ABSTRACT
The sociological contributions of Harriet Martineau and Charlotte Perkins Gilman are presented as examples of two female theorists who can be easily integrated into a survey theory course in sociology. In literature, women authors are being discovered and rediscovered, largely by women literary critics. The new social historians, whose project is to reconstruct history “from the bottom up,” are finally showing that women as well as men “make their own history.” Women’s studies programs and academic journals have institutionalized the study of women by women in the halls of academe. There have been women who have made significant contributions in terms of theory, methods, and practice in the discipline of sociology. Harriet Martineau’s insightful analysis of women’s subordination in America in the 1830s bears a striking resemblance to more recent feminist theory. The major factor determining women’s position, according to Martineau, was economic dependency.
