Alice Rossi, 87, noted sociologist, leading feminist

[Forkboy]

Alice Schaerr Rossi, a prominent sociologist, proponent of women’s rights, and retired professor at the University of Massachusetts, died Nov. 3 of pneumonia in Northampton. She was 87.

As an early and ardent supporter of abortion rights, a champion of female professors, and one of the founding board members of the National Organization of Women, Dr. Rossi was a strong feminist voice across many spheres of American life. Her early writings helped form the philosophical underpinning of the women’s movement in the late 1960s and 1970s. But her influential research and teaching, while puncturing societal myths, also sometimes challenged long-held feminist assumptions.

In the late 1970s, for example, she argued that gender roles, particularly in parenting, can be defined as much by biological impulses as by societal pressures.

“The differences between men and women are not simply a function of socialization, capitalist production, or patriarchy,’’ she wrote.

The traditional division of child-care, she argued, has a strong biological basis, with women able to care for children better than men can. Women, she said, had an “innate predisposition’’ for child-rearing.

The reaction in some circles of the feminist movement was harsh.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/obituaries/articles/2009/11/10/alice_rossi_87_noted_sociologist_leading_feminist/

[elleng]

1. She wrote much more than that, of course, AND she was right!

How foolish we liberals, progressives, feminists, whatevers have been! We just can't keep from cutting off our noses despite our faces!!!

[Warpy]

2. Of course she was right. Women who wanted some help

with the backbreaking job of child care weren't happy about that whether or not they self identified as feminists, but she was right.