Joan Acker and the shift from patriarchy to gender

Feminist sociologist Joan Acker is most commonly cited as one of the first to theorize how gender gets institutionalized in organizations and workplaces. But this project was actually an application of a more general theoretical turn in the field Acker was promoting. Acker was centrally involved in an important feminist sociological conversation about whether we should continue to theorize and study ‘patriarchy' or whether our focus should shift to ‘gender'. She argued for the latter and played an influential role in convincing the field to follow this suggestion.