- What is Feminism and why do we need it?
- What is Sociology?
- Feminism and Sociology
- The Feminist Movement’s Ontological Challenges
- The Feminist Movement’s Epistemological Challenge to Male stream Sociology
- Feminism and Classical Sociology
What is Feminism and why do we need it?
If someone questioned you, "Are you a feminist? How would you respond to that question? Spend some time considering it. At Duke University in the United States, Toril Moi, a professor of literature, romance studies, and theatre, periodically instructs a freshman session on feminist classics. When she asks her pupils whether they consider themselves feminists in her first lesson, they typically respond "no." Shouldn't the answer be yes if they, or you, for that matter, believe in the equality, freedom, and justice for women?
In actuality, most people relate the term "feminist" to a woman who is aggressive, bossy, and who despises males. This is most likely the cause of the fact that many men and most women now have some feminist ideals but are still reluctant to identify as feminists. They feel more at ease using a statement like "I am not a feminist, but.." to support their opinions.
Feminist has, in many respects, earned a negative reputation among the general public. However, if we were to examine the concept of feminism more closely, we would see that it is a phrase that emerged from the women's struggles for equality and justice on a global, national, and local level. There are other types of feminism than feminist action. It also relates to the creation of knowledge, study, theories, and, of course, praxis, which tries to change social systems via both words and deeds. Feminism is foremost an awareness and a way of life. Simply said, the fight to overthrow and change patriarchies is what limits women's potential and human potential. Grassroots movements are significant, according to feminists.
They have also acknowledged the need to alter knowledge production processes. Fighting is a part of feminism not just in the streets but also at home and in the school. in an effort to start fresh.
Like sociology, feminism also seeks to explain society and suggest solutions.
What is Sociology?
“The excitement of sociology lies in the fact that its perspective makes us see in a new light the very world in which we have lived all our lives.” - Peter L. Berger
Simply described, sociology is the study of society. Sociology is a social science that investigates how people interact with one another, with organisations, institutions, and societies, as well as how these interactions and other social behaviours affect society at large. We are impacted by social institutions including the government, economy, culture, and religion, and they are impacted by us. Sociology is a broad subject of study since it integrates a number of disciplines, including economics, political science, philosophy, law, and psychology.
All people make an effort to understand the social environment in which they live, but this does not make them sociologists. Common sense and widely held assumptions about the social environment are put to the test by sociology. It is a methodical study of society that emphasises critical thinking and queries the roles of inequality and power in social interaction. It is supported by theory-based research. Thus, sociology is a "scientific" discipline that makes use of logic and methodology to comprehend social issues from a sociological point of view. Using the phrase "sociological imagination," which was coined by the sociologist C. Wright Mills' work enables us to examine our own society objectively, free from the biases and influences of our own experiences, and to make links between a given individual's social surroundings and the larger social dynamics that they are a part of.
In Europe, the 18th and 19th centuries saw enormous social change on a scale never before seen. The Industrial Revolution caused civilization to shift from being agrarian and rural to being industrial and urban. Machines were utilised to make items in large quantities as technology advanced. People were drawn to the city by the new factory jobs, where they started to adapt to a totally different way of life. Industrialization was a great benefit for producing commodities, but it also destroyed the lives of the working class by making them work inhumanely long hours in awful conditions. At this time, there was no way to comprehend the turbulent changes that society was going through.
The values of the Enlightenment, which emphasised reason and autonomy, supported this modernising movement. Older philosophical theories, theological teachings, and common sense viewpoints were insufficient. As you are aware, August Comte set out to make sociology into a "social physics" after the triumph of the natural sciences method. This notion that sociology could be like physics was vigorously debated and established throughout this time. It was acknowledged that sociology could offer explanations of the past, present, and future and could explain contemporary social connections. Three influential sociologists—Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber—set different orientations for sociology that were rooted in modernist notions of modernity.
Feminism and Sociology
Despite the fact that gender is now frequently discussed in sociology, this was not always the case. In actuality, gender did not occupy its rightful and deserving position within sociological thought until the 1970s. Up until this point, conventional sociology did not think it was important to acknowledge gender differences. Sociologists examined society as though it were made up only of men. Not only were women unnoticed, but the gendered nature of social life as a whole was also ignored. Feminism set out to dispel the notion that the difference between the sexes was predetermined by nature once gender was ultimately taken into consideration.
At this period, the idea of gender was introduced to emphasise that masculinity and femininity are social constructs. Men and women are arranged in different social institutions and social customs according to their gender. We construct, negotiate, and perpetuate gender via our daily interactions, creating a social and structural reality. Even in Western society, feminism is not widely embraced and is typically left to women, with few male participants in academia or as students. Rethinking the field of sociology as a whole, including its technique and content, is the feminist response to male-dominated sociology. The work of middle-class, able-bodied white males has historically dominated the field of sociology.
