Social Scientists & Psychologists, Biographies & Memoirs, Social Sciences, Women's Studies 

"This is a daring and exciting book that will be much more controversial than any usual history of ideas. McDonald shows that women like Florence Nightingale, Harriet Martineau and Beatrice Webb, while well-known historical figures, have been overlooked as founders of social science history. Nightingale was neither a romantic nor an hysteric, but an originator of applied statistics; Webb was the first social scientist to use participant observation; and Martineau wrote the first book on how to conduct sociological research. Feminists today, in their rejection of empiricism, are rejecting the very tools which were developed by women in the past to expose bias and prejudice". Marjorie Griffin Cohen Simon Frasier UniversityThrow out those dated books on the white, male founders of the social sciences! Lynn McDonald documents the ideas and lives of the brilliant, early women in the social sciences, while also lucidly explaining why patriarchs and many feminists stubbornly fail to acknowledge our female founders. Mary Jo Deegan University of Nebraska - from Amzon