Bio: (1908-1973) Austrian sociologist. Viola Klein completed her doctoral studies at the University of Prague, and after the entry of Nazi forces into Czechoslovakia, she emigrated to Great Britain. She completed her second doctorate in Britain at the London School of Economics, and her doctoral thesis was published in 1946 under the title The Feminine Character: History of an Ideology. In this book, she uses the approach of sociology of knowledge to explore psychological, biological, anthropological, and sociological conceptions of “femininity”. Klein concluded that what makes the position of women similar to the position of other subordinate groups are socially constructed stereotypes of femininity. These stereotypes portray women as intellectually and emotionally inferior to men. These stereotypes are perpetuated by male theorists whose conceptions of women and femininity depend more on male-dominated culture than on empirical evidence. In her later work, Klein focused on the empirical study of women's work, both at formal work and in the household.

Together with Alva Myrdal, she wrote the book Britain’s Married Women Workers (1956), in which the authors compare the position of women in the labor market, as well as in domestic work, in Sweden, Germany, France, and the United States. After Klein become the director of the UNESCO Department of Social Sciences in the early 1960s, she collected a large amount of empirical data on the position of women in the labor market from 21 countries and presented the results of the analysis in the book Women Workers (1965). Her first academic position was at the University of Reading, where she worked from 1965 until her retirement.

Main works

The Feminine Character: History of an Ideology (1938);

„The Stereotype of Femininity”, in Journal of Social Issues (1950);

Women’s Two Roles: Home and Work (1956);

Britain’s Married Women Workers (1965);

Women Workers: Working Hours and Services: A Survey of 21 Countries (1965).