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Famous Feminists: M-O
Catharine A. MacKinnon (437) A lawyer, teacher, writer, activist, and expert on sex equality. She has been Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School since 1990, and Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School since Fall 1997. She has taught at Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Minnesota, UCLA, University of Chicago, Osgoode Hall (Toronto), and the University of Basel (Switzerland). Beginning in the mid 1970s, MacKinnon pioneered the legal claim for sexual harrassment as a form of sex discrimination. Beginning in 1983, with Andrea Dworkin, she conceived and wrote ordinances recognizing pornography as a violation of civil rights. The U.S. Supreme Court accepted her theory of sexual harassment in 1986. The Supreme Court of Canada adopted, in part, approaches that she created with the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) to equality (1989), pornography (1992), and hate speech (1991). She is involved in litigation, legislation, and policy development on women's human rights domestically and internationally. |
Fatima Mernissi (218) Feminist sociologist, formerly a Professor of Sociology at the University Mohammed V in Rabat, Moroccois. She is one of the pre-eminent Koranic scholars of our time. This outspoken feminist is also the author of Beyond the Veil, Islam and Democracy, and Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood in which she provides an insider's view of the daily revolutions of Moroccan women living a restrictive harem life. |
John Stuart Mill (67) British philosopher and economist. He was educated exclusively and exhaustively by his father, J. Mill. In A System of Logic (2 vols., 1843), he makes a valiant attempt to formulate a logic of the human sciences based on causal explanation. Intended by his father as the philosophical successor to J. Bentham, he cofounded the Utilitarian Society with Bentham (1823), though he later significantly modified the utilitarianism he inherited from both men to meet the criticisms it encountered. In 1825 he and Bentham cofounded University College London. In On Liberty (1859) Mill eloquently defended individual freedom. His Utilitarianism (1863) was a closely reasoned attempt to answer objections to his ethical theory and address misconceptions about it; he was especially insistent that "utility" include the pleasures of the imagination and the gratification of the higher emotions, and that his system include a place for settled rules of conduct. His The Subjection of Women (1869) made a strong and controversial call for women's rights. His other works include Principles of Political Economy (1848), Three Essays on Religion (1874), and an autobiography (1873). Prominent as a publicist in the reforming age of the 19th century, he remains of lasting interest as a logician and ethical theorist. |
Chandra Talpade Mohanty (344) Professor of Women's Studies at Hamilton College, New York. Her work focuses on transnational feminist theory, cultural studies, and anti-racist education, and has been translated into German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese. Sites: 1 |
NOW (169) NOW stands for the National Organization for Women. It is dedicated to making legal, political, social and economic change in our society in order to achieve our goal, which is to eliminate sexism and end all oppression. The purpose of NOW is to take action to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men. Sites: 1 |
Sherry Ortner (203) Ortner is one of the leading women on feminist thought and is noted for her influential work in anthropology. She first brought her feminist thought to attention when she published Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture in 1974. This was her second publication but her first published feminist piece. In this work she makes her now famous argument that culture is associated with men, and although women are important participants in culture, they are more aligned with nature (Bratton 1998). Ortner moved to the University of Michigan where she taught Anthropology for 17 years. During that time she was Chair of the Department of Anthropology. She published The Virgin and the State in 1976, was an Editorial Consultant for the Journal of Cultural and Social Practice, and was one of the several directors for Womens Studies. Ortner then received the MacArthur Award in 1990 for her work in Anthropology. She then moved to the University of California at Berkeley where she was part of the South Asia Consortium- west, an undergraduate program. At age 60, Ortner has now settled down at Columbia University where she teaches courses in gender and power while also researching contemporary American society. |
