User:Theunbearablelightnessofbeing/sandbox

Sociology is "the study of the development, structure, and functioning of human society". Even though ancient philosophers like Plato and Aristotle studied the relationship between individuals and society, it only emerged as an academic discipline in 1985 when the first European department of sociology was created by Emile Durkheim at the University of Bordeaux.

Sociology aims to make a comprehensive and analytical study of human societies but has paradoxically excluded women from its analysis and theories for a considerable period of time. This was the result of the idea that men's experience of society is universal and normative, which has isolated women's place in the family prism. Foundational thinkers like Emile Durkheim or Max Weber saw men as the "core constitutive category of the social/cultural".

However, the feminist movements of the 1970s rooted the feminist paradigm shift in sociology and social sciences in general. Women's experiences were used to create new research on topics like sexual harrassment (McKinnon, 1979) or lesbian communities (Krieger, 1982), resulting in a more complex and comprehensive analysis of society. The concept of gender was given a new approach through feminist articles like “Doing Gender”, published in 1987 by Candace West and Don Zimmerman wrote. The article identified gender as a social contruct, therefore challenging the sociological theories arguing that men a woman are naturally determined by their biological differences. The new theories, concepts and research developed by feminists have helped to correct gender biases in the discipline and to bridge the silences around women's experiences. This evolution was reflected across other discplines like history, anthropoly and psychology.