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Classic Sociological Theory > Early Women Sociologists > Flashcards

Early Women Sociologists Flashcards

1
Q

Who were the Early Women Sociologists?

A

-Women who were writing during the early 19th century to the early 20th century
- most were feminists
- All were social theorists, not sociologists

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2
Q

What are the waves of feminism?

A

1st: 1830s to 1920s, analyzed how and why women occupy a different and unequal position is society
2nd: 1960s to 1990s
3rd: 1990s - 2000s
4th: 2010s - present

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3
Q

Who is called the first women sociologist

A

Harriet Martineau

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4
Q

Why were women erased from the history of sociology?

A
  1. Politics of gender
    - sociology exists within the contest of a patriarchal society.
    - Decline of woman’s theories from the 1920s to the 1960s
  2. The politics of knowledge
    - during the first half of the 20th century, male academic elite saw sociology in a certain way that de-legitimized the work of EWS
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5
Q

When/how were EWS re-introduced into the history of sociology?

A

1960s, EWS became reintroduced
- difficulty in reintroduction as records were incomplete and difficult to recover.

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6
Q

Who was Harriet Martineau?

A

British social theorist and writer during the 1920s to 1950s.

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7
Q

What was Harriet Martineau’s early life?

A
  • born in 1802 by a large family of 10
  • liberal unitarian religious faith (emphasized education, which is why she was educated)
  • age of 12 she lost most of her hearing
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8
Q

What was Martineau’s education and employment?

A
  • Strong student
  • Didn’t go to university
  • Began publishing in 1920 within the Unitarian journal “the repository”
  • Father’s business failed so she became a writer to support her family
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9
Q

What was Martineau’s early writing?

A

Published over 20 short stories, “Illustrations of Political Economy”
- IPE were fictitious stories that aim to educate the public of economic and politican principles
- very popular work, outsold Charles Dickens

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10
Q

What was Martineau’s later writing?

A
  • Turned to academic writing
  • 3 volumes of “Society in America” - critical sociological analysis on American society, esp in relation to the inequality experienced by women and Black people
  • “How to observe Morals and Manners” - first book on sociologist research methods
  • English translation of Comte’s “Positive Philosophy”
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11
Q

What was Martineau’s later life and death?

A

Did public speaking til the last year of her life
- After her death, the record of her achievements were completely washed away, only known for translating Comte’s writing.

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12
Q

What was the basis of Martineau’s sociological analysis?

A

Sociology should investigate the patterns, causes, consequences, and problems associated with life in society.
- developed social laws

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13
Q

What was the most important social law (Martineau)?

A

Human association aims to generate human happiness
- Society generates human happiness if it: Has moral principles, allows people to have autonomy

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14
Q

What was Martineau’s analysis of morals and manners?

A

Society needs to address the extent t.o which society develops morals and manners that produce or subvert human happiness.
Morals: collective ideas about behaviour
Manners: Actual Behaviour or practices of society.
- Within society there should be an allignment between its morals and manners, if not, anomalies occur.

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15
Q

What are the 4 anomalies that undermined American Society?

A
  1. The subordination of women
  2. The existence of slavery
  3. The inequality in wealth
  4. The cynicism about elected represented
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16
Q

What are the 3 measures that ascertain a society’s progress in terms of it’s promotion of autonomy and allowed dominations?

A
  1. The condition of the less powerful
  2. Cultural attitudes and autonomy
  3. The extent to which all people are provided with the necessities for autonomous moral/practical action.
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17
Q

What was Martineau’s feminist analysis?

A
  • Examined the inequality experienced by women and the conditions shaping the lives of women in America
  • Concerned with the enslavement of Black people and how it reflects the poor moral condition of America society
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18
Q

In Martineau’s analysis, domination in American society is due to….

A

The contradiction between morals and manners.
- most acutely felt by Black women.
- Women and Black people didn’t have autonomy.

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19
Q

What are other topics Martineau wrote about?

A

Women’s education, family, marriage and the law, violence against women, women’s paid work, and other issues affecting women

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20
Q

Who was Charlotte Perkins Gilman?

