Feminist sociology

1800s: Martineau · Tocqueville · Marx · Spencer · Le Bon · Ward · Pareto · Tönnies · Veblen · Simmel · Durkheim · Addams · Mead · Weber · Du Bois · Mannheim · Elias Feminist sociology is an interdisciplinary exploration of gender and power throughout society.

Here, it uses conflict theory and theoretical perspectives to observe gender in its relation to power, both at the level of face-to-face interaction and reflexivity within social structures at large.

Growing up, she went against traditional holds that were placed on her by society by focusing on reading and learning concepts different from women who were taught to be housewives.

She "emphasized how differential socialization leads to gender inequality", but she did agree that biologically there is a difference between those born with female and male parts.

[2] Parts of her research involved a theoretical orientation of a multidimensional approach to gender and discusses it more in depth in her book Women and Economics.

This is an example of a neurological theory, as developed by Sigmund Freud, which is cultivated using a psychoanalysis process called conscious and subconscious state of mind.

Gilman argued furthermore that the traditional division of labor was not biologically driven, but instead forced upon women based on the structure of society since before the nineteenth century.

In 1963s, the Equal Pay Act, signed into law by John F. Kennedy, outlawed the wage disparity based on sex (Grady).

[6] In the 1970s, many women fought for the right to dictate what happens to their body, such as establishing legal abortions, as well as making forced sterilization illegal (Grady).

[12] This intersectionalist approach on feminist sociology allows for a type of "marriage" between the "gender/race/class dynamic", rather than excluding individuals of different races, ethnicities, nationalities, social classes, gender, sexual orientation, or any other factors.

An ongoing debate in portions of transnational feminism surrounds the question of "solidarity", specifically as regards the general representation of women of the Global South.

Consequently, this has rendered women from the Global South "mere objects of their systems and institutions, victims of this never changing primitive force known as culture", effectively erasing their struggles only to be "replaced instead by the voices of Western feminists who want to save them.

Furthermore, black women suffer on both racist and sexist fronts, marginalized not only by larger systems of oppression but by existing feminist discourse that disregards their intersectionality.

Anna Julia Cooper and Ida Bell Wells-Barnett are African American women who were instrumental in conducting much research and making valuable contributions in the field of black feminism.

[18] Also, "feminist analyses have developed gender parallels to the critiques of models of race that fail to address inequality as a function of something other than "difference".

[23] Gender is a social construct derived from norms that society has implemented; based on how they believe a male or female would represent themselves.

[23] Modern queer theory attempts to unmake the social and contextual elements reinforcing heteronormativity by challenging oppressive institutions on traditional binary distinctions between male and female, among its many other criticisms.

Queer theory, by comparison, challenges the traditional ideas of gender through the deconstruction and lack of acceptance of a dichotomy of male and female traits.

To "settle" on a subject category, then, is to reinscribe a fixity that excludes some, often in violent ways (for example, those who are literally erased because their bodies do not conform to a discrete binary)" (McCann 2016, 231-232).

There can be a refashioning of the field, where extending boundaries to include queer theory would "develop new and innovative theoretical approaches to research...[and] address inequality within society" (McCann 2016, 237).

Debates within ethnic relations, particularly regarding the opposing perspectives of assimilationism and multiculturalism, have led to the accusation that feminism is incompatible with multiculturalist policy.

Others have argued that these debates stem from Western orientalism and general political reluctance to accept foreign migrants.

There are feminists such as Jean Bethke Elshtain, Daphne Patai, and Camille Paglia who oppose certain aspects of feminism.