Thoughts of the Future of the Discipline

On the future of the discipline of Sociology, Barbara has many ideas of what needs to be done. She thinks that we need to encourage the teaching of sociology in the classroom and to the public, and we also need to give back to community. She believes that we "must value and encourage diverse approaches to the discipline." This includes both teaching and professional published research, which she thinks we need a lot more of and need to constantly be improve on.
On the future of Feminism, she thinks that we need to learn "how inequality is produced" in order to "create a more just society." Even though gender is produced by society, she knows that it can be reinvented and recreated by us. In her book Gender Vertigo she shows how some families are going against the regular patterns of the family structure. She also recognizes that institutional changes can help to brake down gender barriers, but alone they can never be sufficient. She thinks that sex categories are not necessary in discussing the future, and that gender should be "irrelevant to all aspects of our lives." She says the hardest part of becoming equal would be changing the way we think and "do gender" because "it is not only about subordination, inequality, and stratification but also about whom we are and how we experience ourselves and our relationships." Even though these gendered displays are natural to us all, we need to remember that they are socially defined, and that we can open up to "less repressive ways of living." She is optimistic, but not about a mass-feminist-movement happening any time soon. She thinks that we will continue to discover gender inequalities and understand our situations as women better, because she believes that "we have come as far as we can with incremental change."

Resources:
Gender Vertigo- Barbara Risman
Interview