Preface

Women Theorists on Society and Politics 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, in spite of the high quality of their contributions.My Early Origins of the Social Sciences, 1993, included women theorists along with many more men, while The Women Founders of the Social Sciences, 1994, was devoted entirely to reporting the women's work.Most of the theorists included in this anthology appeared at least in the Women Founders, but the focus there was on their methodological contribution, with only secondary attention to social and political theory.Women Theorists on Society and Politics now provides the opportunity to relate the enormously interesting social and political writing of these theorists, with biographical background on their no less exciting lives.The quality of these theorists' contributions will speak for itself.I merely recount my own experience of being constantly amazed at how prescient they were, how often they "anticipated" the work of better-known men and how lively and witty their writing was.A significant phase of "unlearning" was required to get me past a wellingrained deference to leading male theorists to see the originality and relevance of the women's work.In some cases the women theorists were saying something quite different, material that deserves to be read for its distinctive contribution.In other cases their position was not greatly different from that of more prominent men, but they nonetheless brought insights, experience and nuance worth considering.Readers of conventional histories of social and political theory and students and professors in conventional courses, which still deal virtually exclusively with men theorists, are the losers for the absence of these women.Growing numbers of scholars have taken up these women theorists, so that the work is no longer lonely.Especially helpful were the sessions on women theorists at the International Sociological Association, History of Sociology, meeting in Amsterdam, 1996, a session on women theorists at the American Sociological Association meetings, Toronto, 1997 and the founding of the Harriet Martineau Sociological Association at the Amsterdam meetings, with its first working meeting at Mackinac Island, 1997 (a special thanks to Michael Hill and Mary Jo Deegan for organizing it).I appreciated also Charles

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