The Women Founders of the Social Sciences

Margaret Conrad is a history professor at Acadia University, and the
editor of Making Adjustments: Change and Continuity in Planter Nova
Scotia, 1759-1800.

While conducting the research for her book Early Origins of Social
Sciences (1994), Lynn McDonald discovered so much information on
forgotten female social scientists that she decided to produce a second
volume. The result is this useful book that looks at more than 20 women
who made substantial contributions to the social sciences from the late
16th to the 19th century. In addition to highly accessible discussions
of the women’s written work, McDonald provides an outline of the
context in which the women wrote, brief biographies of their lives as
scholars, and extensive bibliographies of further readings.

The book sheds new light on such women as Mary Wollstonecraft and
Florence Nightingale, who are reasonably well know as historical actors
and brings such hitherto neglected women as Anne Conway and Mary Hays
into clearer focus. Because of their absence from positions of academic
power, these women were not very influential in shaping the direction of
the social sciences. Nevertheless, their ideas stand the test of time
rather well. McDonald argues that, in contrast to most male social
scientists, these women tended to disdain mind/body dualism and
militarism; take a positive view of humans, animals, and the
environment; seek moderation and practical application in their work;
and use inclusive, nonsexist language in their writing. Such conclusions
are as controversial as they are interesting and will, no doubt, fuel
continued research into the gendered nature of academic endeavors, past
and present.

Equally controversial is McDonald’s critique of postmodern feminists
who eschew empiricism as a “malestream methodology.” McDonald
maintains, correctly in my opinion, that empiricism historically gave
women the tools they needed—“objective” methods and real-world
knowledge—to escape the shackles of idealism, which, on the basis of
religion, custom, and male subjectivity, argued that women were inferior
to men. Although most of the women discussed here were middle-class
universalists, they nevertheless worked against racism and sexism, and
rarely turned the tables on the men. Instead they, as did Mary
Wollstonecraft at the end of the 18th century, argued that women wished
to have “power [not] over men, but over themselves.” McDonald’s
book is a timely reminder of this important feminist goal.