Notable Achievements of Twentieth-Century American Women: Analyzing Biographical Dictionaries

Abstract

Women’s achievements have been, in large measure, overlooked by society, due to gendered expectations about their roles and a persistent tendency to center men as the primary agents of notable achievements, especially when it comes to historical information. Therefore, to challenge this narrative and provide evidence-based suggestions for the development of feminist research in sociology, this thesis draws on a dataset derived from the biographical dictionaries on Notable American Women. Building on theories such as the Status Attainment Model of Blau and Duncan (1967) and Bourdieu’s different forms of capital (1986), this research investigates the role of parental status, partner status, education level, and other life factors in understanding the attainment of “notability” among these women. To incorporate information from biographical dictionaries into quantitative analyses (N = 201), this research employs international coding schemes, such as the Historical International Standard Classification of Occupations (HISCO), Historical CAMSIS (HISCAM), the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED), and conducts a series of regression analyses to test its hypotheses. The findings revealed mixed results. Parental status and having higher education were not significant predictors, while the partner’s status proved to have a positive effect on the social status of Notable American Women. These results highlight the need to expand the use of biographical dictionaries to better document women’s lives, thereby advancing efforts toward research on stratification and gender equality.