Significant Differences

Feminism in Psychology

Corinne Squire

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317238676
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Psicología social

Current western feminism and psychology have a particularly close relationship, with feminism finding an increasingly important voice in psychology. In this clear introductory text, originally published in 1989, Corinne Squire examines what feminism and psychology mean to each other, concentrating on the different ways in which feminism is articulated in psychology.

Each of the feminist 'movements' within psychology is explored, with clear and critical explanations of the ways in which they differ significantly from conventional psychology. Squire looks at the dominant, egalitarian form of feminist psychology, which tries to work within traditional psychology, and at the woman-centred feminist psychology, which has developed largely outside the conventional discipline, and analyses the limitations and advantages of these approaches. She goes on to look at more complex feminist attempts to deal with psychological concerns, and identifies feminist initiatives, throughout psychology and outside it, which manage to address psychological issues but refuse to respect the boundaries of mainstream psychology, forming instead helpful associations with other forms of knowledge in order to change the nature of psychological discourse.

Chapter one
Counting women in

We were not thinking much about being women in psychology. We simply took it for granted that women can function well in psychology in all kinds of settings, and we showed that they could by doing our work.

(Henlé in O'Connell and Russo 1983: 229)

Women ... had to be a little better than the average man in order to stay equal. That seemed to me to be quite all right, since I was quite sure that I was better than the average man. That there was a gross injustice here, I preferred to overlook.

(Rioch in O'Connell and Russo 1983: 174)

In the early 1970s, women psychologists, particularly in North America, began to oppose what they characterized as psychology 'against' women (e.g. Parlee 1975). They were inspired by the contemporary growth in western feminism. Feminist writers were protesting against women's exclusion from well-paid, high-status, and meaningful work, and from cultural and political power. They were also starting to analyse subjective experiences of gender, and were finding traditional psychological accounts of them inadequate. Feminists in psychology began to investigate these gendered subjectivities, and to challenge their discipline's gender biases. The first approach they developed was what I shall call egalitarian feminist psychology.

Egalitarian feminist psychology analyses traditional psychology's errors and omissions about gender, and hopes to correct them by bringing in more female psychologists, extending male-oriented psychological work to include women, and adjusting existing procedures and theories. By extending a kind of equal opportunities policy to the whole discipline, it tries to create a gender-neutral psychology, 'a non-sexist science, a psychology of human behaviour' (Vaughter quoted in Unger 1979: 24).

Egalitarianism is the chronological and logical starting point for feminist psychology. It is also its dominant form. Its closeness to mainstream psychology is important for a discipline as concerned about its own definition and status, and as resistant to feminist ideas, as psychology generally is. Where critical psychologies have written off conventional psychology, as with marxist and other radical psychologies in the 1960s, the mainstream discipline has been able to ignore or co-opt them. The traditionalism of egalitarian feminist psychology gains it a hearing in the conventional discipline, and allows it to make changes within the established framework. At the same time, egalitarian feminist psychology departs from mainstream psychology in important ways. It is heavily indebted to western feminism. And its feminist interests in social relations link it with disciplines like sociology and history, making it more interdisciplinary than most psychology, maintaining its hopes for change and even a complete paradigm shift in the discipline (e.g. Parlee 1979, 1981). These double allegiances, to psychology and to feminism, generate a variety of goals and strategies, which allow egalitarian feminist psychology to co-exist with other forms of feminist psychology, and to assist their development.

Some feminist psychologists criticize the egalitarian approach for providing a response, not an alternative, to traditional psychology. 'Does integration lead to cooptation and dilution of feminist goals and methods?' (Basow 1986: 6), they ask. Egalitarian feminist psychology tends to neglect gender issues that do not relate to traditional psychological interest. It often treats women as a unified group, glossing over psychological and social differences between them. And it can encourage the tokenizing and co-opting of female psychologists and their work. These problems resemble those encountered by early second-wave western feminists like Friedan and the National Organization of Women, who were often slammed for trying to improve women's position within male-oriented spheres of activity, rather than pursuing female-oriented concerns. They seemed to be making women into honorary men. In the 1980s, some egalitarian feminists have responded to political constraints by reviving this approach, and only supporting gradualist, defensive, or 'new realist' campaigns around, for instance, equal employment opportunities hiring and firing. Some have even lapsed into postfeminist inaction. Such a climate increases the likelihood that egalitarian feminist psychology will be incorporated into the traditional discipline.

