Includes bibliographical references.

The classical period : nineteenth-century sociology -- Auguste Comte (1798-1857) on women in positivist society -- Harriett Martineau (1802-1876) on American women -- Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) on the rights and status of women -- August Bebel (1840-1913) on women and socialism -- �Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) on the division of labor and interests in marriage -- Lester Frank Ward (1841-1913) on the condition of women -- Anna Julia Cooper (1858-1964) on the voices of women -- Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) on dress as pecuniary culture.

The progressive era : early twentieth-century sociology -- Georg Simmel (1858-1918) on conflict between men and women -- Anna Garlin Spencer (1851-1932) on the woman of genius -- Mary Roberts (Smith) Coolidge (1860-1945) on the socialization of girls -- Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) on the economics of private housekeeping -- Edith Abbott (1876-1957) on women in industry -- Leta Stetter Hollingworth (1886-1939) on compelling women to bear children -- Alexandra Kollontai (1873-1952) on women and class. -- The 1920s and 1930s : institutionalizing the discipline, defining the canon -- W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) on the "damnation of women" -- Edward Alsworth Ross (1866-1951) on masculinism -- Anna Garlin Spencer on husbands and wives -- Robert E. Park (1864-1944) and Ernest W. Burgess (1886-1966) on sex differences -- William Graham Sumner (1840-1910) on women's natural roles -- Sophonisba P. Breckinridge (1866-1948) on women as workers and citizens -- Margaret Mead (1901-1978) on the cultural basis of sex difference -- Willard Walter Waller (1899-1945) on rating and dating. -- The 1940s : questions about women's new roles -- Edward Alsworth Ross (1866-1951) on conflict between the sexes -- Alva Myrdal (1902-1986) on women as a social problem -- Talcott Parsons (1902-1979) on sex in the United States social structure -- Joseph Kirk Folsom (1893-1960) on wives' changing roles -- Gunnar Myrdal (1898-1987) on sex as a parallel to race -- Mirra Komarovsky (1905-1998) on cultural contradictions of sex roles -- Robert Staughton Lynd (1892-1970) on changes in sex roles.

The 1950s : questioning the paradigm -- Viola Klein (1908-1971) on feminine stereotypes -- Margaret Mead on women, culture, and work -- Mirra Komarovsky on functional analysis of sex roles -- Helen Mayer Hacker on women as a minority group -- William H. Whyte Jr. (1917-1999) on the corporate wife -- Talcott Parsons and Robert F. Bales on the functions of sex roles -- Alva Myrdal and Viola Klein on women's two roles -- Helen Mayer Hacker on the burdens of masculinity.