Changing Patterns of Women's Employment in Sociology
1950-80
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5635555 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Helen Roberts (0000-0002-6319-061X), Diana Woodward (0000-0001-5051-469X) |
| Year | 1981 |
| Volume | 32 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 531 |
| Publication date | 1981-12-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | British Journal of Sociology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-1315 • E-ISSN: 1468-4446 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/590132 |
| OpenAlex | W2329911887 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 5 |
This paper looks at changing patterns of women's employment in sociology over the last thirty years since the foundation of the British Sociological Association. Starting with an examination of early studies of the sexual division of labour in sociology, we go on to look at the adequacy or otherwise of explanations in these studies. Moving on to more recent surveys of the profession, it becomes clear that there has not been a substantial improvement in the employment prosl)ects for women in sociology, although the subjective situation of women sociologists has probably been improved through the support of the Women's Caucus and increased attention to sexism in the subject matter of sociology. Finally we suggest that improvement in women 's employment prospects in sociology would not only affect the construction of the labour market in sociology, but would be likely to go further, and would also affect the construction of knowledge. The last decade has witnessed a revival of the women's liberation movement which has fostered the efforts of feminist academics to expose the critical absence of women as both theorists and subjects (or objects) of codified knowledge. The cumulative evidence of the invisibility of women in knowledge which has been constructed primarily by men, from a male perspective and about men, makes salutary reading.2 In all the social sciences and some of the physical and natural sciences there has been documentation of the way in which women have been omitted and excluded from the production of knowledge.3 An attention to the exclusion of women from the codification of knowledge is not a new idea. As early as 19 7 2 in her paper 'My Four Revolutions', Jessie Bernard4 was asking not what sociology can do for wome n, but rather what women ( and sympathetic male colleagues) can do for sociology. It is of course significant that it is
Social science · Sociology · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Gender Studies · Intergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies · Social and Cultural Dynamics
| Citations per year | 0.07 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 1986 - 2015 (30) |
| Highly cited | No |