1. Feminism: Dorothy Smith (1926 - )
Gynocentric feminism
Women share a common identity
Everything social and psychological structured by gender
Women’s lives center around domesiticity

2. Women’s Knowledge
Women’s unique situation leads to unique ways of knowing
Women’s knowledge grounded in specific, detailed, daily activities
Women’s knowledge likewise particularistic, not general
Such knowledge is discounted by the male social universe

3. Sexist Sociology? Sociology by and for men Women’s issues ignored
Problem of public world
Impersonal, abstract and general
Thought of as rational
Sociology as a ruling ideology

4. Smith’s Feminist Sociology
Central aim: free women from patriarchal relations

5. Mary O’Brien
Why Patriarchy?

6. Men’s relation to reproduction
Alienation of the male seed
Paternity uncertain
No natural relationship between man and child
Relations with child social and ideological
Right to child mediated by right to woman
Requires agreement among men

7. Manifestations of Patriarchy
Marriage
Public/private spheres of life
Downfall of patriarchy through control of fertility