Because egalitarian feminist psychology wants to adapt conventional psychology, rather than replace it, it has to begin from psychology's self-definition. Different schools of psychology describe themselves differently, but the discipline's dominant view of itself is as an objective science, capable of consistent, complete explanation, and prediction. Psychology takes subjectivity, unique individual consciousness, as its object. Other western sciences exclude difficult aspects of subjectivity from their portraits of themselves, as in classical physics. Non-scientific discourses, like law and literary studies, address subjectivity by deploying their own concepts of the subject. Psychology sets out to fill the gaps left by these approaches, and in particular, to be 'a science which explains, vis-à-vis physics, why it is that the mind is by nature constrained initially to mislead reason in its dealings with reality' (Canguilhem 1980: 41).

Popular understandings of subjectivity, psychology's object, suggest that it escapes rationality. This makes the impossibility of sustaining an objective, scientific programme particularly clear in psychology. The fact that psychology uses 'subjective' individuals to investigate subjectivity intensifies the problem. Psychology gets round these ambiguities by ignoring them. It develops an idea of an unproblematic, purely 'psychological' subject who is rational, unified and asocial. This is a 'partial subjectivity: that which fits in with the subject-of-science of the positivist ideology of science; also, it is a subjectivity which is consistent with the rationalising subject of capitalist economic exchange' (Henriques et al. 1984: 141). But psychology's concept of the subject runs into a number of difficulties. Psychology takes different, sometimes incompatible, and often implicitly social subjects as its objects. These subjects emerge from psychology's links with biological, medical, psychiatric, education and employment discourses, for example. Different psychological schools also view one phenomenon, like crowd behaviour, as a manifestation of different cognitive, social, biological, or unconscious subjects. Even within one school, methodological and theoretical subjects may not match up.

Psychology also tries to deal with the ambiguities of subjectivity by imposing methodological rigour on it. It uses experiments to measure its subjects' behavioural components, and sets up psychologists as the neutral agents of these experiments. The problems here are obvious. Psychologists exert powerful influences on experiments, making the resultant data unreliable. It is impossible to define and measure every parameter of a behaviour. Subjectivity is in any case incompletely manifested in behaviours. Psychology cannot construct complete, consistent, scientific theories of the subject by adopting such a programme.

Psychology's theoretical inadequacies often lead it to replace theory with utilitarian generalizations from its most reliable methods. This utilitarianism allows psychology to adapt to its diverse and changing academic and applied contexts. Psychological utilitarianism is implemented by psychologists. By giving their work 'an evaluative aspect and a significance in terms of expertise' (Canguilhem 1980: 48), it makes them into powerful professionals. More than other self-declared 'sciences', psychology uses this expert status of its practitioners to dismiss its theoretical uncertainties, and guarantee its objectivity. And so psychologists come to dominate the discipline. They are aware of this power. Some want to expand it by making themselves indispensable within different agencies and organizations, even if this entails the loss of a clear identity as a psychologist (e.g. Herriot 1987). Most, however, support the explicit institutionalization of their expertise, through chartering, for instance (e.g. Hartnett and Shimmen 1987). In the past, psychologists have even claimed that 'the world will be saved by the psychologists, or it won't be saved at all' (Maslow quoted in Pečjak 1985: 268). Such presumptions of omnipotence are troubling, however philanthropic their tone. And, Canguilhem asks, who chooses these megalomaniac experts, who treat subjects like insects? 'How does one recognise the men who are worthy of assigning to man-the-instrument his role and function? Who selects the selectors?' (1980: 48).

The powerful place psychologists have in psychology, and the large part they play in deciding how the discipline deals with gender, has been recognized by egalitarian feminist psychologists. Their main response has been to campaign for fairer representation of women among psychologists. This chapter examines the gender imbalances among psychologists, and analyses egalitarian attempts to rectify them.

