Outline and Evaluate the feminist contribution to sociological research.

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David Rowley

Outline and Evaluate the feminist contribution to sociological research

Feminism is a movement for women trying to get equal rights for themselves. Feminism first emerged in the late 60’s, but women as early as the beginning of the 20-century, called the Suffragette movement tried to get the vote for women.

 The Feminism movement of the 60’s and especially feminist sociologists were critical of sociology, for ignoring gender issues and women and research being malestream. And so feminists took it upon themselves to open up new research other than that of research by men focusing on men. The new areas of research by women were taken into the work place, education and health.

 The women’s liberation Movement in the early 60’s founded the feminist perspective and had 7 aims such as: equal pay, equal education and job opportunities, 24-hour nurseries, free contraception and abortion, legal and financial independence for women. And end to discrimination against lesbians and the right of all women to define their own sexuality and an end to all the laws, assumptions and institutions that perpetuate male dominance and men’s aggression towards women.

 These 7 aims led to research into institutions such as the work place and education system to work out what could be done.

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  Early feminists are critical of malestream research in sociology. They argue that a lot of important sociological research is focused on men, this is called malestream sociology. Feminist research has contributed to the research into the position of women in society. In this research the key concepts developed are gender, ideology and patriarchy, and gender in particular will come across in all topics of research.

 An example of malestream and recent feminist approach to research is in sociology of deviance. The traditional malestream approach focused on juvenile delinquency, football hooliganism and other predominantly male deviance while the feminist approach ...

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