A recently published book clarifies that sociology is much more grounded in its female founders than in its “fathers”. It states that anyone can check that “they focused more on gender, inequalities, education, poverty”, the key themes and dimensions of this social science today.
Until now, most demands for the role of women in sociology have focused on the fact that women’s contributions should also be acknowledged. The extraordinary work of feminist movements to end the invisibilisation of women in science is making it possible for us to throw off the burden that in feudal universities forced us to only include the “fathers” in sociological theory syllabuses and texts.
This same feminist work makes it possible for this book to take a necessary step forward by eliminating the “also” and demonstrating that current sociology has much more to do with the contributions of classical sociologists such as Jane Addams or Marianne Weber than with those of Émile Durkheim or Max Weber. For the first time, a book publishes that a woman was the main founder of sociology. This work provides elements that allow us to unveil the manoeuvres to exclude from sociology the woman who was its main founder and received a Nobel Peace Prize: Jane Addams. During World War I, while she promoted women’s actions for peace, Émile Durkheim and Max Weber acted as pro-war “patriots” (on opposing sides) rather than as sociologists.
The two main arguments for excluding Addams are that she was not a university professor and that she was a social worker and not a sociologist. The first argument excludes most sociologists from sociology, since most work in places other than the university; moreover, Addams co-founded the world’s first sociology department and then chose to work at Hull House. The second argument needs to hide the fact that Durkheim’s professorship was not in sociology but in pedagogy, and that Max Weber was a professor of economics and only during his last three years he directed an institute of sociology.
After the publication of this book, it is inevitable that the truth will be restored. There will be resistance to explaining it to students and to society, new arguments will be invented to continue to maintain an exclusion that is so damaging to sociology and to citizens, but this resistance will only slow down change, not prevent it.
