Abstract
In this chapter, Shields reviews how feminist-informed psychology in the US has conceptualized and studied gender since the early 1970s, and how her career both reflects and has affected the field. Toggling between her own experiences and the field, she organizes the story around three periods: the early 1970s and its emphasis on androgyny; the late 1980s to 1990s and growing focus on gender as a socially constructed practice; and present-day intersectionality-informed views of gender as but one dimension of interlocking social identities that define axes of sociostructural power. She concludes with cautions and hopes. She cautions readers about the “gender differences paradigm” that continues to dominate psychological research on gender. Shields finds hope in the continued growth of the international community of feminist psychologists.
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Notes
- 1.
Some feminist psychologists (e.g., Eagly 2018) today still maintain that science can be undertaken completely objectively, and that rigorous empiricism alone can correct for flawed scientific reasoning about gender. The late Naomi Weisstein, best known by feminists for her devastating critique of mid-century psychology (Weisstein 1968/1993a), was also an esteemed vision neuroscientist whose theoretical and empirical work has had lasting impact on the psychology of visual perception. She strongly identified as an experimental psychologist and was critical of feminists who questioned the value of scientific practice. Instead, she called for a return to scientific research that was “activist, challenging, badass feminist psychology.” (Weisstein 1993b, 244).
- 2.
Carolyn W. Sherif (one of two women tenure-line faculty out of at least 25 white male faculty) was an exception, but only because of her husband Muzafer Sherif’s status as a sociologist. In her writing, Carolyn was open about the fact that the Psychology Department only took her as a faculty member because they were forced to, though she did not even hint at being made to feel unwelcome to us grad students (Sherif 1983; Shields and Signorella 2014).
- 3.
Originally I had written that I was “fortunate to land” this position, but Teresa Frasca, a grad student who works with me, busted me for falling into the “lucky girl” trope here and throughout the draft chapter. Old and well-socialized habits die hard!
- 4.
Years later that and other overlooked work was “counted,” but only after women faculty across campus lobbied successfully for a salary equity study. The catch in being considered for an equity adjustment was that we individually had to write a statement about why and how we believed we had been disadvantaged, and have our dossiers reviewed by a committee appointed by our department chairs and, ultimately, the campus-wide Committee on Academic Personnel and Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs. Outrageous. I cannot think of it today without anger and a vivid memory of the distress of having to write a justification for why I deserved a salary adjustment. I had friends who did not put themselves through this demeaning process because they knew they would have no support from their department. In the end, my adjustment was approved shortly before I left UC Davis for Penn State. Thus, my “adjustment” was back pay for the year I left, an adjustment that our then department chair, Phillip Shaver, told me, was “a nice bonus.” Obviously, he did not grasp the fact that I had been underpaid for at least the previous 13 years. Ironically, in my 19 years at UC Davis, I had offered graduate and undergraduate seminars in feminist psychology in the Psychology Department and advised students who completed the Graduate Specialization in Feminist Studies without overt objections or backlash.
- 5.
On the eager assimilation of Freud’s thinking in the U.S. see, for example, Fancher (2000).
- 6.
The most meaningful outcome of my time in “France”/Women’s Studies was initiating and organizing the first national conference on the PhD in Women’s Studies with Sally Kitch (then at Ohio State) and Jean O’Barr (Duke). We convened a committee of about ten people representing diverse institutions, geography, and perspectives to plan and host a national conference in Atlanta in October, 2001. Even though it was held just one month after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, all but one invited institution participated. I believe the conference archives are kept at the Duke Women’s Studies Center.
- 7.
The Conference has been held biennially since then, in off years from meetings of the Society for Research in Child Development that are held every two years. The Gender conference was originated and continues to be organized by Carol Martin and Campbell Leaper.
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Shields, S.A. (2020). From “Gender Difference” to “Doing Gender” to “Gender and Structural Power” in Psychological Science. In: Fenstermaker, S., Stewart, A.J. (eds) Gender, Considered. Genders and Sexualities in the Social Sciences. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48501-6_14
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