In Joanna Russ's The Female Man, Janet, returning to the twentieth century from an all-female future, visits the Pentagon, and asks, 'where the dickens are all the women?' (1985: 8). Walking into a parliament of psychologists, like the governing Council of the British Psychological Society (BPS), she might have had a similar reaction. There are only seven women on the forty-six strong Council.

Women's representation decreases as you ascend psychology's professional hierarchy. In Britain, women predominate in non-examination adult education psychology classes. Among psychology students at 'A' level, degree, and postgraduate level, half, 65 per cent, and 40 per cent respectively, are women. Women do slightly, but consistently, better at degree level. But there are seven male to every one female tenured academic psychologist, and women heads of department are in single figures. Women are much better represented among occupational, educational, clinical and counselling psychologists and psychotherapists, but here too they are concentrated at the lower levels of the profession.¹

The US situation looks more hopeful. Women took two-thirds of 1982 psychology degrees and half of 1984 psychology doctorates. The Association of Women in Psychology (AWP) has about 1000 members. Many of these are also members of the American Psychological Association's (APA's) Psychology of Women Division, the largest and one of the fastest-growing divisions, which has 2000 members, almost all female. Women make up over two-fifths of APA boards and committees and over a third of its main governing bodies. But only four of the APA's twenty-six 1986 awards for outstanding work went to women. Most women in the APA Psychology of Women Division work in low-status, 'feminine', service areas of psychology. The number of psychology Ph.Ds in these expanding areas taken by women, is increasing at a particularly fast rate. Women's Ph.D parity or dominance in academic psychology has been achieved mainly through a decline in male Ph.Ds. Women hold one-third of tenure track and one-fifth of tenured posts, and still comprise only three-tenths of the total US psychological workforce. They are more likely to be low rank and part time, are lower paid, and have higher Ph.D unemployment than men.²

Psychology usually assumes that psychologists can act in a neutral way. Skinner, for instance, says,

A scientist may have an effect on behaviour in the act of observing or analysing it, and he must certainly take this effect into account. But behaviour may also be observed with a minimum of interaction between subject and scientist.

(1953: 21)

But worries about psychologists' neutrality continually resurface in the discipline, in a history which includes 1960s concerns with experimenter effects; 1970s ethogeny; a 1980s preoccupation with the social representations which psychologists as well as subjects draw on; and a long list of attempts to replace living with automated experimenters, from written instructions, to computers. Many psychologists realize that Skinner's optimism is excessive, and that variables like gender affect their practice in important ways. They argue for a more equal representation of women and men among psychologists. Even the Scientific Affairs Board of the BPS, criticizing an initial proposal for a Psychology of Women Section, agreed that 'to encourage women to become and remain involved in the BPS is a laudable objective in itself' (Women in Psychology 1985).

Feminists often rely on male psychologists' work to solve the psychological problems they encounter. Mostly they ignore the possible significance of these male origins. Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1965), which first appeared in the US in 1963, at the beginning of the second wave of western feminism, quotes male psychologists extensively and uncritically. Figes's Patriarchal Attitudes (1972) begins with a review of psychological and anthropological evidence on gender, pitting predominantly male experts against each other. But sometimes feminists see women's poor representation among psychologists as a problem, and attribute psychology's inadequate handling of gender to the imbalance. Greer (1971), for example, denounces psychology's gender bias by referring to the discipline's predominantly male practitioners.

Egalitarian feminist psychologists draw on both feminist and psychological criticisms of gender imbalance among psychologists. They argue that increasing the number of women psychologists will make the discipline more scientific, and will provide strong role models for other women. This approach is not new. Many early women psychologists thought that 'quietly doing our job, not as women psychologists, but as psychologists' (Henlé 1983: 229) would prepare the way for more and more women to come into the discipline, and for psychology to become fairer as a result. The approach also has precedents among other women who were the first in their fields, and has been adopted in feminist work like that of Friedan and Greer. It has emphasized an aspect of psychology that is particularly important for the discipline's status and influence. But it has had limited success. Fifteen years after it began, women are still numerically under-represented in high-status and decision-making areas of the discipline. And counting more women in among psychologists is not changing psychology's understanding of gender as much as many feminists would like.

