Toward a New Psychology of Gender

A Reader

Mary M. Gergen, Sara N. Davis, Mary M. Gergen, Sara N. Davis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781317795735
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Drawn from a brilliant array of voices primarily from psychology, but also from other social sciences and humanities, this unique reader of creative and intellectually provocative essays investigates the social construction of gender. For the past several decades, those involved with the study of the psychology of women and gender have been struggling for recognition within the framework of psychology. This volume brings together the writings from psychology, philosophy, psychoanalysis, history, women's studies, education and sociology that critique mainstream thinking and exemplify new ways of creating inquiry.

PART I

LINKING FEMINISM AND PSYCHOLOGY

Social Constructionist Re-visionings

REGARDING GENDER

Essentialism, Constructionism, and Feminist Psychology

Janis S. Bohan

chapter 1

DURING THE past decade and a half, a group of approaches to understanding women (represented by the work of Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarrule, 1986; Chodorow, 1978; Gilligan, 1982; Miller, 1976; and others) has gained wide popularity, both within and outside academia. Collectively, these models suggest that girls and women necessarily have different experiences than do boys and men and that these differential experiences generate distinctive modes of thinking, judging, relating, and so forth.

This notion of substantial differences between women’s and men’s modes of being has been a recurrent and pervasive theme in considerations of gender, whether stressing or minimizing differences. Hare-Mustin and Marecek (1988, 1990) discussed how these two approaches, which they termed alpha bias and beta bias, respectively, have shaped psychology’s understandings of gender despite the fact that the construction of gender as difference has failed either to resolve the paradoxes created by such renditions or to confront underlying issues of domination.

It was my intention that author’s full first names be used in the reference section of this article. As I have argued elsewhere, the use of initials may support the presumption of male authorship, thereby contributing to the persistent invisibility of women and their work. Unfortunately, during the copyediting process (in accordance with the APA manual), initials were substituted for authors’ first names by the editors of Psychology of Women Quarterly.

Historically, the vast majority of psychological considerations of gender have been maximalist or alpha biased and androcentric; sex differences have been regarded as fundamental to human nature, with male traits the valued norm. Only with the resurgence of feminism in the late 1960s was this dimorphism seriously questioned, and such challenges have since characterized much of feminist psychological theory and research (Crawford & Marecek, 1989; Deaux, 1984; Sherif, 1979; Unger, 1979).

Against this recent minimalist or beta biased background, the new approaches put forth by Gilligan, Miller, and others appear profoundly divergent. This “cultural feminism” presents traits deemed distinctively women’s as indeed different from but equal or even preferable to those that characterize men in general. Thus, difference is affirmed, but the customary valuation of difference is turned on its head; women’s ways of being are revered rather than demeaned.

This valuing of qualities traditionally associated with women is transformative. By elevating characteristics long identified as feminine, cultural feminists offer an alternative conception of women’s place in the order of things and simultaneously promise to broaden the range of qualities regarded as worthy for all people. The effort to validate the intrinsic worth of “feminine” qualities arguably contributes importantly to the feminist goal of liberating women from oppression grounded in devaluation.

Yet, even as many rush to embrace this re-vision of gender, others urge caution. The debate between essentialist and constructionist views of gender is invoked in this critique, a debate whose concepts and terminology are often misunderstood and misrepresented. To clarify the meaning of essentialism and constructionism as they will be used here, I offer the following brief discussions of these two perspectives on gender.

ESSENTIALISM

Designating an approach as essentialist is not the same as saying that it argues for the biological determination of gender. The distinction between essentialist and constructionist views of gender lies not in the origin of gender qualities but in their location.

Essentialist views construe gender as resident within the individual, a quality or trait describing one’s personality, cognitive process, moral judgement, etc. Thus, it is an essentialist stance to argue that “relationality” or a “morality of justice” is a quality possessed by the individual. Essentialist models, thus, portray gender in terms of fundamental attributes that are conceived as internal, persistent, and generally separate from the on-going experience of interaction with the daily sociopolitical contexts of one’s life.¹

CONSTRUCTIONISM

Just as essentialism is often misunderstood as biological determinism, the social construction of gender is often confused with the socialization of gender. The position urging that gender is socially constructed is not simply an assertion of the environmental origin of gender traits. Rather, the constructionist argument is that gender is not a trait of individuals at all, but simply a construct that identifies particular transactions that are understood to be appropriate to one sex.

