Women’s Contribution to Classical Sociology

Abstract

This chapter highlights themes in the women's work within a context of their life stories, and considers how their ideas help enhance the understanding of death, grief, and bereavement. It focuses on five particularly outstanding women, from Britain and America: Harriet Martineau, Jane Addams, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and African Americans Anna Julia Cooper and Ida Wells-Barnett. The history of the founding women in sociology illustrates the social construction of sociology's history and the workings of power. In attending to the sociostructural dimension of people's lives, the founding women recognized the intersection of gender with other structures, such as race, ethnicity, class, age, and ability, in shaping their own and other people's experiences, expectations, and interactions. Underpinned by a social ethic or responsibility to act for the common good, the quest for an inclusive social democracy via public education and social reform is necessary to achieve an equal and socially inclusive society, especially for women.