor market in which one group is more likely to do certain types of work than other groups. Gender-based occupational segregation describes situations in which women are more likely to do certain jobs and men do others.
- postcolonial theory: originated with scholars from former European colonies in the global south. Postcolonial theory explores how colonization disrupts social arrangements, including gender relations of the people who lived in colonized places. Gender-based differences in work and pay for women of the global south are an example of the ongoing results of colonialism.
- post-structuralism: de-centers dominant perspectives to decolonize ideas of culture and societal structures.
- queer theory: a framework for understanding gender and sexual practices outside of heterosexuality.
- standpoint theory: argues that knowledge is socially situated and that the dominant standpoint of social and natural sciences has been based on “rampant sexism and androcentrism (centering men)” (Harding, 1992).
- structural functionalism: also called functionalism, a macro-level theory concerned with large-scale processes and large-scale social systems that order, stabilize, and destabilize societies.
- symbolic interactionist theory: is a micro-level theory concerned with how meanings are constructed through interactions with others and is associated with the Chicago School of Sociology.
- transnational feminism: is a body of theory and activism that highlights the connections between sexism, racism, classism, and imperialism.
Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter, you will be able to do the following:
- Identify three early theoretical perspectives of social inequality.
- Discuss key theoretical developments that correspond with each wave of feminism.
- Explain why post-structuralism made it possible to understand gender in new ways.
- Analyze the gender pay gap using foundational, feminist, poststructural, and post-colonial theories.
- Use Queer Theory to analyze sexual orientation as a social construct.
Licenses and Attributions for Chapter Introduction
Open Content, Original
“Chapter Introduction” by Nora Karena is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
Figure 4.1. “Major Theorists of Three Foundational Paradigms of Sociology” by Nora Karena and Katie Losier, Open Oregon Educational Resources, is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
All Rights Reserved Content
“Feminism” definition from Eastern Kentucky University is included under fair use.
a group of people who live in a defined geographic area, who interact with one another, and who share a common culture (Conerly et al. 2021).
is an interdisciplinary approach to issues of equality and equity based on gender, gender expression, gender identity, sex, and sexuality as understood through social theories and political activism (Eastern Kentucky University, n.d.)
the meanings, attitudes, behaviors, norms, and roles that a society or culture ascribes to sexual differences (Adapted from Conerly et.al. 2021a).
the way our gender identity is expressed outwardly through clothing, personal grooming, self-adornment, physical posture and gestures, and other elements of self-presentation.
the gender we experience ourselves to be.
refers to a person’s personal and interpersonal expression of sexual desire, behavior, and identity.
an acronym that stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual, Plus a continuously expanding spectrum of gender identities and sexual orientations.
a systematic approach that involves asking questions, identifying possible answers to your question, collecting, and evaluating evidence—not always in that order—before drawing logical, testable conclusions based on the best available evidence.
de-centers dominant perspectives to decolonize ideas of culture and societal structures.
a framework for understanding gender and sexual practices outside of heterosexuality.
a subfield of sociology that reveals and interrupts the harmful social pressures and social norms of ableism and heteronormativity.
emotional, romantic, or sexual attraction to other people; often used to signify the relationship between a person’s gender identity and the gender identities to which a person is most attracted (Learning for Justice 2018).
shared meaning that is created, accepted, and reproduced by social interactions between people within a society.