Gender so defined is not resident in the person but exists in those interactions that are socially construed as gendered. From this view, relationality or morality is a quality of interactions not of individuals, and it is not essentially connected with sex. What it means to term a transaction feminine or masculine is socially agreed upon and is reproduced by the very process of participating in that transaction.

THE CONTRAST BETWEEN ESSENTIALISM AND CONSTRUCTIONISM

By way of analogy, consider the difference between describing an individual as friendly and describing a conversation as friendly. In the former case, “friendly” is construed as a trait of the person, an “essential” component to her or his personality. In the latter, “friendly” describes the nature of the interaction occurring between or among people. Friendly here has a particular meaning that is agreed upon by the participants, that is compatible with its meaning to their social reference groups, and that is reaffirmed by the process of engaging in this interaction. Although the essentialist view of gender sees it as analogous to the friendly person, the constructionist sees gender as analogous to the friendly conversation.

If “friendly” were gendered, an essentialist position might argue that women are more friendly than men. Whether this quality came from biological imperatives, from socialization, or from a combination of both, it is now a trait of women. A constructionist position would argue that the gendering of friendly transactions is the product of social agreements about the appropriateness of certain behavior. The differential exposure of men and women to those contexts that elicit friendly behavior results in a linkage between sex and friendliness, and friendliness becomes gendered.

THE CRITIQUE OF ESSENTIALISM

The models proffered by Belenky et al. (1986), Chodorow (1978), Gilligan (1982), and Miller (1976) represent essentialist construals of gender as defined here. These understandings, although laudable for their affirmation of women’s experience, also raise important theoretical, empirical, and political difficulties for feminist psychology. Although their enthusiastic welcome has served in some degree to bring women’s experience to the fore, they demand the same critical political analysis that feminist psychology has accorded other less woman-centered theories. Among the concerns we must address are the following.

When We Say That Women Think, Make Moral Judgements, or Relate Differently Than Men, Which Women Do We Mean?

Both methodologically and theoretically, essentialist models are grounded in problematic universalizing assumptions. Research designs from which these models are derived have not systematically identified or sought out participants representing the diversity of women’s experience (Auerbach, Blum, Smith, & Williams, 1985; Fine, 1985; Lerman, 1986; Lott, 1986).Theoretically, also, the exclusionary nature of these concepts is troublesome. Theories stressing mothering discount family groupings and child-rearing practices that vary from the nuclear family norm, and in so doing invalidate not only those women who are not mothers but also the experience of children raised in other living arrangements (Lerman, 1986; Lott, 1990).

The failure to acknowledge diversity among us may contribute to a misogynist agenda; Butler (1990) urged us to be cognizant of the “coercive and regulatory consequences” of a portrayal of women as a homogeneous class, a “seamless category” (p. 4). The point is not that each identifiable group of women does or does not approach the topics of concern in a similar manner. The point is that we do not know and dare not presume.

The experiences attributed to women, portrayed as contributing to their “nature,” are not timeless and universal but are socially, historically, and politically located; essentialist models fail to acknowledge this situatedness (Nicholson, 1990). To presume that all women judge, think, or relate in a characteristic and universal manner denies the contextuality that, as psychologists, we know frames behavior.

Are the Qualities Attributed to Women in These Views Issues of Gender per se or Are They a Product of Oppression?

Hare-Mustin and Marecek (1988), Stack (1986), Westkott (1986), and others have argued that oppressed groups develop the ability to exist in two worlds—that of their immediate reference group and that of the dominant group—to abide by the demands of those in power.² This ability requires sensitivity to the expectations and responses of others; this vigilance is manifested as a mortality of caring, as a sense of self grounded in relationships, and as subjective and connected knowing.

If women’s relationality is a product of oppression, as Miller (1976) suggested, then when we cherish our relationality, are we legitimizing the oppression that created it (cf. Hare-Mustin & Marecek, 1990; Westkott, 1988)? This question has frightening political implications. If the oppressed can be led to value their own oppression, then liberation becomes impossible.

Imagine a scenario where women have begun to recognize their marginalization and to assert their personal and collective right to self-worth. Imagine that women are making notable if limited strides both in improved quality of life and personal autonomy and in raising the consciousness of their society to their oppression and the need for redress. Imagine, further, that the lingering product of that oppression is women’s distinctive “way of being,” a more relational, caring approach to others.

