Pauline Bart, Sociologist Who Mapped Women’s Challenges, Dies at 91

Pauline Bart, a second-wave feminist sociologist who wrote with rigor and acheronian wit astir slump among 1950s-era housewives, sex inequities successful wellness attraction and unit against women, died connected Oct. 8 astatine a hospice installation successful Raleigh, N.C. She was 91.

Her daughter, Melinda Schlesinger, said the origin was Alzheimer’s disease.

“She was 1 of the earliest, possibly the earliest, feminist sociologist,” said Catharine A. MacKinnon, the feminist instrumentality prof who pioneered the ineligible assertion that intersexual harassment is intersexual discrimination. “Pauline took the insights of the women’s liberation question and turned them into knowledge. She took the insights from consciousness raising and made them into scholarship.”

Dr. Bart documented the ways successful which society’s sex biases had harmed women. One of her studies, published successful 1973, looked astatine the connection and directives of gynecology textbooks.

Pointing retired that astir each gynecologists astatine the clip were antheral — 93.4 percent, Time mag reported successful 1972 — she showed however aesculapian books that were theoretically geared toward women’s reproductive wellness focused alternatively connected the happiness of their antheral partners.

She cited textbooks that noted however “women’s intersexual pleasance was secondary oregon adjacent absent” and that suggested women taxable to their husbands successful each ways — “the bride should beryllium advised to let her husband’s enactment thrust to acceptable their pace” — and larn to fake their orgasms. “Innocent simulation” is however 1 publication phrased it. One textbook compared the gynecologist to a god.

“A Funny Thing Happened connected the Way to the Orifice” was the wry rubric of Dr. Bart’s study, which she often said was an “ovarian, alternatively than a seminal, work.”

“Pauline could person been Lenny Bruce,” said Phyllis Chesler, the feminist scientist and co-founder of the National Women’s Health Network.

Instead she turned to sociology. It was a profoundly idiosyncratic prime driven by her ain experiences and challenges. “I crook my idiosyncratic beingness into sociology,” she said, “and usage sociological investigation to header with my idiosyncratic life.”

An amerciable abortion, performed by a antheral doctor, had been truthful achy that she vomited. Its fallout — erstwhile she sought treatment, the infirmary demanded she divulge the doctor’s sanction earlier helping her — propelled her years aboriginal to survey the Jane Collective, an underground termination work tally by women that had palmy (which is to accidental safe) outcomes.

Her mother’s slump — and possibly her own, arsenic a divorced parent of 2 young children struggling to gain precocious degrees and find enactment — led her to interrogation women who had been hospitalized for depression. They were 1950s housewives who had go bare nesters; erstwhile they recovered themselves without intent oregon occupation skills, their self-esteem had plummeted.

“Portnoy’s Mother’s Complaint,” arsenic Dr. Bart called her study, was a compassionate, and often hilarious, investigation of her interviews with mostly Jewish women, the alleged ace mothers who were the butt of jokes but suffered terribly erstwhile deprived of their superior roles.

“There is nary barroom mitzvah for menopause,” she wrote.

During her interviews, the women fussed implicit her, gave her proposal astir erstwhile to remarry and offered her candy; 1 diligent promised to propulsion her a enactment erstwhile she was released from the hospital.

“It is precise casual to marque amusive of these women,” Dr. Bart wrote, “to ridicule their pridefulness successful their children and interest for their well-being. But it is nary people of advancement to substitute Molly Goldberg for Stepin Fetchit arsenic a banal drama figure.”

While teaching women’s studies astatine the University of Chicago, Dr. Bart began to absorption connected rape due to the fact that truthful galore of her pistillate students told her they had been assaulted, galore by men they knew. That led to a 10-year study of what she called rape avoidance, and the strategies utilized by those who had deflected an assault. Those strategies, she found, mostly boiled down to warring back, a uncovering precise overmuch against the prevailing contented of the times — that it was safer for women to stay passive.

In 1983, Dr. Bart testified astatine the anti-pornography hearings that Professor MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, the feminist writer and anti-pornography activist, had organized successful Minneapolis. She appeared alongside Linda Boreman (otherwise known arsenic Linda Lovelace, of “Deep Throat” fame), rape survivors and others.

At that point, Dr. Bart had been studying the taxable for 10 years, and had noted pornography’s relation successful incidences of coercive sex. She besides presented probe by Diana Russell, the feminist activistic and sociologist who studied unit against women and popularized the word “femicide.”

After Dr. Bart gave her testimony, she work a poem by an anonymous writer that was a somber homage to Virginia Woolf — “who arsenic you recall,” Dr. Bart said, “walked into the stream and drowned.”

“She was outspoken, insightful and very, precise funny,” Professor MacKinnon said. “She did not endure fools astatine all. She was ne'er unkind, but she could beryllium pointed.”

In 1992, Dr. Bart’s classes astatine the University of Chicago, wherever she had taught connected and disconnected for 21 years, were reassigned erstwhile a antheral pupil complained that she had referred to him successful sexist and racist terms. She had already fought and mislaid a bid for wage parity with her antheral colleagues, and assemblage officials said astatine the clip determination were different incidents that led to her sidelining. She retired successful 1995.

“What I survey — unit against women — is thing people, including women, don’t similar to speech about,” she told The Chicago Tribune, which reported her clashes with the university. “It deals with the harm men bash to women, and it’s not symmetrical — determination are not arsenic galore pistillate rapists arsenic antheral rapists. It gets men wherever they live.”

Pauline Bernice Lackow was calved connected Feb. 18, 1930, successful Brooklyn. Her mother, Mildred (Prozan) Lackow, was a homemaker; her father, Emil Lackow, manufactured leather goods. In people school, arsenic she wrote successful an effort called “How a Nice Jewish Girl Like Me Could,” the mostly Jewish students were made to sing Christmas carols. Pauline protested by refusing to sing the words she thought were excessively religious.

She joined Max Bart, a chemic engineer, successful 1949. They divorced successful 1960.

She earned her undergraduate, master’s and doctoral degrees, each successful sociology, astatine the University of California, Los Angeles.

In summation to her daughter, Dr. Bart is survived by a son, William Bart; a sister, Charlotte Prozan (who took their mother’s commencement sanction arsenic her own); 2 grandchildren; and 4 great-grandchildren.

Dr. Bart was the co-editor, with Eileen Geil Moran, of “Violence Against Women: The Bloody Footprints” (1993), and the co-author, with Patricia H. O’Brien, of “Stopping Rape: Successful Survival Strategies” (1985). She and Linda Frankel wrote “The Student Sociologist’s Handbook,” archetypal published successful 1971.

“Everything is data, but information isn’t everything,” 1 of Dr. Bart’s oft-quoted insights, astatine 1 constituent made its mode onto a Sociologists for Women successful Society T-shirt.

Still, she couldn’t assistance quantifying the governmental positions of the guests astatine Dr. Chesler’s 50th-birthday party, which was held successful Kate Millett’s downtown Manhattan loft, a storied feminist locale astatine the location of a storied second-waver (Ms. Millet was the writer of “Sexual Politics,” the 1968 taste polemic and champion seller). She divided them into pro- and anti-pornography advocates; the latter, she proclaimed proudly, had a slim majority.

“My enactment connected unit against women,” Dr. Bart wrote successful 1993, “has made cocktail banter hard and has thrown a damper connected my societal beingness generally. As Andrea Dworkin said, ‘I’m a feminist, not the amusive kind!’”