The Impact of Feminism on Canadian Sociology.

The article focuses on the sociological dimensions of the impact of feminism on Canadian sociology. Counter to the U.S. and Europe, sociology in Canada is still a young discipline. Hiller (1980) proposes a four-step periodization for understanding the development of Canadian sociology: first, a period of European transference, which ends about the time of World War 1. During the second period, which Hiller names the period of environmental adaptation (essentially the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s) sociology was taught in conjunction with economics and political science as part of an interdisciplinary approach. Hiller names the third period one of disciplinary differentiation and specialization (the late 1950s and the decade of the 1960s). The fourth period of consolidation, sarting in the 1970s, also involved the development of a truly Canadian sociology, stimulated and carried forward both by the Canadianization movement and the women's movement, which largely coincided timewise. In the middle to late 1960s the women's movement in Canada started to become a social force, kickstarted by the Royal Commission on the Status of Women. In 1972, the first session ever on women took place in the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association. It was organized by Marylee Stephenson, with three speakers: Lorna Marsden, Dorothy Smith, and Margrit Eichler.