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/

[niyad]

1. RIP alice.

thank you for sharing this

[saracat]

2. Amazing. She was 87 and STILL women are second class citizens

and we are STILL debating the rights of women to control their own medical issues. RIP Alice. You fought the good fight.

[Forkboy]

4. It seems we're going backwards at times.

I know overall that things are better for women than they were 20-30 years ago, but sometimes it doesn't seem it. Bush was a nightmare on all these things. Sexism and racism were suddenly ok again.

[comtec]

3. self-delete

.