Dorothy Smith, Sociologist

“The institutionalized practices of excluding women from the ideological work of society are the reason we have a history constructed largely from the perspective of men, and largely about men...This is why we know so little of women visionaries, thinkers, and political organizers...This is why we have a sociology that is written from the perspective of positions in a male-dominated ruling class and is set up in terms of the relevances of the institutional power structures that constitute those positions...This is why the assumptions of psychological research and of educational research and philosophy take for granted male experience, orientation, and concerns and treat as normative masculine modes of being.” Wrote feminist sociologist Dr. Dorothy E. Smith in her book 'The Everyday World As Problematic: A Feminist Sociology.' She was born on July 26, 1926. Her work focuses on applying a feminist perspective to sociology and institutional ethnography, a sub-discipline she founded, as well as expanding feminist standpoint theory to include race, class & gender. Her work is among the most important in 20th & 21st century sociology.