A

Leading theoretician of feminism during the progressive era, she published short stories and poetry lecturing on women, labor, and social organization.

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21
Q

What was Gilman’s early life?

A

Born in 1960
- Came from a prominent and well to do family
- Parents divorced at 9, was raised by her mother in poverty

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22
Q

What was Gilman’s education and employment?

A
  • Received no regular education
  • Educated herself in intellectual debates about the place of women in society
  • Wrote in the “Women’s Journal”
  • Married someone and became depressed due to the confinement of traditional domestic life of a wife and mother, divorced her husband
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23
Q

What were Gilman’s major works?

A
  • “The right to earn money” - Women’s journal
  • The Yellow Wallpaper - fictitious story of a women drived to madness from the idleness that was imposed on her by her husband
  • Women and Economics - successful in academic circles
  • also wrote numerous feminist analyses
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24
Q

What was Gilman’s later life and death?

A

Never free from her depression
- Got breast cancer and committed suicide
- Writings were whipped out like other women’s work

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25
Q

What was Gilman’s theory of the sexuo-economic relation?

A
  • Refers to the condition to which one sex (female) is economically dependent on another sex (male)
  • Said that this condition only exists in human beings
  • Women do work that sustains men and children, but not for their won subsistence, satisfaction, or fulfillment.
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26
Q

What was Gilman’s theory of the origins of gender stratification?

A

Claim’s that man’s domination of woman springs from his need for sociability with or recognition by an other

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27
Q

What is Gilman’s theory of androcentric culture?

A
  • Culture that creates the ideals of masculinity and femininity and impacts all aspects of society.
  • Sexuo-economic relations are continuously reproduced by androcentric culture.
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28
Q

What was Gilman’s theory of public and private spheres

A

Society can be understood as dividing between the public w=economy of the marketplace and the private economy of the household
1st sphere: manly action, and women are marginal to it
2nd: Sphere of women’s labour, labour dependent on the economic power of men

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29
Q

What is the private sphere?

A

The household. Area of untrained, unprofessional demanding labour, wasteful of the women and society’s economic resources in its replication of need from house to house

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30
Q

What is the public sphere?

A

The market. When a man’s gender power becomes an oppressive economic responsibility for the provision of his household

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31
Q

What occurs due to the pressures within the private and public spheres?

A

A social system arises which encourages individualism, competition, conflict, class division, excessive greed, and wealth with crippling exploitation and deprivation

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32
Q

What is Gilman’s theory of excessive sex-distinction?

A

Simply maintaining sexuo-economic relations
- Refers to differences between men and women beyond those associated with biological sex.
- People have magnified implications of sex-distinctions so that they have become “excessive”
- Contemporary feminists have pointed out the this concept paved the way for the later concept of gender

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33
Q

What does Gilman theorize about eliminating the sexuo-economic relation?

A

Require 3 things:
1. Modifying socialization and education
2. Re-thinking relations between men and women
3. (Most important) Modifying the household so that women can be free to do work they choose and work that fulfils them
- household tasks could be handled professionally by well-trained people who provide those services.

34
Q

Who was Marianna Schnitger Weber?

A

german social theorist and women’s rights activist W

35
Q

What was marianna’s early life?

A

Born in 1870
- father became mentally ill after her mother died
- Shuttled among relatives
- Grew up in poverty with economic and psychological stresses

36
Q

What was Marianna’s education?

A

Received basic education as a child.
- Married her distant cousin Max Weber
- Studied at the University of Heidelberg and became interested in philosophy and feminist thought

37
Q

What was Marianna’s early scholarly career?

A

Became the leader of a newly organized society for the dissemination of feminist ideas

38
Q

What was Marianna’s scholarly career during Max’ breakdown?

A

Sidetracked due to his breakdown
- Published “Politics and the Women’s Movement”

39
Q

What was Marianna’s later scholarly career?