If you were a member of the long-dominant male power structure in this society, a group that wished to retain its hegemonic position, how might you proceed in the face of such challenges? First, no conscious conspiracy need direct such an undertaking; socially constructed understandings of what gender is and should be, what women are and should be, will suffice to guide both your traditionally empowered group and the response of the public at large. It will seem clear that your agenda is self-evidently right. I suggest that you could achieve your aim by appealing to women’s caring nature, urging them to cherish the activities and roles they traditionally held and to abjure their striving for equality and visibility, which will now be portrayed as misguided.

Here are some suggested strategies for retaining power. You should call public attention to instances where the proposal for a return to traditional roles comes not from you but from among women’s own numbers. At the same time, you should be vocal in your personal admiration for these qualities. Women will welcome your praise for qualities now seen as inherently theirs and inherently valuable, and it will offer no threat to your power to grant such acclaim, for these are traits of the disenfranchised.

You should employ and encourage public and political discourse that supports your agenda. Phrases such as “the death of feminism,” “saving the family,” “the mommy track,” “the biological clock,” “the infertility epidemic,” and “the new feminity” should be effective. You should encourage media coverage that blazons across the front page commentary highlighting sex differences and supporting “traditional” values. Serious scholarly and political criticism must be relegated to academic journals where it will go largely unnoticed.

If effective, this strategy should result in a populace convinced of the merit of separate spheres and confortable with their own place in such a system. Critics will be largely unheard; those who are heard will appear resistant to the truth of common experience and hostile to the natural order.

The political realities underlying this chilling scenario have been the subject of a number of serious scholarly analyses in recent years (e.g., Beckwith, 1984; Crawford, 1989; Faludi, 1991; Kahn & Yoder, 1989; Lott, 1988, 1990; Mednick, 1989; Poovey, 1988; Squire, 1989). If such a strategy succeeds in convincing women of the merit of a return to the separate spheres of the past, the aims and recent gains of feminism will be the likely casualties.

However, it might be argued, the work we consider here does not relegate women to devalued roles; indeed, here feminine qualities are cherished rather than demeaned. Certainly we must avoid participating in the devaluation of those traits that have traditionally been associated with women and that hold promise for improvement in the human condition: nurturance, sensitivity to others, connected knowing. Indeed, it is not only cultural feminists who have argued that “men’s” modes of being are less rather than more noble. Sampson (1977, 1989, 1990), for example, has summarized considerable scholarship regarding the problematic nature of the western, masculine conception of the self-contained individual as the epitome of mental health and social evolution.

However, although we may cherish these qualities associated with women, wish them for ourselves, and also encourage them in men, both political experience and systematic research demonstrate that these traits are not those most respected by the culture. Collaboration with essentialist interpretations of gender might, if inadvertently, contribute to a recreation of earlier understandings of gender, with women deemed not different and equal but, once again, deficient.

Essentialist Models Have Troubling Implications for Collective Feminist Action

Further problems are created by the essentialist location of responsibility for a woman’s experience and behavior within herself, the construal of gender as an aspect of the individual’s personality structure. This position borders on victim blaming: Women’s experience, including their marginalization and oppression, becomes a result of qualities within themselves, rather than a reflection of the social systems that shape their lives (cf. Fine, 1985; Kahn & Yoder, 1989; Lott, 1985, 1990; Sampson, 1977, 1990; Sarason, 1981; Scheman, 1983; Squire, 1989).

Operating from this understanding of gender, action undertaken to i...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Toward a New Psychology of Gender Opening Conversations
• Part I Linking Feminism and Psychology Social Constructionist Re-visionings
• Part II Connecting With Others Research as Relational Practice
• Part III Challenging Differences Cultural Constraints and Narratives of Lives
• Part IV Open to Interpretation Multiple Lenses
• Part V Contested Relations Family Members and Friends
• Part VI Sexuality and Pleasure De-forming Desire
• Part VII Gender & Identity Dis-Figuring the Body
• Part VIII Power Multiply Messaged
• Part XI Breaking Out Diagnosis and Therapy After Modernity
• Part X Postscript A Postmodern Moment
• Contributors
• Copyright Permissions
• Index