In parallel with the growth and diversification of feminism, the disci­pline of sociology was also changing. In the mid-1960s, the dominant American sociology, which therefore dominated the English-speaking world, was Parsonian structural functionalism. In 1971 Gouldner pub­lished an attack on this orthodoxy The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology which was savaged at the time but […]

There are three currents in feminist sociology which can be clearly dis­tinguished from the early 1970s to the present day: liberal feminist sociology, Marxist feminist sociology and radical or separatist feminist sociology. In the past decade, there has also been a distinct postmod­ernist feminist sociology. There are other theoretical positions in femi­nism which could be […]

The account which follows is an oversimplified one, and is also con­tested. The material in the following seven chapters will subvert the simple schema which follows. Maynard (1995) proposed, several years ago, that the ‘three schools’ model which follows was not an accurate characterisation of feminist sociology in the 1990s. Paula England (1999: 263) argues […]

The potential literature which could be cited in a book such as this is overwhelming in range and in sheer amount. I have, therefore, illus­trated the arguments made with examples from four empirical areas: the sociologies of education, stratification, science and medicine. These are the areas I know best in sociology. I have crossed the […]

This chapter introduces the book and briefly explores its place in the series. The chapter will explain the ‘crisis of western sociology’ in the late 1960s, to use Gouldner’s (1971) phrase, and the consequent explo­sion of new ideas and the ‘zesty disarray’ that developed out of that cri­sis. The theoretical schools of feminism will be […]

To understand the varieties of feminist sociology it is important to know something of the history of feminism as a social movement, because the feminist sociologies are a product of a particular phase of feminism. For the purposes of the book, feminism is divided into three broad phases. First Wave feminism, from about 1848 to […]

When the patriarchy gets worried it goes into action. (Cross, 1981: 22) T his is a book about feminist sociology. It is not an account of the sociological research on women. There are plenty of those (e. g. Delamont, 1980, 2001 and Pilcher, 1999). Rather it is an account of a theoretical perspective in sociology […]

of silverbacks and tree houses When struggling to write this book I wondered why I had asked to do so. On hearing about the series I wrote to the editor Robert Moore and asked who was writing the gender/feminism volume. In part this was to ensure that feminist, and gender issues were included in the […]

New Horizons in Sociology The British Sociological Association is publishing a series of books to review the state of the discipline at the beginning of the millenium. New Horizons in Sociology also seeks to locate the contribution of British scholarship to the wider development of sociology. Sociology is taught in all the major institutions of […]