A

Became well known as an intellectual and political circles as a feminist
Wrote numerous works about females work in the household and in marriage
“Autonomy and Authority in Marriage”

40
Q

What was Marianna’s career after Max’ death

A

Went into a depression and withdrew from social life
- Concluded max’ Economy and Society
- Wrote Max Weber: A Biography
- Accepted an honorary doctorate from the University of Heidelberg for her work

41
Q

What was Marianna’s later life and death?

A

Hitler dissolved the Federation of German Women’s Organizations
- Feminist work swept under the rug
- much of her work was not translated until the last 30 years.

42
Q

What was significant about Marianna’s research style?

A

Always had an empirical basis for her theoretical ideas, always connected to legal, historical, and statistical data and research.

43
Q

What did Marianna argue about the standpoint of women?

A

Women have a unique standpoint and perspectives on marriage, public and household life, housework, and power than men.

44
Q

Who did Marianna debate with? What were the debates about?

A
  1. Max - need for autonomy for women equal to that on men
  2. Simmer - significance of women’s work in the production of culture
  3. Gilman - Situated differences of standpoint among women.
45
Q

What was Marianna’s theory of authority and autonomy?

A

Tried to bring a woman-centred perspective to her husband’s analysis of domination
- Argued that the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate authority is not useful for understanding male domination in marriage
- The more important distinction is between autonomy (free exercise of a person’s will) and domination (one person’s will being imposed onto another)
- Argued that men enjoyed autonomy in marriage while women experienced domination due to the patriarchal household.

46
Q

What did Marianna argue about the differences among women?

A
  • Social class differences produced differences in the standpoint of women
  • Middle class, and upper class women: have autonomy and self-actualization
  • Working class women: No autonomy and little pay
  • All experience domination in the patriarchal households
47
Q

What did Marianna propose about improving conditions for women?

A
  • Legal reforms (spousal rights)
  • Job training that would give women better employment and more meaningful lives
  • Provide monetary independence for the housewife
  • (most important) More important to eliminate the patriarchal household than it was to eliminate the capitalist workplace (greater of the two evils).
48
Q

What does “herland” mean?

A

Redesigned domestic space and domestic activity so each person has a “room of their own” and space for association with the daily of their choice/construction

49
Q

What is the Chicago Women’s school (CWS)?

A

A group of young women (lead by Jane Addams) that worked to establish communication within their community and women in sociology as a whole within The University of Chicago.

50
Q

What was the social role of a sociologist (CWS)

A

Reform and improve society through progressive movements

51
Q

What was Jane Addams core belief?

A

Society needs not individual but collective action realized in democratic association

52
Q

What was Addams’ basic thesis?

A

Amelioration is needed to achieve the democratic transformation of all parts of society through the inculcation of social ethics.

53
Q

What were Addams’ methods for sociological study?

A

Focused on personal experiences over theory
- Worked with detailed accounts of men and women she knew
- “The neighbourly relation”: having an authentic, caring relation between the researcher and the subject of the research
- Pursues the issue of “vantage point”: the practice of rendering accounts of social reality from the perspectives of various individuals involved.

54
Q

Define the social ethic

A

the practice of rules of right relationship that produces and sustain in the individual an orientation to action based on concern for the welfare of the community or identification with the common lot.
- Basically, it calls for individuals to move beyone self-interest and consider their obligations to others, particularly the most culnerable, to create a just and equitable society

55
Q

Define bifurcates consciousness

A

The awareness of a division between formal textual descriptions of life and one’s own lived experiences, the neighbourly relations and vantage point

56
Q

How did Addams envision society?

A

As a vast network of individual humans coming together to realize both material interests and ethical ideals - want to make societal structures that possess qualities of social democracy

57
Q

What are belated ethics? What are the 3 types?

A

Outdated moral frameworks and ethical principles that fail to address the complexities of modern, industrialized, and diverse societies. Militaristic, individualistic, and patriarchal family claim.

58
Q

What is the household and family ethic?

A

Restricts women’s sense of ethical responsibility for the larger society, leading them to feel ethically adequate even when they exploit their domestic help so long as the needs of their family / immediate circle of friends are addressed.

59
Q

What is a militaristic ethic?

