A Sociology Of Women

MySearchLab provides students with a complete understanding of the research process so they can complete research projects confidently and efficiently. Students and instructors with an internet connection can visit www.MySearchLab.com and receive immediate access to thousands of full articles from the EBSCO ContentSelect database. In addition, MySearchLab offers extensive content on the research process itself–including tips on how to navigate and maximize time in the campus library, a step-by-step guide on writing a research paper, and instructions on how to finish an academic assignment with endnotes and bibliography. Synthesizing the disciplines of sociology and women's studies, this book presents major theoretical frameworks on sex and gender stratification, taking a feminist sociological approach to the study of women in society to analyze women's positions within the institutions of work, education and the law. Integrates social class, race/ethnicity and gender as dimensions of equality across social issues. Explains basic sociological approaches, including functionalism, conflict theory and symbolic interactionism, and provides an overview of feminist theories. Analyzes trends in census data over the past two decades, and includes new sections on trends in women owned businesses and hate crimes. Discusses the global view of women in the labor force over the last three decades, and concludes with a section on Women and Aging that illustrates the compounded effects of the interconnections between class, race and gender issues on women as they progress through the course of life. For sociologists, social scientists, and those interested in women's studies.

KEY BENEFIT: Synthesizing the disciplines of sociology and women's studies, this book presents major theoretical frameworks on sex and gender stratification, taking a feminist sociological approach to the study of women in society to analyze women's positions within the institutions of work, education and the law. Integrates social class, race/ethnicity and gender as dimensions of equality across social issues. Explains basic sociological approaches, including functionalism, conflict theory and symbolic interactionism, and provides an overview of feminist theories. Analyzes trends in census data over the past two decades, and includes new sections on trends in women owned businesses and hate crimes. Discusses the global view of women in the labor force over the last three decades, and concludes with a section on Women and Aging that illustrates the compounded effects of the interconnections between class, race and gender issues on women as they progress through the course of life. For sociologists, social scientists, and those interested in women's studies.

Young Women and the Body sets out to examine why the current generation of young women seem to be deeply unhappy with their own bodies. Dieting and disguising are commonplace, and inflicting serious harm by no means rare in fourteen to eighteen year olds. Despite prophesies to the contrary boys and adults are suffering far less. Drawing on feminist social constructionist perspectives the book seeks to examine this epidemic of body-hatred.

Winner of the American Sociological Association's Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award (1999)Winner of the Jessie Bernard Award for Feminist Sociology (1993)In this collection of essays, sociologist Dorothy E. Smith develops a method for analyzing how women (and men) view contemporary society from specific gendered points of view. She shows how social relations – and the theories that describe them – must express the concrete historical and geographical details of everyday lives. A vital sociology from the standpoint of women, the volume is applicable to a variety of subjects, and will be especially useful in courses in sociological theory and methods.

During the past three decades, feminist scholars have successfully demonstrated the ubiq uity and omnirelevance of gender as a sociocultural construction in virtually all human collectivities, past and present. Intrapsychic, interactional, and collective social processes are gendered, as are micro, meso, and macro social structures. Gender shapes, and is shaped, in all arenas of social life, from the most mundane practices of everyday life to those of the most powerful corporate actors. Contemporary understandings of gender emanate from a large community of primarily feminist scholars that spans the gamut of learned disciplines and also includes non-academic activist thinkers. However, while in corporating some cross-disciplinary material, this volume focuses specifically on socio logical theories and research concerning gender, which are discussed across the full array of social processes, structures, and institutions. As editor, I have explicitly tried to shape the contributions to this volume along several lines that reflect my long-standing views about sociology in general, and gender sociology in particular. First, I asked authors to include cross-national and historical material as much as possible. This request reflects my belief that understanding and evaluating the here-and-now and working realistically for a better future can only be accomplished from a comparative perspective. Too often, American sociology has been both tempero- and ethnocentric. Second, I have asked authors to be sensitive to within-gender differences along class, racial/ethnic, sexual preference, and age cohort lines.