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Feminist Perspectives Of Dorothy Smith's Oppression Of Women

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Feminist sociologist, Dorothy Smith argues that sociology has been biased and exclusive towards a white male perspective of society. Furthermore, Smith argues that sociology focuses on class struggles as well as ways of managing and governing society, which are the core components in oppression seen in women. Smith uses an intersectionality perspective to show the ways social theory perceives society that rarely reflects women’s concerns and struggles. Smith goes on to question the history of sociology and the ways theory would be affected if given a feminist point of view. Furthermore, when discussing Theordor Adorno’s argument of culture industry, it highly lacked a feminist perspective of how media is used to target women’s beauty standards and reinforce social roles. Furthermore, Erving Goffman’s theory of social interactions scarcely discussed the performances expected of women’s roles, which further creates female oppression. Both Adorno and Goffman provided important concepts to social theory, however, they never made means to incorporate feminist perspectives in their work, in addition, Smith offers perspectives on how these theories would be altered when discussed through a different lens. Furthermore, Dorothy Smith argues that social theory offers little female perspective, especially seen in large concepts such as media. This application can be seen in Adorno’s argument of culture industry, in which mass media is used as a mechanism to hinder people’s ability to
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