Judith Lorber (1987-1990)

Abstract

When I became the first editor of Gender & Society, Mitch Allen, then an editor at Sage, told me that the journal would be successful if we got close to 1,000 library subscriptions in the first year (I think we got more than 900). What he was saying was that we needed to become part of the academic establishment. We were easily able to do that because Gender & Society filled a niche, empty at the time, 1987. Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society, had started in 1975, and was eclectic regarding social science and cultural studies at the beginning, but it was more and more focusing on culture rather than on society. Sex Roles, also established in 1975, published mostly small-group psychology studies—it called itself A Journal of Research. There was also a lot of work being pub lished in different journals devoted to women's studies—research on women, by women, for women, from a woman's standpoint. What was missing was a sociological perspective and a way of conceptualizing gender as societal, not just individual. The intent was for Gender & Society to be a sociology of gender journal with a feminist theoretical perspective. This innovation was turned down by ASA—their argument being that ASA journals already published the sociology of gender—but it was quantitative, comparing women versus men on various parameters, scattered over many journals, and atheoretical. As editor, I was determined to be theoretical, which meant to define gender and to analyze gender's relationship with society. I saw my mission as bring ing the new feminist perspective of the social construction of gender to sociological research and theory. My vision was spelled out in my initial From the Editor.