A

Where people feel their ethical responsibility should be to a hierarchy organized group which participates in approved collective violence

60
Q

What is the individualism ethic?

A

Endorses people following their personal sense of right and wrong without negotiation with

61
Q

What are the 4 major propositions made by the CWS?

A
  1. Every person and activity potentially relates to one another
  2. We must turn on our understand human beings as an agentic moral agent, and through these efforts, the world is changes. - our moral responsiblity to work toward systematic reform and social justice
  3. Socially disenfranchised groups must be heard and their experiences are cruicial for creating ethical and equitable social policies
  4. Sociology should be actively used to improve the living conditions of marginalized groups and shape public policies.
62
Q

What was the methodology of the CWS?

A

Took situations that most people took for granted as unavoidable and redefined them as subject to social control, social improvement, and social elimination.

63
Q

What did the CWS say about collective action?

A

Social science must act for change; that all citizens, including women still denied suffrage, are nevertheless morally responsible for the welfare of the country

64
Q

Who was Anna Julia Cooper?

A

African American Writer and Activist

65
Q

What was Cooper’s early life?

A

Born as a slave in North Carolina, master was her father
- Freed in 1863
- Had extraordinary intellectual ability

66
Q

What was Cooper’s education and employment?

A

Worked as a pupil teacher at age 9 to pay for her education at Oberlin College
- Husband died 2 years in marriage
- Taught for 40 years
Worked on her doctoral degree while working
- dissertation in French: “Slavery and the French Revolutionists”

67
Q

What was her major work?

A

“A Voice from the South by a Black Woman from the South”

68
Q

What was Cooper’s methodology?

A

Engaged in theoretical work. Sought to describe the patterns of social life and to situate herself in that work of theoretical creation

69
Q

What was significant about her theoretical ideas?

A

Solely held in theories, nothing about concrete society

70
Q

What did Cooper write about power, domination, and inequality?

A

Saw power and domination as providing the conditions for inequality
- Focus on power in her discussion of race relations

71
Q

Cooper saw society as a system made up of…

A

The economy, family, education, and religion
- Stratificational groupings based on race, gender, and class.

72
Q

What are the two forms order in society can take place in?

A
  1. Result of domination, results in the oppression of people
  2. Results from equilibrium, based on interdependence of various parts of society and between people within society.
73
Q

What was Cooper’s analysis of race and gender?

A

Addressed the intersection between race and gender - Black woman occupy a unique position (dominated in two ways)
- Utilized her own experience in addressing the intersection

74
Q

What is the theory of race and power?

A

Power is the fundamental relation among groups in society; groups arise when individuals share common traits of shared location in a stratified society; power is a group’s ability to influence the social outcomes of the members (equilibrium) and society (domination).

75
Q

Who was Ida Wells-Barnett?

A

Black women and activist

76
Q

What was Barnett’s early life?

A

Born to slave parents
- freed under the 1863 act
- credited her parents in giving her interest in politics and fighting justice

77
Q

What was Barnett’s education and employment?

A

Attended Rust College - black segregated school
- Studied at Fisk University - black segregated
- Worked as a teacher and a write/journalist
- Initiated a life-long fight for the rights of Black people and women
- Developed a particular focus in investigating and attacking the practive of lynching Black men

78
Q

What was Barnett’s scholarly career?

A
  • did journalistic writing
  • strong interest in gender issues
  • Contributed to founding the National Association of Coloured WomenW
79
Q

What was Barnett’s methodology?

A

Secondary data analysis (statistics, interviews, and secondary accounts)

80
Q

What did Barnett theorize about power, domination, and inequality?

A
  • Power relations between White people and Black people in American society as connected to domination and inequality
  • Wrote of lynching in terms of power, lynching occured as a way for White people to assert their power.
81
Q

What did Barnett theorize about race and gender?

A
  • Addressed the emotional and sexual attraction of white women to black men (largely denied, thought to be raped)
  • Discovered the attraction of White men to Black women (accepted and unquestioned)
  • Found her life threatened when she spoke of these issues

Classic Sociological Theory (6 decks)

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