The incorporation of gender scholarship into sociology

Abstract

The prospects of an intellectual revolution in sociology informed in part by a feminist perspective loomed large in the early 1970s. Following Ward and Grant's (1985) empirical examination of gender and feminist scholarship in sociology journals between 1974 and 1983, our research provides an empirical assessment of the "second ten years" after the feminist critique of the discipline, 1984-1993. Specifically, we examine the incorporation of gendercontent scholarship into mainstream sociology journals. Our research also assesses the extent to which gender-content scholarship published in these journals is feminist-oriented or not and the extent to which this is influenced by the sex of authors, the type of journal, and the sex composition of editorships and editorial boards. Our findings indicate that although there were more gender-and feminist-oriented articles published in the recent ten-year period, proportionally there were fewer feminist-oriented articles than in the previous ten-year period. Our findings suggest that a feminist revolution in sociology is not likely to occur anytime soon, although the assimilation of feminist scholarship into sociology is occurring along the lines of other critical intellectual movements in recent decades.

The Methodological Impact of Feminism: A Troubling Issue for Sociology?

“…As such this finding provides little hint as to whether feminism, as an interdisciplinary field, is influencing sociology. More pertinently, albeit in the US context, Waller et al (1998) find a diminishing influence of feminism within mainstream sociology journals in 1984-1993, relative to 1974-1983. Consequently they note that despite an assimilation of feminist scholarship into sociology 'a feminist revolution in sociology is not likely to occur anytime soon' (Waller et al, 1998: 43; see also Dunn and Waller, 2000).…”

The race relations “Problematic” in American sociology: Revisiting Niemonen’s case study and critique

“…To test Niemonen's assumptions about the unique ways in which specialists view race and ethnicity, we selected a subset of the articles that focus on race and ethnicity and conducted a comparative analysis of these articles. Following the logic of a similar project that emphasized gender and feminist perspectives in patterns of sociological publishing (Waller, Dunn and Watson, 1998;Dunn and Watson, 2000), the subset was selected through a visual examination of the title, abstract, and key words. Articles were included if race and/or ethnicity were mentioned in the key words, specific racial and/or ethnic groups were identified in the title, and/or if the words race, ethnicity, prejudice, racism, or discrimination appeared in the title or abstract.…”