Women Theorists on Society and Politics

Margaret Conrad is a professor of history at Acadia University. She is
the author of Intimate Relations: Family and Community in Planter Nova
Scotia, 1759–1800, and Making Adjustments: Change and Continuity in
Planter Nova Scotia, 1759–1800 and the co

As the editor notes in her preface, this book represents the end of a
long intellectual journey to find and publish the great women theorists
who have been so unjustly excluded from textbooks and courses on theory.
While her earlier publications, Early Origins of the Social Sciences
(1993) and The Women Founders of the Social Sciences (1994), explored
the history of the founding fathers and mothers of the social sciences,
this volume allows the women to speak for themselves. McDonald has
selected excerpts from the works of 24 female social scientists,
beginning with Christine de Pisan and Mary Astell and ending with
Catherine E. Marshall and Emily Balch. Following a chapter on early
theorists are chapters devoted to theorists on revolution; social
reform; gender and violence; and peace, war, and militarism,
concentrating on the period from the Enlightenment to 1900.

In an afterword, McDonald concludes that had these women been accorded
a larger role in mainstream social sciences, there would be a greater
focus in the world today on the social bond, on peaceful accommodation
rather than competition and war, and on gender equality rather than the
double standard. Indeed, the very field of social science, McDonald
maintains, would be accorded greater value in comparison with the
so-called hard sciences, in part because it would display a better
integration of qualitative and quantitative analysis and be more focused
on the applied side.

This fascinating volume includes material that has not hitherto been
published (most notably the excerpts from Florence Nightingale) or
appeared in English (Du Chtelet and de Stal) and makes difficult texts
more accessible by translating the works of early theorists into modern
English so that readers can concentrate on content rather than form.
Concise introductions provide just enough information to put each woman
in her context socially and intellectually. Academic readers will
perhaps question the choices of both theorists and excerpts but, on the
whole, the book strikes a good balance.

The exclusion of works on women’s status and rights is questionable.
While it is true, as McDonald contends, that this topic has been
discussed elsewhere, her conclusion that it is not part of mainstream
social and political issues seems to undermine the very premise upon
which her work is based. It also means that university students for whom
this work is surely intended will require two texts “to get the whole
story” and to be introduced to such stirring manifestos as the Seneca
Falls Declaration of Sentiments, which marked its 150th anniversary in
the year this book was published.