Pamela Abbott - An Introduction to Sociology: Feminist Perspectives

In feminist terms the twentieth century began, in Britain at least, with the suffragettes and ended with the Spice Girls and the popular perception, as Germaine Greer wryly observed, that feminism has served its purpose and should now eff off (1999, p. 5). During the intervening period, feminism achieved profound success, improving the social, political, cultural and economic position of women in a whole range of ways. At the same time, feminist theory, particularly in the last three decades or so, has made a significant contribution to rethinking many aspects of the ways in which we make sense of society. Yet, many post-feminists consider that feminism has now achieved its aims and is therefore no longer relevant (or welcome) politically or theoretically, given the diversity of womanhood; or that feminism has simply gone too far towards benefiting women, resulting in a gender backlash. Others claim that feminism has not gone far enough in addressing social inequalities, and that those gains that have been made have focused too specifically on the needs of middle-class, white professional women living in the West. In many respects therefore, feminism (including feminist sociology) is currently engaged in something of a stock-taking exercise, reflecting critically on questions such as how to address the diverse experiences of women whilst maintaining some notion of commonality, at the same time as examining the relevance of the feminist project at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

For us, the relevance of feminism as both a political and a theoretical commitment, and its centrality to sociology as a critical project, becomes immediately apparent when we step outside of these debates and locate feminism and its relationship to sociology within the broader social totality.

As Goran Therborn (2004, p. 17) notes in his discussion of patriarchy throughout the course of the twentieth century, in the beginning of our story all significant societies were clearly patriarchal. However, in many societies, he argues, patriarchy was forced into retreat during the last century, a process he describes as de-patriarchalization (p. 73). In most countries, the legal rights of women and girls have been extended, and the expansion of education and paid work has increased womens autonomy in many respects. Dramatic socio-economic, political and cultural changes have undermined the authority of individual husbands and fathers, and of mens power over women as a group. Yet this process of de-patriarchalization has by no means been even. As Therborn puts it, the most important feature of the twentieth-century change of patriarchy is not its universal tendency. It is the variation in outcome as well as in timing (p. 129). This means that there are many areas of the world where patriarchy is still well entrenched; South and West Asia, North and sub-Saharan Africa, are notable examples. As he puts it, in these areas of the world