Why is this so? First, psychology itself has resisted the campaigns. As Rioch suggests (see p. 7 at the beginning of this chapter), women psychologists always need to be better to be equal. Often they do not achieve the institutional recognition which their practice or research merit. Many of their contributions are forgotten. Where they appear to be gaining, opposition develops, based on fears about the profession's declining prestige. Humphrey and Haward, for example, warn that 'a female-dominated [clinical psychological] profession ... could be at risk of losing status and momentum. Comparison with other female-dominated professions in the Health Service e.g., nursing, physiotherapy ... may help to bring home this point' (1981: 413–14). Finally, the psychological profession's hostility to marriage and family commitments works strongly against women psychologists. Puffer, a nineteenth-century female psychology graduate thinking of applying for an academic post, is told by her college president, 'the rumor ... concerning your engagement may have ... affected the recommendation I sent'. Later, having chosen marriage over her promising career, she writes, 'The basic inhibition still operating to suppress the power of women is the persistent vicious alternative – MARRIAGE OR CAREER – full personal life versus the way of achievement' (Furumoto and Scarborough 1986: 41). Bronstein et al. (1986) find that even today, where referees refer to candidates' families, they see those of female candidates as problems they have overcome, but refer to those of male candidates as assets.

The second reason why playing the numbers game with female and male psychologists does not work is that it involves equating women with feminists. O'Connell and Russo's (1983) account of eminent female psychologists, for instance, presents these women as feminist role models. Russo ends her (1982) review of US psychology of women faculties and courses with pride that these courses are being taught mainly by and for women. But female psychologists are not all feminists. Some accept the secondary status the discipline allocates them. Puffer, for instance, suggests that the restricted family life a psychological career demands is too high a price for women to pay, and urges them, instead, to study 'borderline subjects', a 'fringe of specialist research', or do consulting, criticism, and reviewing (Furumoto and Scarborough 1986: 41). Other female psychologists conform to Laws's description of women in academia who take on male-associated traits to mask their gender. They try 'to actualise the esteemed qualities associated with the dominant group (e.g. rationality; universalism; affective neutrality; coolness; courage)', and each 'esteems herself to the degree that she succeeds' (Laws 1975: 54). Many women psychologists become honorary men. They stay close to the male-oriented tradition, particularly at higher academic levels, and assume, like Henle at the beginning of the chapter, that their gender need not affect their career. Some psychology produced by men is more feminist than the work of these female professionals. Pleck and Sawyer (1974) and Kimmel (1988) contain good examples. And Canguilhem's analysis of the power relations of psychology, which I draw on often in the course of this book, is more valuable for feminist psychology than some narrower, more science-based accounts of the discipline written by women.

A third problem with the numbers game is tokenism. The many female psychologists who adopt traditional psychological priorities make a more equal sex balance seem good sense for psychology. But although a woman psychologist may act like one of the boys, her sex never becomes irrelevant to her work. Laws describes women in academia as Tokens, made deviant first by their sex, and then their aspirations, which do not fit with social expectations about women: 'Being born female, the Token is assimilated to primary deviant status. By aspiring to the attributes and privileges of the dominant class, she becomes a double deviant: female, to be sure, but refusing the constraints of the ascribed status' (1975: 53). Tokenism allows the number of women in psychology to increase; but women psychologists remain second-class psychologists. They stay women: masculinized but still female – exceptions that prove the rule.

Tokenism's ambiguity constrains all women psychologists. In 1985, the women on the BPS Council argued against the establishment of a Psychology of Women Section in the Society. The Scientific and Professional Secretary issued an account of the debate to the Section's supporters, in which he quoted the women's opposition to justify the proposal's defeat. This argument managed to suggest that female and male psychologists hold principles of scientific neutrality in common, and that the BPS recognizes female and male psychologists as equal at the highest level; but also that women psychologists are different: specially suited to judge other women. In the US this ambiguity has acquired an institutional structure. Members of the APA's Division of the Psychology of Women work within the traditional pr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Counting women in
• 2 A balanced subject
• 3 Designs for equality
• 4 Theory for all
• 5 Woman-centred psychology
• 6 The unconscious and discourse
• 7 Forming associations
• Notes
• References
• Index