Western, white, middle-class women were among those who changed this male-dominated perspective when the feminist discourse first started to do so. Due to its ethnocentric viewpoints, which ignored the diversity of class, age, sexual orientation, and disability among both men and women, this feminist perspective itself came to be disputed. Gender issues are thus socially constructed and culturally particular, and they have varied meanings for different women around the world.
The Feminist Movement’s Ontological Challenges
Ontological presumptions are formed regarding the character of objects and the things that make up things. Sociologists draw conclusions about the nature of the social cosmos based on their observations. The question of what society is is ontological. Although there are many different and intricate sociological explanations for this, all sociologists concur that societies are structured into some sort of social order and that they are dynamic, not static. Within this concept, some, like Karl Marx, contend that conflicts cause society to change, while others, like Emile Durkheim, contend that consensus causes societies to change.
Feminists contend that while women's lives are structured in a way that makes them prone to forging agreement, these experiences frequently run counter to societal institutions. Instead of consensus theories of order and change, feminists tend to favour conflict theories. Feminists have therefore developed a critique of the social determinism present in, for example, the ideas of structure functionalism, whether on the basis of the family or the division of labour. The ontological presumptions of the determinists, according to feminists, were founded on the notion that there is a biological and natural division of labour between men and women, as well as a sexual division of labour ( men as bread earners and women as home makers).
Feminists contend that the exercise of power and control over the lives and opportunities of women maintains societal order, not via agreement or through the orderly operation of nature. Feminists also criticise conventional sociology for ignoring how human agency contributes to societal change. Feminist ontologies therefore tend to have a dynamic perspective of the social world.
The Feminist Movement’s Epistemological Challenge to Male stream Sociology
Dorothy E. Smith was interested in the potential effects of the feminist movement on sociology as a discipline. It offered women's concerns a voice in a field where men had historically assembled the authoritative interests in sociology. Asking what a sociology derived from the traditional place of women might look like would be a start in the right direction. It wasn't enough to add to the existing sociology in order to cover previously ignored sociological topics that affected women. Women's interests would merely become an addendum to the sociological practises that already exist as a result of this.
There were two issues. The way sociology was conceived was a problem in and of itself. Even the women who worked in this sector were operating inside the same sociology as its ideas, procedures, and paradigms, which were all designed for an exclusively male universe. Men shaped how social science was divided into different subject areas and how social and political structures were deemed relevant. There was a disconnect between how women perceived and interpreted their reality and their capacity to explain it as a result of thinking within these constricting paradigms. The second issue was that knowledge and experience from each group were not valued equally because men and women appeared to live in different worlds. Men have a better understanding and experience of the world than women have. These two issues are connected. The concepts and terminology that women are then obliged to use to understand their experiences are imposed due to the superiority of male experience, which causes women to become alienated from their experiences. Women will continue to experience oppression as long as these circumstances exist.
It has become evident that changing the focus of sociology is insufficient to bring about long-lasting change. Only the introduction of fresh approaches to comprehending our experiences can bring about this change.
Feminism and Classical Sociology
Sociologists never questioned the fact that society was essentially an all-male environment. Sociologists didn't begin to acknowledge the gendered nature of society until the 1970s. This awareness included the admission that, on the rare occasions she was taken into social consideration, women were either completely invisible or seen as "natural." In the 1970s, feminism aimed to alter this primarily masculine perspective. Feminists started using the concept of gender to show that what we understood as masculinity and femininity was actually a social construction drawing attention to the hierarchy that exists between men and women in society, whereas in the past it was assumed that the differences between men and women came from nature.
The evolution of sociology in the 19th century probably had a significant impact on family life and male-female relationships. Despite the interest of writers like J.S. Mill and Charlotte Perkins Gilman in disputing and contesting the conventional wisdom that a woman's place was in the home—what they referred to as the "women's question" at the time—the "founding fathers" of sociology were unconcerned by these shifts. Although the first sociologists did not discuss gender, their assumptions about gender are still important to understand because they later inspired the feminist analysis of sociology.
References
- Abbott, P., Wallace, C., & Tyler, M. (2005). Introduction: feminism and the sociological imagination. In An Introduction to Sociology Feminist Perspectives (3rd ed., pp. 1-15). Oxon, UK: Routledge.
- American Sociological Association: What is Sociology? (n.d.). Retrieved July 14, 2015, from http://www.asanet.org/about/sociology.cfm
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www2.webster.edu/~woolflm/gilman.html
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www2.webster.edu/~woolflm/gilman2.html
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