Durkheim's Response to Feminism

Prescriptions for Women

Bibliographic Data

ID7532532
AuthorsJennifer M Lehmann (corresponding author)
Year1990
Volume8
Issue2
Pages163-163
Publication date1990-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSociological Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0735-2751 • E-ISSN: 1467-9558
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.2307/202203
OpenAlexW2335628645
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited17

There is a striking parallel between Durkheim's assessment of feminism and his assessment of socialism.1 For Durkheim feminism, like socialism, is essentially an unconscious movement. Like socialism, feminism is a nonscientific, misguided perception of conditions which are nonetheless both real and problematic. Like socialism, feminism misinterprets actual social problems and therefore suggests radical (i.e., unrealistic and destructive) pseudosolutions. For example, feminism advocates legalized divorce, most drastic and revolutionary solution to women's problems (Durkheim 1906, p. 240).2 Like socialism, feminism is based on a false, ideological understanding of society, one which entails the misrecognition of social structures as both fatally flawed and malleable and the misrecognition of their differential effects on various social

Feminism · Medical prescription · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Emile Durkheim and Sociology · Gender Studies · Medicine · Nursing · Philosophy, Sociology, Political Theory · Psychology